Connecting Y Meadows and Front

Setting up an integration between Y Meadows and Front requires work in both applications. A new "Connection" needs to be configured in Y Meadows and a new Rule needs to be set up in Front.

Notes:

• The Front account must support Webhook calls in order to make this integration work. The lowest tier of Front service does not support this integration.

• Administrator rights are needed in both applications to set up the integration between them.

Webhook Setup and API Secret

Before you begin, you need to enable webhooks in front using the following instructions.

How to enable and use the Webhooks integrationFront Help Center

After Webhooks have been enabled it is necessary to get a “Webhook App Secret” from Front.

Navigate to: Settings > Company > App Store (https://app.frontapp.com/settings/apps)

Use the search bar to look for “webhooks” then click on the “See Details” button

Then click on the “Configure app” button

The “Webhook API Secret” can be obtained by using the Copy button on the configuration window.

Store this information - it will be used later in the Y Meadows application. Use the Cancel button when finished.

Create a Developer API Token in Front

Click on the settings icon in the top-right corner when logged in as an administrator.

Then, choose the Developers section from the left sidebar

Switch to the API Tokens tab and then click on “Create API token”

When creating the token use a name that is very descriptive of the use case. Something like “Y Meadows automation” is suggested.

After naming the Token, choose all the scopes related to the teams that Y Meadows will be interacting with. It is not necessary to create separate tokens for each team. Only Shared Resources and the resources for the team(s) are required.

After saving, the new token is needed to configure the Y Meadows application. The token can be accessed using the Copy button. Save this information for later use in Y Meadows.

Create a connection in Y Meadows

Use the navigation bar to go to Components and then choose Connection

Then use the + Connection button to create a new connection

Choose Front Incoming Message Webhook from the connection type

Set up the Name and Description, turn your connection on, then enter the information that you copied from front into the Webhook API Secret and Developer API Token fields. The instructions above should make it clear which value goes into which field.

Using the Connection to retrieve conversations

Front webhooks can be used to start trips in Y Meadows when new messages are received in Front. There are some options in the Y Meadows connection interface that control when those messages will trigger automations to run.

The two checkboxes, “Only handle one message per conversation” and “Only handle 1st incoming message in a conversation” control this. If both are checked, then only the first message which begins a new conversation will trigger an automation. If neither is checked then every incoming message will trigger a new automation. It is uncommon to check only one box.

Finish by pressing Save

If you are going to connect to more than one Front account (for example, one for testing and another for actual use) then you will go through this process again for the second Front account. You can sign up for a test Front account by contacting your Front representative or by signing up at Free Trial note that the basic account does not have access to all the features of a full account.

Before you leave this page copy the URL from your browser navigation bar. It will look something like this: https://yourcompany.ymeadows.com/components/connections/014dfa65-a2ad-4a7d-bce8-c51ec0b445b5

You are going to need the sting of characters at the end when you configure Front rules. In this example you need to keep track of 014dfa65-a2ad-4a7d-bce8-c51ec0b445b5. This is the ID of your connection and you'll need it later.

Set up a rule in Front to connect your inbox(es) to Y Meadows

Navigate to the settings for your Front account and create a new rule.

See https://help.front.com/t/182490/how-to-create-a-rule for more information.

The rule should be set up such that all the messages that you want to send to Y Meadows are selected by the When and IF sections of the rule (For example, WHEN an inbound message has been received IF its in x inbox).

In the Then section you want to set up a "Send to Webhook" action. Do this by clicking on the + Action button and then typing "webhook" into the search box. Click on Send to Webhook.

If you don't see the option for a Webhook please go back and follow the instructions here:

How to enable and use the Webhooks integration

Complete the setup by filling in the URL for the webhook as follows

https://{yourcompany}.ymeadows.com/api/v1/webhooks/front/{connection-ID}

Where {yourcompany} is replaced by your company name from the Y Meadows application URL and {connection-ID} is replaced by the value you got from the Y Meadows connection URL.

From the example earlier you would enter this information into the action:

https://yourcompany.ymeadows.com/api/v1/webhooks/front/014dfa65-a2ad-4a7d-bce8-c51ec0b445b5

Using the Integration

To make use of your integration you will need to set up a Y Meadows Junction Path and choose the Connection that you just created in the Source Step. More information about that can be found in the Source Step documentation.