Front Integration Broke (Salesforce / HubSpot): Reconnect Guide

Before you start, a fast triage:

1. Salesforce: an invalid or expired credential (most common)

The single most frequent Salesforce failure is a rejected login. Front is explicit about the symptom — per its Salesforce integration guide, when the credentials go stale you'll see: "Some rules are failing because your Salesforce login is invalid. Update your credentials and test the rules again." This happens after a password reset, an SSO change, a revoked OAuth token, or a Salesforce admin rotating a connected app.

The fix is a re-authentication, and Front is clear that a company admin must do it — a regular teammate can't. In Front, a company admin opens the Salesforce integration settings (Company → App store → Salesforce → Settings), updates the login/credentials, and then re-tests the affected rules. Once the credential is valid again, the rules that were erroring resume.

One under-documented gotcha worth knowing if repeated re-auths don't stick: on the Salesforce side, an External Client App is capped at five concurrent access/refresh token pairs per user. If you (or an automated flow) have re-authorized several times, Salesforce revokes the oldest pair when the sixth is issued — which can quietly invalidate the connection you thought you just fixed. If you're in a re-auth loop, have your Salesforce admin clear old tokens for the integration user before reconnecting.

2. Salesforce: you've hit the API request limit

If Salesforce lookups stop but there's no "invalid login" message, you've likely hit your Salesforce API request limit. Front's Salesforce documentation treats this as a distinct failure mode from bad credentials: when your org exhausts its API quota, integration operations simply stop. There's no reconnect that fixes this — the credential is fine, the calls are just being throttled.

Your two honest options are exactly what Front states: increase your API request limit with Salesforce, or wait for the request-limit cycle to reset. Salesforce quotas are calculated per 24-hour rolling window and scale with your edition and licence count, so a busy Front rule set that calls Salesforce on every inbound message can burn through a smaller org's allowance. If this recurs, look at whether your rules are calling Salesforce more often than they need to — narrowing a trigger from "every inbound message" to a specific inbox or tag is the cheapest way to cut call volume.

3. HubSpot: the "why didn't my edit sync back?" confusion

The most common HubSpot "bug" isn't a bug at all — it's the one-way sync. Per Front's HubSpot companies sync guide, "Companies are synced one-way from HubSpot to Front," and the same one-directional model applies to the HubSpot contacts sync. Data flows HubSpot → Front, not the other way. So if you rename a company or fix a phone number inside a synced Front record and it never appears in HubSpot, that's expected behaviour: Front reflects HubSpot, it doesn't write structural sync data back upstream.

The place edits do work two ways is the sidebar plugin, which is separate from the account/contact sync. Per the HubSpot integration guide, the plugin fetches data live from HubSpot and lets you edit supported fields "within Front based on your permissions." So the mental model that removes most confusion: the background sync is one-way (HubSpot populates Front), while the sidebar plugin is a live, editable window into HubSpot. If you need genuine two-way, field-level writeback, that's a different architecture than Front's native sync provides.

4. HubSpot: sidebar shows a contact but the fields you need are missing

If the plugin finds the person but the company, deal, or custom-object fields you rely on aren't there, it's almost always field display configuration — not a broken connection. The plugin matches records by the sender's email or name, per the HubSpot integration guide, and surfaces Contacts, Companies, Deals, and Engagements. Which fields appear is a per-object choice you make in the plugin's Settings tab: open the plugin, go to Settings, and choose the fields to show for each standard object.

Two concrete fixes from that same guide:

• Missing custom fields or a new object? Use Reload custom fields in the plugin settings to refresh the schema so newly added HubSpot fields and custom objects show up. Front doesn't pick up schema changes automatically.
• No record at all for a valid contact? The match is by email or name — if the conversation's sender address doesn't exist on any HubSpot contact, there's nothing to display. Confirm the address is on the HubSpot record (or add it), and the sidebar will resolve on the next open.

If fields still won't display after reloading, the cause is usually permissions: the plugin only shows and edits fields the connected HubSpot user is allowed to see.

5. The integration is greyed out, disabled — or Front itself is down

Before deep-troubleshooting a single integration, rule out the two blunt causes. First, the integration may simply be disabled: in Company → App store, open the integration and confirm it's enabled and connected — an admin (or a billing change) can switch integrations off. This is the same install/settings surface pictured above; it's where you re-enable or re-authorize any connector. Second, if multiple integrations, syncs, and the app itself feel broken at once, the problem may not be your integration at all — check whether Front is down before you start reconnecting anything. A platform-wide incident looks exactly like a local integration failure from inside one workspace.

Where an AI layer reduces the volume behind these tickets

Reconnecting a connector is the tactical fix. The strategic one is reducing how often a human has to open a conversation, dig into Salesforce or HubSpot, and hand-answer at all — because that volume is what makes every integration hiccup feel urgent. That's the seam an AI agent layer fills. Macha runs on top of the Front you already use through the Macha–Front integration — it doesn't replace Front, your shared inboxes, your rules, or your CRM. Instead, the agent reads a routed conversation, understands intent, and pulls the live account or deal record through a custom tool that turns your CRM's API into something the agent can call directly — the same lookup a teammate would do by hand, done automatically. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists for exactly this. It won't stop a Salesforce token from expiring, but it means a smaller share of conversations depend on a human manually cross-referencing a CRM at all. Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, never per resolution.

FAQ

Why is my Front Salesforce integration suddenly failing? The two common causes are an invalid credential ("Some rules are failing because your Salesforce login is invalid…"), which a company admin fixes by updating the credentials in Front's Salesforce integration settings, and hitting your Salesforce API request limit, which you fix by increasing your quota or waiting for the limit cycle to reset.

Who can reconnect a Salesforce integration in Front? A company admin. Front requires admin rights to update integration credentials — a regular teammate can't re-authorize the connection.

Why don't my Front edits show up in HubSpot? Because the companies and contacts sync is one-way, from HubSpot to Front. Front reflects HubSpot data; it doesn't push structural sync changes back. The live, editable sidebar plugin is the place two-way field edits work, subject to your HubSpot permissions.

The HubSpot sidebar shows a contact but no company or deal fields — why? It's usually field display config, not a broken connection. Open the plugin's Settings tab to choose which fields show per object, and use "Reload custom fields" to pick up new HubSpot fields and custom objects. If a whole record is missing, the sender's email or name may not match any HubSpot record.

How do I know if it's my integration or Front being down? If a single integration fails, troubleshoot that connector. If multiple integrations, syncs, and the app all misbehave at once, check whether Front is having a platform-wide incident first.

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