Office 365 history import and sync [legacy]

⚠️ This legacy behavior applies to some Front companies with a start date before Aug 16, 2023. See this article for the latest sync behavior.

When you connect an Office 365 individual inbox or shared inbox to Front, you will have the option to import your history and Front will maintain a two-way sync of statuses with Office 365 whenever possible. The cases where status syncing will stop are explained here, which is to be expected since Front and Office 365 have different features, and thus why you are using Front. Continue reading to understand the details of how history import and syncing work between Front and Office 365.

For the same information on Gmail channels, see here. Note that SMTP forwarding channels will not have history import and syncing.

*See the FAQ Why isn't the read status syncing? for exceptions.

• When you connect an Office 365 channel, Front will try to fetch as many folders as we can from Office 365 and create them as tags in Front.

• For individual (personal) inboxes:

  • Front will add up to 500 tags to your sidebar, retaining the original nesting structure. If you already have other tags added, then Front will add as many more as possible up to 500.

  • Front will add tags to your sidebar regardless of whether there is content in the tag.

  • Tags that are created but not added to your sidebar are accessible through the tag menu.

• Folders that couldn't be translated into tags will fall into the normal workflow in which a Front tag is created when a message belonging to the Office 365 folder comes into Front.

No. Conversations located in in-place archive mailboxes (different from the Archive folder) will not sync to Front. Front only supports syncing from primary inboxes.

Read status will only sync for individual (personal) Office 365 channels, and for shared conversations when marked as read by the assignee. We use this behavior for shared inbox conversations since many teammates may read a conversation before the assignee, and we wait to sync read status until the teammate handling the conversation reads it.

Import times vary based on the inbox’s number of messages, message contents, and attachments. It may take up to 72 hours to finish an import.

Messages are imported from newest to oldest.

When an email is sent from outside of Front after your account is connected, it will sync into your Front inbox as archived.

See this FAQ section for common questions that apply to both the Gmail and Office 365 import and sync.