Time goal rules

Time goal rules (previously named SLA rules) are a commonly used tool to help businesses maintain a high standard for response times, and keep their customers happy. Whether you have internal response time requirements for your team, or external service-level agreements (SLAs) with your customers, Front will help you reach your goals.

Front’s time goal rules are like guardrails for your inbox, so you and your team can ensure every customer is responded to in time. Just set your response time goal and specify when conversations should be overdue. Front will take care of surfacing urgent conversations — even before a conversation is marked as overdue.

Front has two prebuilt time goal rule templates that allow you to define internal time limits:

1. Reply time goal: Track how much time it takes your team to send an outbound reply to a message. i.e. How long a customer spends waiting for a reply after they send you a message.

2. Resolution time goal: Track how much time it takes to resolve a conversation. i.e. How long it takes you to fully conclude an inquiry from a customer, taking multiple back and forth messages into account.

You can use one or both rules to help your team prioritize conversations and ensure timely resolutions.

If the conditions of your rule are met and your rule’s time limit has passed:

• The rule will trigger an overdue time goal, and add an SLA breach tag to the conversation. 

• You can add additional resulting actions for overdue time goals, such as notifying specific teammates, automatically assigning overdue conversations, and more.

Optional: Enable the Warn when goal is at risk section in your rule to bring attention to upcoming overdue time goals before they occur. At risk time goals apply an SLA warning tag to help your team further prioritize time-sensitive conversations. Like overdue time goals, you can add additional actions for at risk time goals.

You must have workspace admin permissions to create reply time goal rules.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the Company settings tab. Select Rules and macros from the left menu, and click Create rule. Select the Set reply time goal template from the rule library.

Step 2

Enter a name for your rule.

Step 3

In the Reply time goal field, set the time when the conversation is considered overdue. For example, if you want your team to respond to customers within 2 hours, enter 2 h into the reply time goal.

Use the dropdown menu to choose whether you'd like your rule to run only during business hours (within business hours), or at all hours (regardless of business hours).

Reminder: You can adjust your workspace's business hours in Front Analytics. Be aware that changing your business hours here will adjust business hours for the workspace as a whole, and will impact your analytics. To adjust any shared inbox business hours, navigate to the shared inbox.

Step 4

In the If section, select which inboxes the rule will apply to.

Optional: Click + Condition to add additional conditions to your rule. See this article for more information on filter conditions.

Step 5

In the Then section, determine what actions will happen when your reply time goal is overdue.

The Add tag action will automatically create an 🔥SLA Breach tag if it doesn't exist. We don't recommend using a different tag for this rule. If a different tag is used, all conversations with that tag will be considered overdue in analytics.

You can also add additional actions. See this article for more details.

Step 6 (optional)

Add an at risk warning to your rule. Toggle on the Warn when goal is at risk setting and choose the time you'd like to be warned of upcoming overdue time goals. The time you set in the No reply sent after field must be less than the time set in the Reply time goal field.

Step 7 (optional)

In the Then section, determine what actions will happen when an at risk warning is triggered.

The Add tag action will automatically create a ⚠️ SLA Warning tag if it doesn't exist. We don't recommend using a different tag for this rule.

Step 8

Click Create to save your rule.

Step 9 (optional)

Add your overdue/at risk tags to your sidebar using views to easily reference conversations that need attention.

You must have workspace admin permissions to create resolution time goal rules.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and into the Company settings tab. Select Rules and macros from the left menu, and click Create rule. Select the Set resolution time goal template from the rule library.

Step 2

Enter a name for your rule.

Step 3

In the Resolution time goal field, set the time when the conversation is considered overdue. For example, if you want your team to fully resolve conversations within 48 hours, enter 48 h into the resolution time goal.

Use the dropdown menu to choose whether you'd like your rule to run only during business hours (within business hours), or at all hours (regardless of business hours).

Reminder: You can adjust your workspace's business hours in Front Analytics. Be aware that changing your business hours here will adjust business hours for the workspace as a whole, and will impact your analytics. To adjust any shared inbox business hours, navigate to the shared inbox.

Step 4

In the If section, select which inboxes the rule will apply to.

Optional: Click + Condition to add additional conditions to your rule. See this article for more information on filter conditions.

Step 5

In the Then section, determine what actions will happen when your resolution time goal is overdue. The Add tag action will automatically create a 🔥 Resolution SLA breach tag if it doesn't exist. 

You can also add additional actions. See this article for more details.

Step 6 (optional)

Add an at risk warning to your rule. Toggle on the Warn when goal is at risk setting and choose the time at which you'd like to be warned of upcoming overdue time goals. The time you set in the No resolution after field must be less than the time set in the Resolution time goal field.

Step 7 (optional)

In the Then section, determine what actions will happen when an at risk warning is triggered. The Add tag action will automatically create a ⚠️ Resolution SLA warning tag if it doesn't exist.

Step 8

Click Create to save your rule.

Step 9 (optional)

Add your overdue/at risk tags to your sidebar using views to easily reference conversations that need attention.

Conversations tagged by your time goal rules will include a timer.

How it works

• The timer is in calendar hours. The timer will display the duration between the current time and the exact time the time goal will be overdue.

• After the reply/resolution time expires, the timer will display the duration between the timer start time to the current time, whether triggered by an inbound message or conversation status change.

• The exact overdue time is determined by your rule, which can take business hours into account.

• The timer has no impact on analytics if you are using business hours for reply/resolution time.

Example

• Business hours: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

• Time goal overdue when conversation is unreplied in: 2 hours

• Message received at: 4:00 PM

• Expected behavior:

  • The message will be overdue the next day at 10:00 AM

  • When viewing the conversation at 4:00 PM, the timer will show "18H remaining" until overdue

  • When viewing the conversation at 10:00 AM the next day, the timer will show "18H late to reply"

Front Analytics includes dedicated reporting on your time goal rules. Review your data to track your team’s overdue conversations and gauge the effectiveness of your time goal rules. For more details, check out our Time goals report article.

The business hours set in your Analytics dashboard or shared inbox settings sync to all of your workspace's time goal rules. This means that if you initially set your business hours to 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM in the time goal rule builder, then later change your business hours to 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM, this will carry over to the time goal rule, and your time goal rule will be based off the 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM business hours moving forward. 

Note that changing your business hours can impact current conversations, and cause your time goal rules to not run if the time frame no longer aligns with your new business hours.

The goal of time goal rules is to bring attention to conversations that are actively overdue and need action. When you reply to a message that has been flagged with an overdue or at risk tag, Front will automatically remove the overdue tag or at risk tag. This signifies that action has been taken on the conversation, and allows the goal timer to restart upon the next inbound message in the conversation.

• Reply time goal: A conversation will become subject to your rule when any of the following happens-

  • A new inbound message is received

  • A conversation is moved into the inbox

• Resolution time goal: A conversation will become subject to your rule when any of the following happens-

  • A new conversation is created

  • A new inbound message is received

  • The conversation status changes to anything other than Resolved/Archived

No. If the goal timer expires, and the conversation is currently Archived or Snoozed, the reply time goal rule will skip this conversation and the rule will not run. However, if the conversation is reopened or the snooze expires before the goal timer expires, then the reply time goal rule will still run.

Resolution time goals are compatible with both traditional statuses (Open/Snoozed/Archived) and ticket statuses (Open/Waiting/Resolved).

No, the goal timer continues to run while the conversation is Snoozed, and the period of time does not extend the rule's time limits.

Example 1:

Your team has a 1 hour reply time goal rule set up. 

A message arrives at 9:00 AM. At 9:30 AM, you set a snooze for one hour. At 10:00 AM, when the goal timer expires, the conversation will still be in a Snoozed state, and the time goal rule will not run. At 10:30 AM, your snooze expires. The time goal rule has already skipped the 9 AM message, but the next inbound message in the conversation can still trigger the time goal rule.

Example 2:

Your team has a 1 hour reply time goal rule set up.

A message arrives at 9:00 AM. You immediately snooze the conversation for 30 minutes. At 9:30 AM the snooze expires and reopens the conversation. At 10:00 AM, you still have not replied to the 9:00 AM message, so the time goal rule will trigger and your time goal will expire.

No, if your customer emails you multiple times before you can respond, it will not reset your goal timer. Your reply time goal will trigger based on when the first message that meets your time goal conditions was received, i.e. the time goal rule calculates overdue conversations based on the oldest unreplied message in the conversation.

No. Only replies manually sent by teammates will reset the goal timer.

Yes. If you select Within business hours under Time limits, the goal timer will only run during business hours.

Example 1: If your team has a 4-hour time limit, and business hours are 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, then a message arriving at 4:00 PM will reach its time goal the next day at 11:00 AM. Front will count 4 business hours and not include your off-hours.

Example 2: If your team has a 4-hour time limit, and business hours are 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, then a message arriving at 6:00 PM will reach its time goal the next day at 12:00 PM. Front will count 4 business hours starting at 8:00 AM and does not include your off-hours.

No. Time goal rules are only available as shared rules, and cannot be set up as individual rules or company rules.

No. Time goal rules do not work with dynamic variables.

Time goal rules are available on the Growth plan or above. Some legacy plans may also have this feature.