Help › Plugins
How plugins work
What plugins do, how to switch on a free one or request a paid one, how to set it up, and what each one costs.
Plugins are extras for your receptionist: new channels (email, texts, WhatsApp), links to the tools you already use (your calendar, CRM, helpdesk, team chat) and a few booking helpers. Your plan's core features, such as phone answering, website chat, bookings, call backs and leads, are set up by CallsCovered and don't appear on the Plugins page.
Finding them
Open Plugins in your dashboard. There are well over a hundred, for many kinds of business, and we aim to add a couple of new ones every week. You can also browse them all, with a page for each, at callscovered.ai/plugins.
To find the right one:
- Search by name, what it does, or your kind of business.
- All, On for you and Recommended (picked for your kind of business) narrow the list. A For you label marks recommended plugins.
- Industry, Type and Price filter further, and the sort box shows Yours first, Name or Price: low to high.
- Clear puts every filter back.
Each plugin is a tile with its name, a one-line summary and its state:
- Free or a monthly price: you don't have it yet.
- Requested: you've asked for a paid plugin and we haven't approved it yet.
- Set up: it's on, but it needs its settings before it does anything.
- On (or Linked for WhatsApp): it's working.
- Needs attention: it's on, but the last thing it tried failed. Open it to see why.
The last tile, Need something else?, is for asking us to build a plugin for your business. See Asking for a plugin built for you.
Switching on a free plugin
- Click the tile.
- Click Switch on.
- Fill in the settings that appear and click Save and test.
Free plugins don't change your bill.
Requesting a paid plugin
- Click Request to add on the tile, or open the tile and click Request to add there.
- Confirm. The tile now says Requested, and the request shows on your Billing page under Waiting for approval.
- CallsCovered approves it, and it's switched on and added to your bill from then. If we can't approve it, the tile tells you why, and you're welcome to ask again.
Setting a plugin up
Open the plugin's tile. You'll see its settings, each with a short note on where to find the key or address it needs. Fill them in and click Save and test. Once the settings are complete, CallsCovered checks them straight away (for example by logging in to your account or sending a test message) and tells you whether it worked. There's no separate Test button: saving runs the test.
Some plugins have extra buttons, such as Show my bookings calendar link or Show recent deposits. Below the settings you'll find Recent activity, a short log of what the plugin has done.
Saved passwords, keys and tokens are never shown again. The box says "Saved. Type to change it": leave it empty to keep what's saved.
- Remove settings clears the plugin's settings. The plugin stays available and you can set it up again later.
- Switch [plugin] off stops it straight away.
What paid plugins cost
Paid plugins are charged month to month on top of your plan. A plugin that's on at any point in a month is charged in full for that month. If you switch one off, it stays on this month's bill and isn't charged from next month. If CallsCovered has agreed a different price with you, your Billing page shows it as "your price". See The Billing page.
Many plugins connect to another company's service (Stripe, Twilio, PagerDuty, SendGrid and so on). Their own charges are between you and them. Each plugin's article says where that applies.
Questions about your bill: hello@callscovered.ai.
Plugins with their own guide
These plugins have a full guide in this help centre. Every other plugin explains its settings on its own tile, and on its page at callscovered.ai/plugins.
| Plugin | What it does | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Calendar sync | Keeps bookings off times you're busy and puts every booking in your Google, Outlook or Apple calendar. | Free |
| SOE Exact | Reads busy times from your Exact diary, so your receptionist only offers free appointments. | Free |
| Closures and holidays | Tells your receptionist the days you're closed, so nobody is booked in and callers know when you're back. | Free |
| Appointment reminders | Texts people before their appointment, so fewer forget to turn up. | Free |
| Cancellation list | Keeps a list of people who'd like an earlier slot, and texts them when someone cancels. | Free |
| Booking deposits | Texts people a secure link to pay a deposit when they book. | Free |
| Review requests | Asks people how their visit went, and sends the happy ones your review link. | £2 a month |
| Conversion tracking | Reports bookings and enquiries to Google Analytics and Meta ads. | Free |
| Text messages | Answers texts sent to your number, and lets people reply to your reminders and texts. | Free |
| Reads your inbox and answers new emails, for you to approve or sent automatically. | Free | |
| Answers your WhatsApp messages from your own WhatsApp account. | £4.99 a month | |
| Team alerts | Posts bookings, call backs and urgent calls to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Chat or Telegram. | Free |
| Email notifications | Emails your team about each booking, call back and urgent call. | Free |
| Smart routing | Your own rules for who hears about what, by text or email. | Free |
| Urgent escalation | Pages your on-call team through PagerDuty, incident.io, Splunk On-Call or Pushover. | Free |
| On-call rota | When a caller says it's urgent, the person on call gets a text straight away, and a phone call if you like. | Free |
| Daily summary | A short round-up each day of bookings, cancellations, call backs and urgent calls, by text or email. | Free |
| Call screening | Blocks nuisance numbers, puts important callers straight through and turns away sales calls politely. | Free |
| Put me through | When a caller asks for a person, your receptionist offers to put them through to you. | Free |
| Read-back on calls | Your receptionist reads names and numbers back to callers before saving them. | Free |
| Webhooks | Sends every booking, call back, enquiry and call summary to Zapier, Make, n8n or your own systems. | £2 a month |
| CRM sync | Adds enquiries, call backs and bookings to your CRM, or new leads to Salesforce or Clio Grow. | Free |
| Job management | Adds call backs, enquiries and urgent messages to ServiceM8 or Fergus. | Free |
| Helpdesk tickets | Opens a Zendesk, Freshdesk, HubSpot or Help Scout ticket for each call back and urgent call. | Free |
| Task list | Turns call backs and urgent messages into tasks in Asana, Trello, monday.com and others. | Free |
| Spreadsheet log | Adds a row to your Google Sheet, Airtable or Smartsheet for every booking, call back, enquiry and call. | Free |
| API actions | Lets your receptionist look up information or send approved requests to your own systems. | £2 a month |
WhatsApp can only be requested once CallsCovered has its WhatsApp server ready for your account. Until then, opening its tile says so.
Still stuck? Write to hello@callscovered.ai with your business name and what you were trying to do, and a person will reply.