Actions
An action lets your agent do one declared thing as well as answer: ask for specific details, notify you, or call your own endpoint. Nothing runs until you add one and switch it on.
The three kinds
- Collect details asks for up to six specific things, such as an order number, in the visitor’s own words. Anything they don’t give stays blank.
- Notify posts a short summary to an address you choose, such as a Slack webhook.
- Call your endpoint is a lookup: it reads the few fields you tick from your system, or changes data when you say so.
Kinds by agent
Which kinds you can add depends on the agent. The form only offers the ones that agent can hold.
| Agent | Collect details | Notify | Call your endpoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own twin | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Support Agent | No | Yes | Yes |
| Team Agent | No | Yes | Yes |
A Support Agent hands the chat to a person instead of collecting details, and a Team Agent doesn’t ask colleagues for theirs.
Add an action
On your agent’s Tools page, next to Your actions.
Choose Collect details, Notify or Call your endpoint. Call your endpoint opens the lookup editor, which starts from Paste a cURL command, Import an OpenAPI file, Start from a template or Start from scratch.
Write it as you’d tell a new colleague: “When someone asks about an order they’ve already placed.” Your agent reads this sentence to decide.
Every action starts switched off. Notify and Call your endpoint ask you to confirm, because they send something outside hiy.
Start from a template
Stripe subscription status looks up a customer’s plan; connect Stripe in Integrations first. Order status checks an order in your own system. CRM contact update updates a contact from the conversation. You add your endpoint, press Try, and tick the fields of the reply your agent may read.
What a credential is, and what happens to it
A credential is a key or password your endpoint needs. You paste it once, and hiy stores it encrypted. You only ever see its last few characters, so the button says Replace, never Edit.
Every use is recorded: open Connection, then What hiy did with it, on the action’s card. Remove revokes it: the key is destroyed, the record stays, and the action stops calling until you add a new one.
Note
There is no reminder to rotate. If your provider rotates keys on a schedule, use Replace when it does.
What your site can tell your agent
A Support Agent reached with a signed token can be told a few facts about the person asking, such as their plan, so an action doesn’t have to ask. You declare the keys, up to six, under What your site tells this agent in Settings › Where it answers. Your server fills in the values.
Only facts on your declared list reach an action, for that one answer, and they are never stored. The visitor sees which keys arrived, never the values. A Team Agent never receives them.
Open on your site
If your Support Agent is open on your websites, anyone can chat with it. For those visitors only a look-up that needs no key runs. Notify, calls with a stored key, and calls that send data stay off. Visitors your server signs a token for get every action.
Good to know
- One answer runs at most two actions. A lookup gets 30 calls a minute and waits 10 seconds for a reply.
- Previews rehearse writes: in Test, you see the request that would have gone out, and nothing is sent. The lookup editor’s Try is the exception: it really calls a read, and a write waits for Send for real.
- An answer that used Notify or Call your endpoint tells the visitor which action ran and whether it worked.
- The system an action writes to is your processor, chosen by you.