Getting started in Front: 7 tips for using your brand new inbox

Congrats! Now that you’ve got Front, you’re on your way to working more collaboratively and productively than ever before. We know moving away from a traditional inbox like Gmail or Outlook can take some getting used to, but once you’ve played around in Front a little bit, we think you’ll really love it.

We put together our top tips for your first month using Front, so you can get all set up and comfortable with your new inbox in no time.

1. Update your account settings

Customize Front to fit your working style. Find your settings by clicking on the icon in the upper left corner of Front. From there, you’ll be able to customize individual settings like your name, password, and profile picture. Depending on the permission levels your Front Admin has set up, you might also be able to access settings for your team inboxes or company here as well.

Here are the main settings we suggest you check out right after you’ve set up your Front account:

• Profile: Add a photo of yourself and specify your username. This is how your teammates will @mention you in comments, so make sure you pick a name your team can remember.

• My preferences: Here you can choose your default settings for how you manage your emails, like whether you want missing attachment warnings or to use the same shortcuts you use in Gmail.

• My signatures:Create email signatures for messages you send in Front here — you can add as many as you need. Front designates the first signature as the default, so make sure the one you usually want to use is at the top of the list.

• Notifications: You can create different notification settings for each of your inboxes in Front. Choose to receive desktop, mobile, and email notifications, or none at all.

2. Connect your individual work email

Front’s not just for your team email. It’s for your individual work messages too! Sync your work email so it’s easy to manage all your messages in one place. And don’t worry — your personal work emails stay private and separate from your team inbox, unless you share them with someone.

3. Think collaboratively

You can see your individual work email and shared inboxes in Front, all in one place — so you won’t have to switch back and forth between Front and your own inbox in Gmail or Outlook to get work done. Shared inboxes work a little differently than a traditional email inbox though. Here are a few questions you might find yourself asking when you start working in Front.

• Am I archiving this message for everyone? When you’re working on a message in a shared inbox, every action you take will reflect that way for the rest of your team.

• Who can see this reply? If you’re working on a message in a shared inbox, everyone can see the reply you’re writing. Likewise, if you’re working in your individual inbox, and you’ve @mentioned a teammate on a message, that person is now “following” your message, and they can see your reply as well.

• Can my customer see this comment? Comments and @mentions are internal-only, so only you and your team will see them, not your customers.

Talk to your Front Admin on your team about how you plan to work together in your shared inboxes. Some teams like to let everyone answer messages in shared inboxes as they come in, while others prefer to set a process for triaging your shared inboxes. Every team approaches it differently, so it’s important to understand the protocol expected for your team.

4. Start working together in Front

Front is made for teamwork, so there are a few features that make collaboration easy. Here are two basic ways to work with your team in Front:

• Assign a message: When you assign a message, you’re designating a teammate to take care of it, so there’s no confusion on who’s following up. There are two ways to assign a message. In the upper right corner of a message, you’ll see “Assigned to” along with a name. To assign it, you can click the name and select a teammate from a drop down menu. Alternatively, you can drag a message to a name in your list of teammates.

• Leave a comment: Instead of forwarding a message to a teammate or CC’ing them when you reply, use comments and @mentions, located at the very bottom of your screen in Front. When you @mention a teammate, you share the whole thread with them, so they can easily read through and respond. You can also use comments to leave notes about a conversation. That way, when you or anyone else is looking at it again later, you’ll have the context you need to reply.

5. Boost your productivity ⚡

We want working in Front to be faster than your old inbox, so you never feel like you want to open up your old inbox again. Try out our favorite ways to speed through your open messages (and even hit Inbox Zero — that awesome moment when you’ve answered everything in your inbox).

• Snooze: Not every message that comes into your inbox needs an answer right away. That’s why you can “snooze” in Front. Hit the clock icon at the top of a message you don’t need to look at right now, and select a time for it to come back to your inbox later.

• Reminders: When you’re sending a message you’ll need to follow up on, set a reminder in Front. Click the clock on the bottom of your message to select a time for the message to pop back up in your unread message folder. That way, if you haven’t gotten a reply, you’ll know to send the recipient another message.

• Message templates: Find yourself typing the same message over and over? Save it as a message template. That way you can easily pull it up, edit it, and send with just a few clicks, instead of typing out the same explanation all the time. You can save message templates for your private inbox, or for your shared inboxes, so you can access responses your teammates have created as well.

• Tags:Tags are the easiest way to keep your messages organized. You can create Private Tags only visible to you — like “Read Friday afternoon”, or Team Tags, visible to your whole team — like “Customer Feedback”.

6. Download the Front apps

Now that you’re managing all your messages in Front, bring them with you wherever you work! Download the Front desktop app for your computer, and access Front on the go with the mobile app.

7. Read more about using Front

Check out our other helpful resources for inspiration, how-to’s, and tips on setting up workflows and using Front features.

• Front Community: Browse our community page to learn from other Front users and share your own tips.

• Getting Started with Front: Download our full user guide to get the full scoop on all things Front.

• Our Customer Success Team: Don’t hesitate to shoot us a question at [email protected]. We’re more than happy to help out!