🎯 Connecting UpBrains AI with Front

To get started:

1) Authorize UpBrains: You’ll first need to authorize UpBrains AI to access your Front messages—either by creating an OAuth 2.0 connection (for seamless, secure access to shared resources) or by providing an API token (for more control, including access to personal inboxes).

2) Define a Webhook Rule: Once connected, define a Webhook rule in Front that triggers based on your chosen conditions (e.g., message received, attachments present) and sends matching messages to your AI agent at UpBrains.

With those pieces in place—authentication and rule setup—the guide will walk you through testing your connection and deploying your agent live.

Here, we assume you have created a draft AI agent with a Front trigger. You may start from one of available Agent Templates with a Front trigger. Alternatively, you can build your own custom agent flow. Visit How to Create your First AI Agent guide for more information.

🔧 Prerequisites

🔐 Step 1: Connect to Front

In UpBrains Admin workspace, go to Settings -> Click Connections → New Connection, look for and select Front. Once selected, a modal opens and provide you with two authentication types:

• OAuth2.0 Authentication — this is the easiest method. You need to only login with a Front user account with Admin permission. This method provides access to only shared resources. If you are forwarding emails from your personal inboxes to shared inbox for processing, this option will not be providing sufficient permission.

• API Token — this option provides more fine-grained access control as you'd create the API token on Front and give it necessary accesses to resources and workspaces including private resources (i.e., non-shared inboxes).

Option A – OAuth 2.0 Authentication

• Select "OAuth 2.0".

• Log in to your Front account (or SSO).

• Authorize the required scopes.

• Choose your workspace and save.

✅ Recommended for ease and security – no token management required. Note: this option ONLY allows access to shared resources. An AI Agent may get 403 (permission error) when accessing non-shared resources.

Option B – API Token

If choosing this option, you would need first to create an API token in the Developers area on Front.

• In your Front account, go to Setting -> Company -> Under Integrations select Developers

• On the middle panel, select API Token.

• Follow Front’s API Token Guide.

• Ensure to select the appropriate permission to both shared and personal resources, all applicable workspaces.

• Paste your token and name the connection.

• Save the connection.

  

🔒 Use this if your org restricts OAuth or you want fine-grained permission control, or if you want to provide the AI agent access to emails in personal inboxes (e.g., if your team may forward emails from their personal inbox to the shared inbox).

Note: You can create the Front Connection also through the Connection field of your agent trigger (the very first step in the agent flow)/

🌐 Step 2: Create a Webhook Rule in Front

Here, we assume that you have created an AI agent with a Front trigger (New Message). In order to receive messages from Front, you need to create a Webhook Rule that will send the messages that meet your desired conditions to your agent at UpBrains AI for processing.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. In Front, go to Settings and find Rules and Macros (could be in Company or Account level settings).

2. Select Create Rules.

3. Under WHEN, select:
   ✅ Message is received

4. Add filters as needed:

   • Inbox → e.g., “Support”

   • Attachments → “present” (optional but highly recommended if you plan to only process emails with attachments in UpBrains)

5. Under THEN, choose:

   • Action: Send to a Webhook

   • Paste the Test Webhook URL from your Webhook of the Agent Flow you are designing at UpBrains AI (see below screenshot of Front New Message Trigger configuration where you will find Test URL and Live URL of your AI agent at UpBrains AI's agent builder).

6. Activate the rule so it will send new messages to the selected inboxes to your AI agent Webhook endpoint.

📘 Need help? Front's guide to webhooks

🧪 Step 3: Test the Trigger

1. In UpBrains AI's agent builder, from the Front Trigger, select Test Trigger. The trigger will switch to the test mode and will be listening for an event from Front.

   

2. Send a test email to the selected inbox in Front. It should trigger the rule that you have created to send the email payload to your UpBrains AI's Agent.

3. Wait for up to 30 seconds. You should see:

   • Email body

   • Metadata (sender, subject, tags)

   • Attachments (if any)

You should see a success message, and should be able to use the event payload in your agent flow to process the email information.

If the event doesn't appear:

• Check rule filters and activation.

• Ensure webhook URL is correct.

• Verify permissions of your API token or OAuth scopes.

🤖 Step 4: Configure & Validate Your Agent Flow

Use the email payload from Front to configure your automation. You may start from one of available Agent Templates with a Front Trigger. Alternatively, you can build your own custom agent flow. Visit How to Create your First AI Agent guide for more information. In a custom agent flow, you can:

• Use AI steps like:

  • 📄 Document OCR

  • 🧠 OpenAI for intent or summarization

  • 📊 Data extractors

• Test each step with real data using Test Step.

• Once all steps work correctly, Publish the Agent.

Consule on the guides on Create your First AI Agent and Common Tools and Actions for more information on how to build and configure your agent flow, and the guide on extractors:

• PDF and Images OCR,

• Extracting Structured Information, and

• Creating a Custom Extractor.

Processing Message Attachments

The best practice for processing attachments of an email is use a Loop element to process all attachments of an email:

Creating Signed URLs for Attachments

The attachment links that are included in the trigger need an access token to download and process the attached file. On the other hand, next steps in the agent flow that process files (e.g., Classify Attachment or Extract Information from Document Skills tool) need URLs of the files to be accessible without needing to deal with credentials. 

The solution is to use an action called “Get Signed URL from Attachment” action from the Front App tool. This action will get the attachment URL (the ‘url’ of the attachment object) and the associated File Name and build a signedURL. This signed URL can be fed to the File URL field of the next steps in the agent flow to process the attachment. 

Note: if you use a Loop over attachment (like the example above) then you have to set the URL from the items in the loop to the Attachment URL in this action.

🚀 Step 5: Go Live

Prerequisite: Ensure your AI agent is Published and Enabled. If not, in the Agent Builder, press Publish button after agent is fully tested.

1. In the Agent Builder page, select the trigger of your Agent (the Front New Message trigger — the very first step)

2. Copy the Live Webhook URL from the sidebar.

3. Return to Front → Edit your rule.

4. Replace the Test URL with the Live URL and save.

🎉 Done! Your Front inbox is now integrated with UpBrains AI.

Test Your Agent After Going Live

To test your live settings, now create an event (sending an email to the Front inbox connected to UpBrains AI) that meets the trigger conditions. After triggering your agent, to see if it started to be processing to to Sessions to review the Agent activity (in the Admin Workspace under Agents click on Sessions). You should see a list of the latest agent runs based on your Front rule’s triggers and their execution status. If you click on any of the agent runs, you should be able to see the execution details of your agent's flow and the status of each step.

If they are processed successfully, you are done! Congratulations!

✅ Summary of Options

🌟 Best Practices

• Start small: Begin with a low-volume inbox for testing.

• Use Tags: Front tags are passed via the webhook and can guide agent behavior.

• Monitor Agent Runs: Use the Agent Sessions dashboard to trace every run.

• Secure API Tokens: Rotate and audit regularly.

🔜 Next Steps

• Add steps for classification, extraction, or updates to CRMs.

• Add “Send Reply” logic to auto-draft responses post-processing.

• Expand to other inboxes or use more advanced conditions.

🧩 Need help?

Reach out via the Contact Us form in UpBrains AI or Book a Demo for tailored onboarding.