Understanding message templates and folders

Message templates are your saved responses to common questions. They allow you to respond faster to inbound messages, lessen the repetitive nature of replying to frequently asked questions, and for your team to have a unified voice in what you tell your customers.

Front allows you to create individual and shared message templates. Individual message templates are visible to only you, and shared message templates can be visible to your teammates on the inbox level. Both admins and regular members can create message templates.

Step 1

In your composer, draft up your message, including any dynamic variables, that you want to save as a message template.

Step 2

Click the message template icon in the composer toolbar to open the message template menu. Select New from draft.

Step 3

You will see a pop-up box to save the message template. Enter the name, choose whether you want to save it as a private or shared template, pick a folder to nest it under if needed, and make any last edits. Then click Create. This message template will now be available for future use.

Step 4

You can edit your message templates at any time in your settings following the steps here, including specifying which inboxes the message template should be available to.

Step 1

Click the gear icon, then navigate to your workspace or personal settings, depending on which space you are working with. Select Message templates in the sidebar.

For companies with multiple workspaces, shared message templates are set up per workspace.

Step 2

Click Create template.

Step 3

Fill in the following fields:

• Name: Internal name for the message template.

• Subject (optional): Enter the subject you want to use. The subject will update when you use the message template and override the previous subject.

• Text box: Write your message template, including any variables and formatting if needed.

• File template under (optional): Select the message template folder this template should be added to.

• Make available for any inbox (optional, shared inboxes only): Select the shared inboxes that should have access to the template when replying in the composer. To grant access to all shared inboxes in the workspace, toggle the setting on. See below to learn more.

Tip: Highlight the text that should be edited or personalized before you send the message template, so that the text stands out.

Step 4

Click Create.

You can select which inboxes have access to a message template using the Make available for any inbox setting. To use the message template, teammates need to first have access to the inbox, and can then set the appropriate channel in the From field of the composer to use the available message templates of that inbox.

However, if a teammate has the Shared message templates and folders permission on their account, they can view all shared message templates in your workspace settings, even if they don’t have access to the selected inboxes. To prevent users from viewing all shared message templates in workspace settings, you can remove this permission by using a custom role.

There are currently no hard limits for the number of message templates you can create. If you are going to create a large number of templates, we recommend you organize them with folders.

You may already have or plan to create dozens of message templates, so it's helpful to use folders to enable yourself and your team to find and use message templates quickly. You can nest up to 5 layers of folders.

Step 1

Click the gear icon, then navigate to your workspace or personal settings, depending on which space you are working with. Select Message templates in the sidebar.

Step 2

Click the Create folder button at the top to create a new folder. To nest this folder under other existing folders, select the folder in the File folder under setting.

Step 3

To move message templates into your folders, hover on a message template and click the checkbox to select it. Check off additional templates that you'd like to move, or click Select all.

Step 4

Click Move in the bottom menu, and then select the folder you'd like to move the message templates to. Click Move.

Step 5

Now, you'll see the folders in the Message templates menu when you insert a message template. You can also search for the name of a folder to quickly pull it up and browse through its contents before inserting the correct message template.

Step 1

To insert a message template you've created, click the message templates icon in the composer toolbar to open the message templates menu. You can type keywords to search for a message template or scroll through the list, then hover on one to see a preview of it.

Step 2

Click the message templates to insert it, then make any edits before sending.

You can also quickly find and insert a message template into your message without leaving your keyboard. Type /template or a forward slash in your composer, type the name of your message template, then press Enter to insert it.

You can also edit message templates from both the composer and the Settings menu similar to above. For step-by-step instructions, see here.

Step 1

Click the gear icon, then navigate to your workspace or personal settings, depending on which space you are working with. Select Message templates in the sidebar.

Step 2

In the list view, hover over the message template you'd like to duplicate, click the three-dot menu, then select Duplicate.

Step 3

The message template will be added to the list with the name "Copy of [original template name]". Select the template to edit it.

Note: Message templates cannot be copied across workspaces.

The Message templates report allows you to gauge how often your team is using message templates, and narrow in on template-specific metrics. For more information about the Message templates report, check out this article.

Note: The Message templates report only includes messages sent by teammates. Message templates that were deleted, or sent by auto-replies or sequences are excluded.

If you'd like to track how often a message template is being sent out by an auto-reply rule, you can do so by adding a rule to automatically tag the conversations where you've sent the message template.

You can create a rule triggered by an outbound message, if the body of the outbound message contains a unique snippet from your message templates, then add the tag to track this message templates. You can then run analytics reports on the tag to see how often the templates are being used. Use this workflow for each of the message templates you want to track.

This feature is available on all plans.