Overview of Front's API and use cases

Front’s platform features a variety of APIs that allow you to build custom workflows and user interfaces that can dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of your customer communication. Our APIs are simple to use and include detailed documentation with walkthroughs, code examples, and more. Most custom integrations can be built in only 1-3 weeks.

If you’re interested in learning more about our platform or are looking for guidance on a particular workflow you’d like to build, feel free to reach out to your account manager or post in our Front Community. We’re here to help you strategize what workflows would be most helpful for your team, and to dive into the technical implementation details.

For some great examples of what some other customers have built with Front’s platform, feel free to check out our Flow and Tell contest winners. We also have dozens of partner integrations that can be installed with just a few clicks.

Front’s platform is made up of three primary APIs: Core API, Plugin SDK, and Channel API

The Core API is Front’s “backend” API that allows developers to access and update almost all elements in Front, including messages, contacts, channels, inboxes, teammates, analytics and more. The API also includes webhooks support to enable real-time updates from Front to your system.

• Syncing data from a CRM or internal database to Front Contacts. This data can then be used in Front Rules to power automatic routing/triage.

• Syncing messages in Front to corresponding records in a CRM.

• Automatically creating draft replies to customer inquiries, which users can then review before sending.

• Automatically assigning and triaging inbound messages based on customer metadata or teammate workloads.

• Exporting Front analytics data to be used in a third party BI tool or data warehouse.

• Lydia’s auto-tagging workflow

• Bubble’s CRM sync

• Load One’s TMS sync

• sennder’s internal ops integration

• HostnFly’s automatic triage

You can start building with the Core API by the following our guide.

The Plugin SDK allows you to embed a custom web app in Front’s sidebar, which can interact with Front’s UI by reacting to the user’s current conversations, creating drafts, adding tags and more.

• Custom CRM or internal tooling integration that automatically looks up the account/contact/transaction details for a particular Front conversation and enables faster message drafting by pre-filling those details

• Phone integration with an in-app dialer to make and receive calls without leaving Front

• Knowledge base integration to search and view any knowledge base articles directly from Front

• 4 custom plugin examples

• SnapTravel’s message-categorization plugin

• Bubble custom CRM plugin

• Shopify’s custom account management plugin

You can start building with the Plugin SDK by following our guide.

A channel is a communication stream that can be connected to Front. With the Channel API, you can integrate practically any kind of messaging system or external communication into Front.

• Logging phone call records and transcripts as messages into Front

• Integrating various third party SMS providers into Front

• Connecting a custom live chat solution with Front

• Matera’s in-app chat

• Modern Empathy’s call log integration