How to manage changing your domain name or migrating email providers

Maybe your team is going through a rebrand or maybe you're just migrating providers for your email system. Either way, there are cases where you need to change email channel configuration details in Front but wish to retain the history. The reasons you might need this could be one of the following:

• Change your company's domain name, and thus make the corresponding change to your email channels and login in Front.

• Change your email provider from Office 365 to Gmail, or from SMTP forwarding to two-way sync.

• Change a distribution list address to a real Gmail or Office 365 inbox.

• Change the primary email address for an account.

• Change your email accounts and domain through an acquisition.

There is an easy three part process to change your domain without losing any of your history:

1. Remove the channels associated with your old domain (make sure to keep the inboxes)

2. Add the new channels into your existing inboxes

3. Update your Front login email

Keep reading for specific instructions. These steps are the same for any kind of channel that you want to add or switch out, not just email.

Gmail and Office 365 channels

If you use Gmail or Office 365 channels and are changing the primary domain name for your system, those services may automatically update to sending through the new domain for your connected email addresses.

In that case, you do not need to follow parts 1 and 2 below and will only need to change the From: address for your channel, and update Front user logins.

Step 1

Remove the channels associated with your old domain by following these steps.

❗ Important to know:

• Make sure you do not delete the inbox if you want to retain its message history in Front. By only removing the channel you'll retain the inbox's conversation history, including comments, tags, assignments, etc. If you delete the inbox itself, then message history will be deleted and cannot be recovered.

• Save any drafts in an external document prior to removing the channel. When a channel is removed, all drafts associated with the channel will be deleted and cannot be recovered.

Step 2

From the Channels setting in your sidebar, click Connect a channel. Select a channel type and follow the prompts to add the new channel associated with your new domain.

We have specific setup guides for common channel types in this section of our Help Center.

Step 3

Repeat parts 1 and 2 for each channel that you need to replace.

Step 4

If your Front login also needs to be updated to a new email address, go to your Personal settings, and click Profile.

Step 5

Click Change email to update your login email address.

Note: If you used the Sign in with Google or Microsoft login method, the option to change your email address will be greyed out. You will need to contact our support team to turn off this login option for you first.

Once we've done that, you will then log out of Front and click the Forgot Password flow on our login page to set up a Front password for your original email login. After doing so, you'll be able to sign in using just your email and password, at which point you can follow steps 4-5 to update your login email. You can then leverage the Sign in with Google/Office 365 option using your new email address upon your next login.

No. You cannot connect two channels with the same email address in Front. If you're changing email providers and will be using the same email address after switching your domain to your new provider, you cannot preemptively have both the old and new email channels connected to an inbox.

For example, Sophia is migrating from Gmail to Office 365. She cannot connect her new sophia@acme.com Office 365 email to an inbox if the sophia@acme.com Gmail email is still connected to Front.