AI Assist [open beta]

AI Assist reduces the time and effort needed to resolve conversations with suggested replies based on past, similar conversations and optionally, your Front Knowledge Base. Let AI generate a message draft and see which sources contributed to it for full transparency and clarity. Use Front's AI Assist features to improve the efficiency and accuracy in your team’s workflows.

The following features are available:

• Conversation summary: Get a comprehensive view of a conversation. Customer inquiries and relevant details are displayed in an outline view with activity summaries.

• Similar conversations: Automatically find past conversations related to the one you’re currently working on. There are three ways to view similar conversations: clicking the pill above the conversation, selecting the one-line summary above the conversation, or clicking the sources while reviewing the suggested reply outline.

• Suggested replies: Generate email drafts using content from past conversations and knowledge base articles.

To participate in the beta:

• Enable the Assist setting via the AI tab in company settings and select your shared inboxes and knowledge sources.

• You must have shared inboxes containing emails in English and/or a Front Knowledge Base that is published in English. Public, Authorized users and Front users only site visibility options are supported.

AI Assist merges similar conversations and suggested replies into a single setting. Previously separate, these features now activate together when AI Assist is enabled.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front, then select company settings in the left sidebar. Select AI from the left menu and navigate to Assist.

Step 2

Click Edit inboxes and knowledge bases to choose where AI Assist is active and, optionally, which knowledge bases it pulls data from.

Step 3

Group inboxes that have related topics to improve response generation. For example, Support teams may group Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 inboxes to share response patterns. Doing so will leverage similar conversations across the inboxes in this group to suggest drafts.  It’s recommended to keep unrelated inboxes (e.g., Finance and Marketing) separate.

Step 4

Once configured, click Update and AI Assist will start generating drafts based on the selected sources. It may take up to 1 day to start seeing suggested replies. The admin who enabled the feature will receive a confirmation email when activation is complete.

Front’s Assist feature generates a summary at the top of a conversation. Teammates can click the overall summary to quickly catch up on long conversations.

A pop-up will appear with an outline of the conversation’s messages and comments. Each activity contains a short summary. 

Some activities represent inquiries. They are distinguishable with the status icon on their left. Hover over it to see the status of the request. You can copy the information by hovering a message and typing CMD+C or CTRL+C.

Click # hidden to see additional activities, or select an activity to jump to it in the conversation.

Use the filter feature at the top of the outline to focus on a specific request or pinned comments.

If the AI detects multiple requests in the same conversation, you can select a request to focus on a subset of messages.

For inquiries, if AI detects similar conversations or related knowledge base articles from the sources configured in your settings, you’ll see them underneath message summaries in the conversation outline. Click the arrows to expand and view the content. Use this feature to quickly learn from previous solutions to resolve your current inquiry.

For similar conversations, hover over a conversation preview to see a summary. Click the arrow icon to view the entire conversation in a new window. For knowledge base articles, click on the article to open it in a new window.

The benefits of using similar conversations include:

• Handling complex inquiries faster and more efficiently

• Reducing the need to manually search through previous conversations or knowledge base articles

• Learn from prior conversations to identify trends and improve processes

When AI detects a question and can find a relevant similar conversation or knowledge base article, you’ll see a Draft reply button in your composer to kickstart a draft.

Hover over the Draft reply button to preview the content that will be used to start a draft. Click Draft reply to start the draft. Clicking on the similar conversations source opens the Assist panel, showing the conversations used to generate the reply. Clicking on a knowledge base article source will take you directly to the article. 

You’ll see the composer open with pre-drafted content. You can continue customizing the message before sending it.

The benefits of using suggested drafts includes:

• Enabling faster resolutions by decreasing the number of drafts you need to create from scratch

• Reducing the need to manually search your knowledge base or past conversations for answers

• Flexibility to edit drafts to further customize the response to your recipient

This feature is only available for email channels.

Only English is supported at this time.

No. Assist only applies to shared inboxes.

Now that AI Assist is in open beta, the previous beta versions of similar conversations and suggested replies have been disabled. Customers who previously had suggested replies activated on a set of specific inboxes have been auto-enrolled in AI Assist for those inboxes.

Customers who were not auto-enrolled can access the latest version of suggested replies and similar conversations by activating AI Assist in company settings.

Yes. Multiple knowledge bases are supported. 

No. Assist only supports Front knowledge bases and historical conversations in Front at this time.

No. The Assist permission will either turn all the features on, or all the features off. For example, it is not possible to enable the similar conversations feature while disabling the suggested replies feature.

If you were using the previous versions of the similar conversations and suggested replies features, they have been improved and updated in AI Assist.

• Similar conversations: Now located in the conversation summary, the Draft reply pop-up, or by clicking the pill button at the top of the message panel, the accuracy of similar conversation has been improved. Unlike before, hovering over the pill button will no longer display similar conversations. Instead, you’ll need to click the pill to view them in the panel. 

• Suggested replies: Now uses similar conversations in addition to knowledge base articles to generate drafts.

Yes. Article additions and updates to your Front Knowledge Base will be available to AI within minutes of the update.

AI Summarize provides a high-level overview of the conversation, while the AI Assist conversation summary offers a more detailed summary of each message, focusing on identifying requests and inquiries. 

No. However, the Assist summary will automatically be generated. 

1. For high level feedback you can use the top level feedback banner in the Assist panel.

2. For feedback on a specific activity in the Assist outline you can hover over any of the summaries in the outline, then click the thumbs down icon. A pop-up will appear for you to provide more information.

Additionally, check our ideas portal here to see if your idea or feedback already exists.

• If it exists, you can upvote and/or comment on the idea to add additional details or describe the importance to your team’s workflows.

• If it doesn't exist, you can submit a new idea by clicking Add a new idea and share details about your idea and/or the problem you're having.

Doing any of those actions will ensure your feedback is reviewed by our Product team. This will also subscribe you to any updates and progress made on those ideas.

If you're encountering a bug and need support, please reach out to our Support team.

See this article for additional AI FAQs.

This feature is available for beta on the latest Growth plan or above until we reach capacity. It is free to use during open beta, but may be moved into a paid add-on in the future.

See this article to learn more about Front’s AI beta features.