Dynamic objects AMA: pull info from any system into Front

What are some examples of customers having success with dynamic objects and how are they being used? 

How do dynamic objects compare to traditional sidebar plugins?

What’s the best way to learn whether or not dynamic objects will be a good fit for my organization?

Any plans for dynamic objects that update on view? Some use cases are excluded/limited where data need to be “live”, for example order status (open, packed, shipped) and shipment status (in transport, delayed, delivered). 

We’re seeing a lot of customer success with dynamic objects. Here’s a few examples 

• We've seen logistics companies use dynamic objects to detect inbound messages from fraudulent carriers and quarantine those messages with rules. This can prevent freight loads with over $200k in merchandise from being compromised by bad actors. 
• A travel agency uses dynamic objects to track guest bookings. They even use rules to flag booking conversations where the travel date is within 90 days from today. 
• We’ve seen numerous customers build dynamic objects for Order data stored in Salesforce, Shopify, in-house order tracking systems, and other tools.

And the list keeps growing 👌

Although similar, we believe dynamic objects offer a number advantages that make them the preferred choice for integrating third-party information into Front. 

1. Dynamic objects are no-code, meaning you can configure them entirely in Front without having to code a custom solution from scratch. This significantly lowers the barrier to setting up an application that connects critical third-party tools to Front. 
2. Dynamic objects are easier to integrate with other mission-critical Front features. The best example of this is rules: users can easily configure rules that can act on a conversation based on the information contained within a dynamic object. In the future, we plan to more closely couple dynamic objects with additional features like Front chat, analytics, contacts, and more. 
3. Dynamic objects provide context in-line, with a single click. Although plugins offer a similar convenience, nothing can beat having that information available, right in the message you’re viewing.

Here’s the exact guidance we give our go-to-market teams to evaluate wether a customer would benefit from dynamic objects 

Do your Front communications often rely on some kind of “business object”, such as an order, reservation, quote, contract, shipment, etc? 

If the answer is yes, you should absolutely explore dynamic objects.

Additional questions:

• Do you often access business objects in a separate, third-party application?
• Are these business objects identified by a common pattern, such as an ID or a unique URL?
• Does your third-party application provide an API to access information about your business objects?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, dynamic objects will almost certainly benefit your organization. Time to learn more! 

Great question @pstos -- 

We absolutely want to ensure that dynamic objects are up to date with their source system. Without this, customers may not be able to rely on them in Front. The use cases you mentioned are perfect examples. 

By January, we plan to release an API endpoint that will allow customers to update their Front dynamic objects, externally. It will require some development effort, but we believe it is the most reliable way to empower users to keep their objects up to date. 

We’ve explored concepts like a “refresh button” in the UI that allows users to update dynamic objects on view. This is an interesting idea that would definitely provide value, but were concerned about some of the problems it may create. For example, if a customer configures a rule for a dynamic object, a user could trigger that rule simply by viewing an object in the UI. We’re not convinced this is the proper user experience. 

Regardless, we plan to actively consider new ways to solve this problem! Appreciate the input. 

Thanks for the update @robby_p. Out of curiosity; why can’t dynamic objects present in a conversation be updated when the conversation is selected by a user? Is the concern the number of refresh calls?

Would it be possible to combine the two, so that a link in the dynamic object opens the plugin panel with a custom plugin showing more detailed info?