Analytics FAQs & topics
Edited

Overview

We try to make the metrics we present in the analytics dashboard as straightforward as possible, but they still depend on details that may be helpful for you to know. Here are a few things you should be aware of if you try to understand exactly how we come up with a certain number and the behavior of the dashboard. To learn more about analytics reports and features, see here.


Teammates

Assignees

The analytics track each teammate who replies in a conversation, regardless of the official assignee of the conversation. If a conversation is assigned to Mary, but Sophia responds because she is unavailable, Sophia will get a reaction and a reply time.

Out-of-office status

If you are out-of-office, any replies that customers send in conversations that are assigned to you will automatically be unassigned and return to the original shared inbox they came from. Thus, you will not personally accrue reply or reaction times because the conversation is not assigned to you anymore.

However, teammates can still manually assign conversations to you while you're out-of-office, which does accrue reply and reaction times.

Deleting or blocking teammates

When you delete or block a teammate, their historical data will be preserved and their data will still be incorporated into team analytics. 

Names of blocked or deleted teammates will no longer appear in the Teammates filter when creating a report. You will no longer be able to run a report specifically on a blocked or deleted teammate, but their work will still be incorporated into overall team analytics.

Additionally, because these teammates' assigned conversations become unassigned, the Active conversations metric will increase during this time period because it is counting the unassign action. Take this into account if you observe that this metric is inflated during the time you deleted a teammate.


Conversations

Move, tag, or delete conversations

If you modify a conversation, it will usually affect the analytics as expected: deleted conversations will not show in analytics; moving or tagging a conversation will affect views filtering on these inboxes. However, there are 2 exceptions:

  • It may take up to 1 hour for the results to be updated.

  • If the conversation has several conversation segments, only the latest segment will be updated.

Example 1 - Conversation tagged:

  • Paul (customer) chats with you to report a problem. You tag the conversation as #support.

  • A month later, Paul chats with you again: he is so in love with your product that he would now like to apply for a job. You tag with #job.

In this case, analytics from the previous month will not be modified.

Example 2 - Conversation moved between inboxes:

  • A customer sends a message to the Support inbox. After 15 minutes, a support agent assigns it to themselves, then takes 1 minute to reply. The 16 minutes that passed between the customer's message and the agent's reply are attributed to the support agent as their reply time, with a 1 minute handle time.

  • Next, the agent needs to escalate the conversation, and moves it to the Engineering inbox. An engineer replies to the customer 10 minutes later, and took 2 minutes to write their response. That Engineering teammate will not have a reply time, because there was no new inbound message between the Support reply and the Engineering reply, but the engineer will have a handle time of 2 minutes.

Conversation moves between workspaces

When you move conversations from workspace A to workspace B, analytics are computed for the time that they were in a certain workspace. In other words, all analytics are computed for workspace A while the conversation is in workspace A; and after the move to workspace B, all analytics are computed for workspace B. 

All tags from workspace A will be removed from the conversation along with the move. Both the move and untag events will be associated with the workspace B analytics. To see tag analytics inclusive of these moved conversations in workspace A, you can use the "Tagged anytime" tag filter setting. 

Inbox moves between workspaces

When an inbox gets moved to a new workspace, all of the historical data for the inbox will be reindexed for the new workspace. If you need to see analytics on the past data before the move, you would check in the new workspace.

Sequences and analytics

When sending a Sequence out of Front using a shared email address, analytics will count each individual outbound message towards the shared inbox's New conversations metric, which also rolls up into the Active conversations metric in the conversations view.


Analytics history

Historical metrics may change

In some cases, analytics metrics displayed for a period may change depending on when you run the report. A few common examples include:

  • Archived conversations: A conversation can become unarchived and re-archived throughout a period. If you run a report in the middle of the week, your Archived conversations count may look different once the week finishes.

  • Tagged conversations: In the Tags report, most metrics look for conversations that are currently tagged with those tags. If you add or remove a tag after running a report, the metrics values may change as a result.

Analytics refresh (cache)

There are many things that can cause the analytics results to change, even in the past. For example, if a customer replies before the inactivity time ends to a conversation that was marked as resolved, the conversation will become unresolved.

Analytics are refreshed every hour or whenever a new query is run. For example:

  1. If you go to analytics right now, it will pull the latest data.

  2. If you revisit the same report anytime within the next 1 hour, you will see the same cached data.

  3. If you revisit the same report anytime after 1 hour, the analytics report will be refreshed.

  4. If you revisit the same report but add a new criterion (ex. include a new channel), analytics will then recalculate.

Time range

Analytics focus on any activities that take place during the selected time period. As new replies are sent, the analytics will update to include the metrics even if the original message was received outside of the time range you're viewing, as long as the reply occurred in the time range. Let's say you received an email last Friday, then reply this week on Tuesday. If you check the analytics for this week, it will include the reply time, even though the original message is outside of your requested time range.

Merged conversations

If you merge conversations, the analytics of the threads also become merged. This means that for conversation count metrics, the original multiple conversations would count as one conversation after merging. Metrics such as reply times could also change following a merge if the message order changes in the new merged thread.

Example where reply time changes:

  • Thread A has an inbound and a reply.

  • Thread B has an inbound but no reply, and came in earlier than Thread A's inbound.

  • After merging the two threads, the new thread's order is: Thread B's inbound → Thread A's inbound → Thread A's reply.

  • The reply to Thread A is now recalculated as a reply to Thread B because B is the first inbound in the new merged thread.

Example where reply time does not change:

  • Thread A has an inbound and a reply.

  • Thread B has an inbound but no reply, and came in after Thread A's reply.

  • After merging the two threads, the chronology of the messages stays the same: Thread A's inbound → Thread A's reply → Thread B's inbound.

  • There is no change to the reply time in the new merged thread.

Historial data limits

There are data limits when using the date range selector in any analytics reports, or when using the start and end date parameters in the Analytics API.

Historical data limits per pricing plan:

  • Starter: Not offered

  • Growth: Access up to 6 months of historical data, from the current date

  • Scale: Access to up to 2 years of historical data, from the current date

  • Premier and legacy plans: Access to all historical data

Historical analytics if you upgrade

If you upgrade from a plan that does not have analytics to a plan that does have analytics, the historical analytics data from the time you were on your previous plan will be available. Likewise, if you downgrade your plan and re-upgrade in the future, the analytics will still be available from when you had a non-analytics Front plan.


Excluded from analytics

Private tags

The Tags filter for analytics reports offer shared tags only, and not private tags. You currently are not able to run reports on your private tags.

Spam/trash

Items that are marked as spam in Front or arrive to Front marked as spam are excluded from analytics.

Auto-replies

Auto-replies are ignored by the analytics; they do not count as a reply and do not generate a reply time.

Aliases

You may have an external alias set up that is not directly added to Front as a channel, but is routed to a channel in Front. In this case, the alias address will not show up in analytics report filters because this channel is not officially connected to Front. 

However, if you reply to the alias conversations using the channel in Front, then the conversations will be counted into analytics as part of the Front channel.

Events outside of Front

Events or activities applied to conversations outside of Front will be excluded from analytics. e.g. If you reply to an email in Gmail, this reply is not included in the reply metrics in analytics.

The event or activity must be made in Front to be counted in analytics.


Pricing

Analytics are available on the Growth plan or above. Account-based analytics are a feature on the Scale plan or above. Some legacy plans with different names may also allow access to this feature.