AI Agents
Create agents with personas and flows, test them, and deploy to chat, SMS, email, phone and meetings.
AI Agents are programmable assistants that talk to your visitors and leads for you — running an intake, qualifying a lead, booking an appointment, and handing off to your team when a person is needed. Each agent has a persona (who it is and how it talks), one or more flows (the playbook it follows), and channels it works on: your chat widgets, outbound SMS or email cadences, phone numbers, and video meetings. This guide walks through creating an agent, programming it, testing it safely, and putting it to work.
Who this is for
Anyone who wants a chat, SMS, phone, or video assistant that follows a defined script while still sounding natural. You need the ai: use permission to open the page, and the AI module must be turned on for your workspace.
Where to find it
Select AI Agents in the left menu. The page lists every agent as a card with its name, role, status (Draft, Active, or Paused), and how many flows, sessions, and connected widgets it has. Select a card to open the agent.
Creating an agent
- Select New agent.
- Enter a Name (for example, "Ava") and an optional Role shown to visitors (for example, "Senior Intake Specialist").
- Select Create agent. You land on the agent's page, ready to program its persona and first flow.
A new agent starts as a Draft. Use Activate in the page header when it's ready, or Pause to stop it without deleting anything.
The agent page
The header shows the agent's name, role, and status, with an Activate / Pause button. Below it are eight tabs:
| Tab | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Persona | Identity, tone, mission, knowledge, and guardrails. |
| Flows | The stage-by-stage playbooks the agent follows. |
| Test | Chat with the agent yourself in a safe sandbox. |
| Outbound | Point the agent at a lead list to run an SMS or email cadence. |
| Voice | Let the agent answer phone numbers. |
| Meetings | Schedule video meetings the agent hosts. |
| Channels | Connect the agent to your chat widgets. |
| Sessions | Every intake run, with outcome and captured data. |
Persona
The Persona tab is split into four cards. Change what you need, then select Save persona.
Identity
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name / Role | What visitors see. |
| Tone | Friendly, Professional, Casual, Direct, or Warm. |
| Language | The language the agent speaks (defaults to English). |
| Style notes | Free-text writing rules, e.g. "Short sentences. No exclamation marks." |
| Identity disclosure | Honest when asked (default), Introduce as AI up front, or Stay in character (honest if seriously asked). The agent never claims to be human when directly asked — this only controls how proactively it says so. |
Voice & feel
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Use contractions | "I'm", "you'll", "that's" instead of the formal forms. |
| Small talk | Allow brief, natural chit-chat. |
| Reply length | Concise (1–3 sentences, chat-like) or Conversational. |
| Mission | What the agent is trying to accomplish, in plain language. |
| Success means | How the agent knows it's done, e.g. "A booked consultation with name, email, phone, and budget captured." |
Brain
- Knowledge base — when on, the agent grounds its answers in your Knowledge Base.
- Custom instructions — facts and rules the agent should always respect, such as office hours, service area, or discount limits.
Guardrails
- Never say (one per line) — topics or phrases the agent must avoid.
- Escalate to a human when… — describe the situations that should trigger a hand-off, e.g. "the visitor is upset or mentions a refund over $500."
Flows
A flow is the agent's playbook: a sequence of stages. Inside a stage the agent converses naturally; your rules decide when the stage is complete and what happens next.
Creating and managing flows
On the Flows tab, select New flow. The editor opens with a starter flow called "Lead intake" containing one stage ("Welcome & discover") that captures a first name and email and updates the lead. The first flow you create becomes the agent's Default flow — the one used on connected chat widgets.
Each flow in the list shows its status and stage count with these actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Activate / Pause | Turn the flow on or off. Only Active flows can be used for outbound assignments. |
| Edit | Open the stage editor. |
| Trash icon | Delete the flow. |
Building a stage
In the editor, rename the flow at the top, then work through each stage card. Use the arrows to reorder stages, the trash icon to remove one, and Add stage at the bottom to append another. Select Save flow when you're done (a flow needs at least one stage).
Each stage has four parts:
Objective — the stage's mission in plain language, e.g. "Find out what project the visitor has in mind, their timeline, and rough budget."
Fields to capture — structured data the agent should collect. Each field has a key (letters, numbers, underscores), a label, a type (text, email, phone, number, boolean, or choice), and a required switch. Leave this empty and the agent simply works the objective.
Branch rules — evaluated when the stage completes; the first matching rule wins, and if none match the flow moves to the next stage. Two kinds of rule:
| Rule | How it works |
|---|---|
| If (AI judges) | A natural-language condition, e.g. "the visitor is an existing customer". |
| If field | Compare a captured field: equals, does not equal, contains, is greater than, is less than, was provided, or was not provided. |
Each rule then either goes to another stage or ends the flow with an outcome of QUALIFIED, DISQUALIFIED, or COMPLETED.
When this stage completes — actions the agent performs:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Update lead from captured fields | Saves the captured fields to the lead in your CRM. |
| Add tag to lead | Applies a tag you choose. |
| Add lead to list | Adds the lead to a lead list you choose. |
| Create pipeline ticket | Creates a ticket in the pipeline stage you choose. |
| Enable appointment booking | Lets the agent offer and book slots on the booking calendar you choose while this stage is active. |
| Enroll in automation | Enrolls the lead in an automation you choose. |
| Notify the team | Sends a team notification with an optional message. |
| Hand off to a human | Escalates the conversation to your team when the stage completes. |
Testing an agent
The Test tab lets you chat with the agent exactly as a visitor would, using its real persona and flow. You need at least one flow first.
- Type a message and press Enter (or the send button). The agent replies in the chat pane.
- The Flow state rail on the right shows the current stage, the outcome once the flow ends, and every captured field so far.
- Select Reset to start the conversation over.
Tests are a safe sandbox: stage actions such as tickets, bookings, and escalations are suppressed, so nothing is created in your workspace.
Outbound cadences
The Outbound tab turns the agent into an SDR: point it at a lead list and it sends AI-written messages on a schedule, pausing the moment someone replies.
- Select New assignment.
- Fill in the form:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | A label for the assignment. |
| Playbook flow | Must be an Active flow. |
| Lead list | The audience. |
| Channel | SMS (the agent replies conversationally) or Email (replies go to your team). |
| Touch days | Comma-separated days from enrollment, increasing, e.g. 0, 2, 5 = day of enrollment, then 2 days later, then 3 days after that. |
| Send from / Until | The hours (0–23 / 1–24) during which messages may go out. |
| Daily cap | Maximum messages per day (1–2000). |
- Select Create assignment. Assignments are created paused — review the card, then select Activate to start the cadence.
Each assignment card shows its flow, list, schedule, and a live funnel: Queued, In cadence, Replied, Converted, Exhausted, and Opted out. A lead who replies STOP is opted out permanently. Use Pause / Activate to control it and the trash icon to delete it.
Voice (phone)
On the Voice tab the agent can answer calls to phone numbers you own, running the same flow it uses in chat.
If your workspace's voice service isn't set up yet, a notice says so at the top of the tab. You can still save settings, and any bound numbers keep their normal call forwarding until voice is live.
Phone numbers this agent answers — choose a number and select Answer this number. Numbers come from tracking numbers you've provisioned under Leads → Sources; if you have none yet, the tab tells you. Use the hang-up icon next to a bound number to release it.
Voice settings (select Save voice settings when done):
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Voice | Alloy, Ash, Ballad, Coral, Echo, Sage, Shimmer, or Verse. |
| Pace | Slow, Natural, or Brisk. |
| Opening line | Spoken first. Leave blank and the agent greets callers in its own words. |
| Disclosure | Spoken before the greeting, e.g. "This call may be recorded and you're speaking with an AI assistant." The agent always answers honestly if a caller asks whether it's a person. |
| Transfer to a human | A phone number the agent can warm-transfer a live caller to. Leave blank and escalation becomes "a team member will follow up." |
Calls — the list at the bottom shows each call the agent has handled with its status (Ringing, In progress, Completed, Transferred, or Failed), the other party's number, time, duration, transfer target, and a short transcript excerpt.
Video meetings
On the Meetings tab the agent can host a video meeting with a prospect: it talks, presents a deck you give it, and drops links — running the same intake flow.
If video meetings aren't set up for your workspace, a notice says so; you can still schedule meetings, but the room can't open until it is.
To schedule one:
- Select Schedule.
- Enter a Title, pick When, and optionally add the Guest name and Guest email.
- Optionally build a Deck: select Slide to add slides, each with a title and talking points. The agent decides when to show each slide. With no deck, the agent just talks — often right for a discovery call.
- Select Schedule + copy link. The join link is copied to your clipboard — send it to your prospect.
Each meeting in the list shows its status (Scheduled, Live, Completed, No show, or Failed), the time, guest, slide count, duration, and links shared. Use Link to copy the join link again, and the trash icon to cancel a scheduled meeting.
What the guest sees
The guest opens the link, enters their name, and selects Join meeting. Their browser asks for microphone access. In the room they see the agent's avatar with a speaking indicator, live captions of what's being said, any links the agent shares, and the current slide. They can mute themselves or Leave at any time; after the meeting ends, the links shared with them stay on screen.
Channels
On the Channels tab, choose a chat widget and select Connect. The agent then answers visitor chats on that widget — its persona and default flow replace the generic support bot. The widget's AI assistant must be enabled in the widget's bot settings (see Chat Widget). Use the trash icon to disconnect a widget.
Sessions
The Sessions tab lists every intake run: its status (Active, Completed, Escalated, or Abandoned), outcome, the flow used, when it started, and a summary of captured fields. Select View conversation to open the full conversation in your Inbox.
Permissions
Everything on the AI Agents pages requires the ai: use permission. If you can't see the page, ask your organization owner to grant it. See Account & Team.
Related
- Chat Widget — turn on the widget's AI assistant so an agent can answer on it.
- Knowledge Base — the content the agent draws on when Knowledge base is enabled.
- CRM — where captured fields, tags, and lists end up.
- Meetings — human-hosted video rooms and meeting recordings.
- Inbox — take over an escalated conversation.