Daily

Archive Front conversations that have gone quiet

Conversations with no activity for two weeks are archived each night, and you get the count.

Runs: Daily
Apps: Front
AI: Not needed
Access: read+write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every night at 11pm, archive Front conversations with no activity in the last 14 days and email me how many were archived.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A shared inbox in Front fills up with conversations that nobody will ever answer again: an auto-reply loop, a customer who got their answer by phone, a thread where the last message was "thanks". Left open, they pad the inbox counts, make a quiet week look busy and bury the conversations that really need an owner.

Once a day, open conversations that have had no activity for 14 days are found by search and moved to archived. A short email tells you how many were archived, so a surprising number is a prompt to check whether something was being ignored rather than finished.

Support leads and operations managers use it when reporting on open workload, because an inbox with only live conversations produces numbers a team can trust. It also keeps shared inbox views short enough to scan.

What you get out of it

Inbox counts reflect real workload
With dead threads archived, the open number represents conversations someone must act on, which makes staffing decisions and weekly reports much more believable. Weekly reports then show what the team really has to handle each day, with no padding from dead threads.
Real conversations are easier to find
Teammates stop scrolling past fortnight-old threads to reach a customer waiting today, which shortens the time to reach people who are actually waiting. Tidy views also help new teammates learn which threads need attention first.
Archiving is reversible
Archived conversations stay searchable in Front and reopen when the customer writes again, so clearing them away does not risk losing the history behind a future reply. The history stays one click away if you ever need to check what was said earlier.
A daily count raises questions
The email count is a quick check on process: if it jumps from 5 to 80, it points to a week where conversations were left alone and deserves a look.
Cleanup stops depending on one person
The manual sweep that someone did every month and often forgot now happens daily, so the inbox never reaches the point where a large cleanup day is needed. Small, regular sweeps beat a painful quarterly cleanup.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every night, ClickRuntime searches Front for open conversations with no activity in the last 14 days.
It archives each one.
You get an email with how many were archived.

Before it runs live

Connect Front

What you get

RunsDaily

Archive Front conversations that have gone quiettoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · Archived 23 stale Front conversationsNo activity in the last 14 days.

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Front steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

auto_archive_stale_conversations.pyexample

import time
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, notify

API = "https://api2.frontapp.com"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.secret('FRONT_API_TOKEN')}"}
    cutoff = int(time.time() - 14 * 86400)
    url, archived = f"{API}/conversations/search/is:open before:{cutoff}", 0
    while url and archived < 500:
        page = http.get(url, headers=headers, params={"limit": 100}).json()
        for c in page["_results"]:
            if http.patch(f"{API}/conversations/{c['id']}", headers=headers,
                          json={"status": "archived"}).status_code == 204:
                archived += 1
        url = page["_pagination"].get("next")
    notify.email_me(f"Archived {archived} stale Front conversations", "No activity in the last 14 days.")
    return {"archived": archived}

FAQ

Common questions

Does archiving delete the conversation?

No. In Front, archived conversations are kept and remain searchable. If the customer replies, the conversation reopens in the inbox. Only the status changes, so there is no loss of message history or comments. Nothing is permanently removed, and teammates can still search and reopen it later.

Can I exclude certain inboxes from the cleanup?

Yes. The search can be limited to the inboxes you name, so a billing inbox where threads stay open for months is left alone while a general support inbox is tidied. Mention the inboxes when you describe the rule.

How is 14 days of idle time measured?

It is based on when the conversation last had activity, such as a new inbound message or reply. Conversations that were touched more recently than the cutoff stay open. You can raise or shorten the number of days to fit your response times.

What permissions does it need?

read+write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

On a schedule