How to enable and use the Salesforce integration

Salesforce is the world’s leading cloud CRM platform that helps businesses grow. Sales teams can track every customer interaction in one place, while powerful reporting gives leaders and reps alike clear visibility into performance and pipeline health.

Front’s Salesforce integration enables high-performing sales teams to get their work done entirely in Front. With Salesforce and Front working together, you can focus on customers while keeping sales data, reports, and forecasts always up to date.

This article: The Salesforce sidebar plugin lets you access and manage Salesforce records directly from your inbox in Front. You can view and update Contact, Lead, Account, Opportunity, Task, Case, and Note records, as well as custom objects linked to these standard types. You can also log full conversation threads, sync data on demand, and trigger automated actions using Front rules.

This integration helps teams stay aligned by keeping Salesforce updated with the latest customer interactions and making key CRM data instantly accessible while working in Front.

Professional plan or above: You can sync Salesforce contacts or accounts to Front, which allows you to use Salesforce data in Front rules, analytics, and search to power workflows and get insights. See these articles to learn more:

• Salesforce contacts sync

• Salesforce accounts sync

Professional plan or above: This integration also includes a library of prebuilt Connectors that give you access to every action available in the Salesforce API. Use them in rules, macros, or chatbots to easily automate Salesforce actions directly from Front, supercharging your workflows without having to write any code.

With Copilot or Autopilot: An MCP Connector lets Front's AI work directly in one of your tools, using that tool's own set of actions. Once connected, Front's AI can find information and take actions in that tool, and you decide what Front’s AI is allowed to do.

You must have Front company admin permissions to set up the integration.

Step 1

Click the gear icon, navigate to company settings, and select App store from the left menu.

Step 2

Select Salesforce from the list of integrations, then click Enable.

Step 3

Once enabled, the Salesforce plugin is automatically available to all teammates in the app switcher sidebar. No additional plugin toggle is needed. Teammates will be prompted to sign in to their Salesforce account the first time they open the plugin.

Step 4 (optional)

In the Overview tab, use the Capabilities section to navigate to additional settings:

• Get context in your inbox: Click Open plugin if you'd like to sign into the plugin immediately.

• Automate workflows with Connectors: Click Go to automations to set up Salesforce Connectors, rules, or macros.

• Sync contacts with Front: Click Manage contacts to set up the Salesforce contacts sync or Salesforce accounts sync.

Step 1

In your inbox view, select the Salesforce icon in the app switcher located in the sidebar on the right of the Front interface.

Step 2

In the plugin, click the Sign in button. A pop-up will appear for you to enter your Salesforce login credentials.

If you'd like to log in with a sandbox (developer) account, see this FAQ for more details.

Step 3

Navigate to the Settings tab to choose which fields you want to be shown for standard objects.

To display custom objects, you will need to follow a few additional steps.

• When you open a conversation, the plugin automatically finds related Salesforce records by matching the sender's email or name.

• You can view and update information from Contacts, Accounts, Opportunities, and related custom objects.

• All data is fetched live from Salesforce, and supported fields are editable within Front based on your permissions.

• Click the gear icon in the plugin to access the Settings tab, then select which fields are shown for each object.

• Standard and custom objects will appear if they’re linked to standard records.

• Admins can lock fields across the company by selecting them and clicking Save for all. Users can still add more fields for their personal view.

• For example, to show a clickable link to a lead or contact, click the gear icon, check the box for Full name in the plugin settings, then click Save.

Use the plugin to log emails directly to Salesforce:

• Select which contacts, accounts, opportunities, or custom objects to log the conversation to.

• Choose to log either the most recent message or the full conversation thread.

• Optionally assign a Salesforce user as the activity owner.

The plugin will auto-detect all known Salesforce contacts in the conversation and pre-select them for quick logging.

Changes you make in Salesforce are picked up in Front usually within seconds, shown by a Live sync indicator when viewing a contact. See the Salesforce contacts sync and accounts sync articles for details.

• Tasks: Create new tasks, mark them complete, and view open to-dos related to the contact or account.

• Notes: Add or edit internal notes linked to the contact for team context. These notes sync to Salesforce.

• Cases: View and create active customer support cases associated with the contact.

All updates made in Front are synced back to Salesforce in real-time.

Front rules can trigger Salesforce actions to streamline workflows:

• Create lead in Salesforce: Automatically create new leads when a message meets certain criteria. Will create a lead in Salesforce if it does not exist already. Only works with channels that use email or phone contacts. No owner is assigned to the lead.

• Send Task to Salesforce: Generate follow-up tasks from key messages. If no contact or lead can be found in Salesforce, no activity will be logged.

• Send Email to Salesforce: Send the message content to Salesforce as a completed activity.

  • If the message was sent by a Front teammate that is a Salesforce user, they will become the owner of the activity.

  • In a case where Front cannot attribute an outbound message to a teammate with a Salesforce account, Front will default to the admin who enabled the Salesforce integration.

  • If no contact or lead can be found in Salesforce, no activity will be logged.

Another related way to log emails to Salesforce is not using the integration itself, but with an automatic Bcc to your Salesforce account. See here for steps. 

• Custom objects must be related to standard objects (e.g., linked to a Contact or Account) to appear in Front.

• You’ll need to configure these relationships in Salesforce and ensure the API user has access.

• Once set up, they will show in the plugin and can be used for viewing, editing, or logging.

To refresh schema and display new objects or fields, go to plugin Settings and select Reload custom fields.

Before Front can display your custom object, you need to make sure the object is set up correctly within Salesforce. The example below uses the standard object Account, but the same applies to any Standard Salesforce object. The custom object for this example is called Account Service Request.

Note: The Salesforce integration does not support objects from "managed packages".

• In Salesforce, managed packages are add-ons created by Salesforce or third parties, and you can spot them by their unique prefix (like “blng__”) before the object name.

• This is mainly because these package objects are “locked down” by Salesforce — they can’t be changed or customized in ways that Front needs to make them work in the plugin. There are also some technical restrictions with how Salesforce allows access to these objects through their API.

For the custom object:

In Salesforce, navigate to your custom object and create a new relationship to the parent object, if it doesn't exist already. If the relationship already exists, make sure it is a lookup.

The lookup field should resemble this:

Click on the custom object and copy the API name without the '__c'.

For the parent object:

In Salesforce, navigate to the parent object Setup > Build > Customize > Account > Fields) and create a new relationship to the custom object, if it doesn't exist. You can create a new relationship under the section titled Account Custom Fields & Relationships.

The relationship you create has to be either a Master-Detail or a Lookup. A master-detail relationship has a cascading effect such that if you delete the parent object, the custom object will be deleted. In a lookup relationship, if the parent object is deleted, the custom object will remain.

When you get to the step where you have to fill out the Field name, give it the same name as the API Name from your custom object. Additionally, make sure the Child Relationship Name on the Parent object matches the API name of the custom object EXACTLY, but without the __c. 

The lookup field should resemble this:

In order to see the custom object in your Front Salesforce settings, your user role will need Read, Create and Edit permissions for the custom object. A Salesforce admin will be able to make these changes by following the below steps.

Additionally, a user with the standard Salesforce profile will not be able to view the custom object. You will instead, need to create a custom profile and assign your user to this profile. If your users are already using a custom profile, just edit that profile's permissions. 

Follow these steps in Salesforce:

1. Navigate to Setup > Administration Setup > Manage Users > Profiles, click on Clone next to the standard user profile. Enter a profile name and click Save. It will open a profile overview of this newly created profile. If you are using a custom profile, just click Edit.

2. Select Object Settings and the required object from the list.

3. Then click on Edit, and assign view or modify all data permissions to this custom object (enable Read, Create, and Edit).

4. Once this is done, go to your Salesforce setting in Front and hit refresh custom fields.

5. If the custom object still does not appear, sign out of your account and sign back in.

You can require certain fields to be filled out for your custom objects, which will be done in Salesforce settings.

Step 1

In your object configuration, select the field you wish to make required.

Step 2

Click Edit for that field.

 Step 3

On the edit page for the field, check the box next to "Always require a value in this field in order to save a record" and click Save.

Step 4

Back in Front, click the gear icon in the Salesforce plugin.

Step 5

Scroll to the bottom and click Reload custom fields to get the latest settings from Salesforce.

Please see our Salesforce troubleshooting article for assistance with frequently asked questions and common errors and solutions for troubleshooting Salesforce integration issues.

The Salesforce plugin integration is available on all plans. The Salesforce Connector, contacts sync, and accounts sync are available on the Professional plan or above.