How to Set Up Front Analytics & Reports (2026)

Where Front analytics live

Front's reporting is all under one roof. Open the Analytics tab from the left rail, then choose Analytics reports to see the pre-built reports Front ships. Per Front's Workload report documentation, the three you'll use most are:

• Workload — is the team staffed for the volume it's getting, and how efficient is it.
• Resolution — how long conversations spend in each status, so you can find where things stall.
• Time goals (formerly the SLAs report) — are you meeting the reply and resolution targets you've committed to.

Each report opens as a view you can filter by inboxes and by time period at the top. A view is the unit you'll save, pin, and later schedule — so it's worth building it deliberately rather than eyeballing the default. For a conceptual tour of how these reports fit together, our companion piece Front analytics explained covers the model; this guide is the hands-on setup.

Setting up the Workload report (FRT + teammate load)

The Workload report answers the staffing question. It's built from three metric groups you can mix into the widgets, and knowing which group a metric lives in saves you a lot of hunting.

1. Open Analytics → Analytics reports → Workload. Set the time period (last 7 or 30 days is a sane default) and the inboxes you care about at the top of the view.
2. Configure the three key-metric cards. Front lets you pin up to three cards, each showing a current measurement plus its period-over-period change. Pick the ones your team is judged on — commonly first reply time, resolution time, and new conversations.
3. Choose your metrics from the right group. Per Front's docs, metrics are grouped as Volume (new conversations, messages received/sent, active accounts, inbound/outbound calls), Efficiency (resolution time, reply time, first reply time, replies to resolution, resolved on first reply %, handle time), and Tasks (new tasks, resolved tasks, task resolution time avg).
4. Read the "Workload over time" graph. This is the volume-peak view. Use the toggle to compare against the previous period, or group by your top 5 inboxes or tags to see where the spikes come from.

1. Use the busiest-times heatmap for shift planning. It shows workload by hour and day, defaulting to a 9-to-5 window that you can expand to a full 24 hours — genuinely useful if you're deciding when to add coverage.
2. Compare people and inboxes in the workload-by-inbox table. This is where teammate load surfaces: outliers in reply time or conversation count jump out against the rest of the row.

One honest note on the screenshot above: the metric picker shown is the real, ungated customization you get on a Professional trial — you can swap any Volume, Efficiency, or Tasks metric into the chart. What you can't do on that plan is the fully custom, drag-and-arrange Custom report builder, which Front reserves for Enterprise. So "customizing analytics" in Front means two different things at two different price points, and it's worth being clear which one you're being sold.

Setting up the Resolution and Time goals reports

The Resolution report tells you where conversations get stuck. It breaks down how long conversations spend in each status, and — the part most teams miss — you can break resolution metrics down by tag. Tag your billing, shipping, and bug conversations and the Resolution report will show you which category is dragging your average up. If your tagging is thin, that breakdown is thin too; see Front shared inbox explained for how tags and inboxes structure the underlying data.

The Time goals report is the SLA scoreboard, and it has a prerequisite people forget. Per Front's Time goals report documentation, the report only populates once you've created time-goal rules — the report reads against those rules, it doesn't invent targets. So the sequence is: define your reply and resolution targets as rules first, then the report has something to measure.

1. Create your time-goal rules (reply time and/or resolution time targets) before opening the report.
2. Open the Time goals report. Read the top key-metrics chart — up to three of Met time goal %, Overdue time goals, At risk, Overdue time (avg), and messages with a time goal.
3. Drill into the "Time goal by rule" table. Use the dropdown at the top-right of that table to switch between reply time goals and resolution time goals — the same table serves both.
4. Track the trend line. The performance-over-time graph shows whether your met-goal percentage is drifting, with an option to compare to a prior period.

For the full mechanics of targets, business hours, and how "overdue" is actually computed, Front SLA explained goes deeper than we can here.

Scheduling reports and exporting the data

A dashboard nobody opens is worthless. Front lets you push reports out on a cadence, and the sequence here trips people up, so follow it in order.

1. Build and save the view first. Filter the report exactly how you want it — inboxes, time period, metrics — then save it. You schedule off a saved view, not off an ad-hoc screen.
2. Pin or open that saved view so it's the one on screen.
3. Open the three-dot menu at the top-right of the view and choose Schedule email delivery.
4. Add recipients — internal teammates or external stakeholders, both are allowed.
5. Pick a frequency: daily, weekly, or monthly.

Per Front's Schedule analytics reports documentation, the delivered email contains CSV attachments of the raw data from each table in the report, plus the visual charts rendered in the email body — so recipients get both the picture and the spreadsheet. To change or stop it later, reopen the three-dot menu on the pinned view and choose Edit email delivery or Stop delivery.

The honest limits — and where an AI layer picks up

Front's native analytics are genuinely good at what they do: they turn shared-inbox activity into staffing, efficiency, and SLA numbers without you wiring up a data warehouse, and the scheduled CSV export is a real convenience. Credit where it's due.

But name the ceilings. The fully custom report builder is Enterprise-only — on Starter and Professional you get the pre-built Workload, Resolution, and Time goals reports and their metric pickers, but not the drag-and-arrange Custom report canvas. The Time goals report is Professional-and-above and, more to the point, it's inert until you've built time-goal rules, so "turn on SLA reporting" is really two projects. And structurally, analytics is a rear-view mirror. It tells you the first reply time was 6 hours and the SLA slipped — after it slipped. It can't read the conversation and shorten the queue.

That's the seam where an AI agent layer fits — not to replace Front's reporting, but to change the numbers it reports. The broader category of AI agents for customer service exists to handle the routine volume that inflates your reply-time and workload charts in the first place. Macha is one such layer: it runs on top of the Front you already use through the live Macha–Front connector — it does not replace Front, your inboxes, or your analytics. Your reports keep measuring; Macha's agent reads incoming conversations, understands intent rather than keywords, and drafts or sends grounded replies — pulling a real order or account status through a custom tool that turns your REST API into something the agent can call. Fewer routine tickets aging in the queue means a healthier Workload graph and a higher met-goal percentage, without anyone gaming the metric. If you want the wiring, connecting Front to Macha to route conversations to AI walks through it, and Macha's credits are consumed per AI action, never per resolution — reading and answering a conversation has a real cost, and it's honest to price it that way rather than pretend outcomes are free.

The clean division of labour: let Front analytics be the scoreboard that tells you the truth about your queue, and layer an agent on top to make that scoreboard read better because the underlying work actually got done. For plan-by-plan detail on what unlocks where, Front pricing explained lays it out.

FAQ

Where do I find analytics in Front? Open the Analytics tab in the left rail, then Analytics reports. From there you can open the pre-built Workload, Resolution, and Time goals reports, filter each by inbox and time period, and save the result as a view.

Why is my Front Time goals report empty? Because it reads against time-goal rules you haven't created yet. The report doesn't set targets — it measures performance against the reply-time and resolution-time rules you configure first. Build those rules, and the report populates.

Can I schedule Front reports to email automatically? Yes. Save the view you want, pin or open it, then use the three-dot menu → Schedule email delivery, add recipients, and pick daily, weekly, or monthly. The email includes CSV attachments of each table plus the charts in the body.

Is Front's custom report builder available on every plan? No. The pre-built reports and their metric pickers are available broadly, but the fully custom, drag-and-arrange Custom report builder is an Enterprise feature. The Time goals report requires Professional or above.

Can I improve the numbers, not just measure them, with AI? Yes. An AI agent layer like Macha connects to Front as a live connector and runs on top of your existing inboxes and analytics — it doesn't replace them. It handles routine incoming conversations so fewer tickets age in the queue, which is what actually moves your Workload and met-goal charts in the right direction.

Ready to make your Front reports read better because the work got done? Start a free trial of Macha and connect it to your Front in minutes.