Create Draft Reply to a Conversation

Use the Front - Create Draft Reply to a Conversation step to create a draft outgoing message in Front. The draft message will be part of a specific conversation and is typically used to reply to an incoming message.

Inputs

Connection

Select a connection that contains the passwords or keys that are needed to access a specific Front instance. Since users can not enter secret information directly into the step input, a connection must be created in advance. Generally, connections are created by Administrators or IT Staff who have access to the necessary credentials.

Message ID

The Message ID can be used to specify which conversation the draft message is in response to. The draft message will always be a response to the last message in a conversation, even if a different message is specified by ID. The externalId output from a Message Retriever step that is connected to Front will contain the Message ID of a message. This is usually the value used for this input.

Users can provide EITHER a Message ID or a Conversation ID but are not required to provide both.

Conversation ID

The Conversation ID can be used to specify which conversation the draft message will be part of. The draft will always be a response to the last message in the conversation. Other Front steps may provide a Conversation ID that can be used to fill in this input. This step acts on a Front conversation but is able to figure out the conversation from a Message ID if one is provided. If users have a Conversion ID but not a Message ID this step will still work as expected.

If BOTH a Message and Conversation ID are provided the Conversation ID will be used.

Channel Name

This must be the name of one of the channels in the team that will have access to the draft message. The chosen channel will determine which team has access.

Author Email Address

This is the email address of a "team mate" that has access to the channel. The created draft message will belong to this team mate. If the message is private, only this person will be able to access it. The email address given must belong to either a teammate in the inbox or a follower of the conversation (per the Front rules - each conversation has a list of followers).

Recipients (Must be a List)

This is an optional LIST of recipients of the draft message. It must be a list of email addresses - this is accomplished with [] brackets surrounding quoted text separated by commas. EG: ['[e-mail]', '[e-mail]'] If left blank the step inserts the original sender from the conversation.

CC (Must be a List)

This is an optional LIST of recipients who will be on CC for the draft message. It must be a list of email addresses. If left blank then the draft will have no one on CC.

BCC (Must be a List)

This is an optional LIST of recipients who will be on BCC for the draft message. It must be a list of email addresses. If left blank then the draft will have no one on BCC.

Subject

The Subject Line that will be inserted in the draft message. If omitted, then the subject line of the draft will be set to “Re:" followed by the subject of the original message in the conversation.

Message Body

The body that will be inserted in the draft message. Plain text and HTML markup are both accepted in this input but note that plain text does not support any line breaks. HTML is preferred for all but the simplest messages. For example:

'''<p>Hello</p><p>This is the second line in my email</p><p>Have a great day!</p>'''

There are lots of online HTML editors that can help - remember that if there are any quotes in your HTML you can wrap the whole string in three single quotes (''') to make sure that everything will work correctly (see the example above).

Private

This determines whether the draft message can be seen only by the Sender or if it can be seen by the entire team. It is a Boolean value and can be set to True or False (do not quote these if typed directly into the input).

The draft messages will be visible in Front, both within the conversation and in the "Drafts" folder, just under the inbox.

Outputs

success

This will be True if a draft message was successfully created and False if one was not.

messageID

The Front ID of the message that was created. This information can be used to further interact with the message in subsequent steps of a Journey.