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API actions

Let your receptionist look things up in your own systems, or send them approved requests, set up for you by CallsCovered.

API actions let your receptionist use your own systems during a conversation. It could check an order's status, look up whether a part is in stock, or send a request into your booking or job system. Each action is a named, fixed request to one of your systems, and your receptionist can only use the actions you've agreed.

How it works in practice

Say you have an action called "Check order status" that needs an order number. A caller asks where their order is. Your receptionist asks for the order number, runs the action, and answers in a sentence or two using only what your system sent back. It works on phone calls and in the website chat.

• Look-ups (reading information) only run when the person asked for that information.
• Requests that change something (sending information to your system) are never sent on a guess. Your receptionist asks the person to confirm first, and only sends once they say yes.
• Your receptionist only chooses which action to run and fills in its inputs. It can never change the address, the method or the password your system uses.

What you need

• A system with a secure web address (an API) that accepts simple requests. Your developer or software supplier will know.
• For each action: what it's for, the address, whether it reads or sends, the inputs it needs (such as order_number or date) and, if your system needs one, an access token.

Setting it up

A person from the CallsCovered team sets this up for you.

1. Open Plugins, choose API actions and click Request to add.
2. Once it's approved, open it and click Ask us to set it up, or email hello@callscovered.ai. Tell us which systems you'd like your receptionist to use and what you'd like it to do.
3. We connect them, test them with you and switch them on. They then appear under "Set up for you" on the plugin.

You can't add or change actions from the dashboard yourself.

Cost

£2 a month. Any charges from your own system's supplier are separate.

Privacy

When an action runs, the inputs your receptionist collected (an order number, a date, a postcode) are sent to your system, with your access token if there is one. Your system's answer is read by your receptionist to reply to the person.

Some actions are about a particular person's account or booking. These can be marked so they only run for someone whose phone number or email address CallsCovered has already confirmed. For those, the confirmed number or address is filled in by CallsCovered, not by the person, and is also sent to your system so it can check.

Limits

• Up to ten actions.
• Each action has up to 12 inputs, each up to 300 characters.
• Your system must answer within 7 seconds, with a reply of no more than about 12,000 characters.
• Each action can run up to 5 times a minute in one conversation.
• Only secure (https) public addresses, without a port number, password or extra settings in the address.
• If your system says no, or doesn't answer, your receptionist is told it didn't work, and is instructed never to claim a request worked without a result.

Still stuck? Write to hello@callscovered.ai with your business name and what you were trying to do, and a person will reply.