How to set up a Slack inbox in Front

Note: This topic describes the channel capabilities of the Slack integration. These capabilities allow you to send and receive Slack messages from Front.

If you'd like to learn how to use the integration to create Slack messages based on Front rules, or how to manually create one-off messages from Slack to Front or vice versa, refer to the How to enable and use the Slack integration topic.

Front’s Slack channel integration allows you to connect public Slack channels (including Slack Connect channels) to receive and send Slack messages directly from Front.

You can connect multiple Slack channels to Front as separate channels, but only public channels can be connected. Private channels and Slack direct messages are not supported.

You can see an example of how messages are synced between the channel in Front and Slack below. More details on threading options, branding, and customization can be found in the "How it works" section.

The channel supports the following:

• Sending and receiving attachments

• Sending and receiving rich text messages (bolding, italics, links etc.)

• Sending and receiving emojis

• Messages deleted in the Slack channel will be automatically removed from Front as well. However, messages deleted in Front are not automatically deleted in Slack.

The channel does not currently support:

• Historical import of messages. Only new messages will arrive in the inbox after it is connected.

• Emoji reactions

• Messages from other bots in the channel

During the authentication process, you can choose between two options:

1. Thread top-level messages in Slack into a single conversation in Front. Inline replies in Slack (also known as a Slack thread) will create separate conversations in Front. 

2. Create a separate conversation in Front for each top-level message in Slack. Replies from Front will always be inline replies in Slack.

We recommend threading option #1 if you are typically want to reply to messages in the top-level thread in Slack. But if you want to treat each top level message in Slack as a separate "ticket," we recommend option #2.

During the authentication process, you'll be asked to provide an optional Author name. If you do, the avatar for your messages in Slack will be always be the logo your company has set in your Slack workspace.

If you don't set an author name, Front will use the name of the teammate in Front who sent the reply, and attempt to match that teammate to one in Slack and use their profile photo instead. The matching will be based on the user's email address, so the email of the corresponding user in Slack must match the email of the user in Front. If no match is possible, the workspace logo will be used instead.

Step 1

Click the gear icon on the top right of Front and select company, workspace, or personal settings in the left sidebar, depending on the space you’re working with.

Step 2

Click Inboxes in the left menu and create a new shared inbox or individual inbox.

Step 3

Click Channels in the left menu, then click the Connect a channel button.

Step 4

Choose Slack, then click the Connect to Slack button.

Step 4

A window will open prompting you to sign in with a Slack account. Sign in with an account that has access to the Slack channel you want to connect to Front.

Step 5

You should see a page that asks which Slack channel you want to connect to Front.

• Slack channel: Select one of these channels to connect to the inbox. You can connect additional channels by repeating steps 3-5 afterwards.

• Message threading: You can choose between two threading models. See the Threading section above for more details.

• Author name (optional): If you set a name here, it will be used for all messages sent from Front to Slack. If you leave the field blank, the name of the teammate sending the message from Front will be used as the display name of the message in Slack.

Step 6

Click Connect to finish connecting the Slack channel. 

Step 7

Choose the inbox that conversations will route to and click Save changes.

That’s it! Once the channel is successfully created, it will have the default name of Slack. You can optionally rename it to whatever your Slack channel is, e.g., #internal_support.

This feature is available on all plans.