Creating Custom Capabilities for your AI Employees

You can enhance your AI Employees in Business App by adding Custom Capabilities—specialized skills that let your AI interact with external systems and perform actions beyond chat, like checking inventory or booking appointments.

What are Custom Capabilities?

A Custom Capability is a skill you add to an AI Employee. Each capability has two parts:

• Prompt: Tells the AI when to use the capability and how to behave before/after using it.
• Tool: Defines what the AI does (e.g., look up data, book a meeting) and how it does it (which API).

Combined, Prompts and Tools let your AI Employee perform custom tasks on your behalf.

Why use Custom Capabilities?

Custom Capabilities enable your AI Employees to use other systems to:

• Check real-time inventory and product details
• Schedule appointments or bookings
• Look up order status
• Generate custom quotes or estimates
• Access customer account information (loyalty points, purchase history)
• Locate the nearest store or business hours
• Search an internal knowledge base or FAQ
• Create a ticket in your job-tracking or support system
• Automate repetitive workflows for your team

If an action can be done via an API, you can probably turn it into a capability.

How your AI Employees use Custom Capabilities

Your AI Employee can use Custom Capabilities across chat, voice, or any supported channel. Here’s how it works:

1. A customer asks a question or makes a request.
2. The AI reviews its Prompts to see if a Custom Capability matches the request.
3. If a match is found and the necessary info is available, it calls the corresponding Tool.
4. If info is missing, the AI prompts the customer to provide the details, then continues.
5. The AI uses the Tool’s response to craft its reply (message or spoken output).

How to create a Custom Capability for your AI Employees

1. In Business App, navigate to AI › AI Workforce.
2. Select an existing AI Employee and click Configure.
3. Open Custom Capabilities and click Add a capability.
4. Name the capability clearly (e.g., CheckInventory) and add a short description.
5. Add the Prompt. For best practices, see Writing a good capability Prompt.

6. Add one or more Tools (e.g., one to check availability and another to confirm a booking).
7. Save your changes and test the capability by chatting with your AI Employee.

Tool fields explained

Import from cURL

cURL is a common way to test APIs. Many docs show example cURL commands. Importing cURL here auto-fills the tool setup—saving time and avoiding mistakes.

ID

Unique name inside your AI’s setup. Choose something simple and descriptive (no spaces), like CheckInventory or BookAppointment.

Description

One clear sentence about what the tool does. This helps your AI decide when to use it and helps your team remember its purpose. Example: “Checks if a product is in stock.”

Method & URL

• GET — fetch info
• POST — create/update something
• PUT/PATCH — change something
• DELETE — remove something

URL is the address the AI contacts to perform the action. Example: GET https://api.yourbusiness.com/products

Parameters

• Query — added to the end of the URL: ?product_id=123
• Path — part of the URL path: /products/123
• Body — sent inside the request (commonly for create/update)

Each parameter needs a name, description, where it goes, and data type.

Headers

• Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY — access control
• Content-Type: application/json — payload format

No external processing needed

Enable this when the tool doesn’t call an outside API (e.g., formatting dates) so the AI can handle it internally without network calls.

Writing a good capability Prompt

• Specify exactly when to call the tool (e.g., “ONLY call CheckCustomerOrderStatus when the user asks about order status”).
• List information the AI must gather before calling the tool (e.g., “You MUST have order_number”).
• Explain how to use the tool’s response when replying to the user.
• Describe how to handle errors or no-result cases.

Managing Custom Capabilities

• Updating: Saved changes apply the next time the AI considers the capability.
• Disabling: Deleting tools isn’t supported yet—unassign the tool to disable it.

Testing and troubleshooting Custom Capabilities

• Chat with your AI Employee and try different phrasings to trigger the capability.
• Verify it gathers required info and calls the correct tool.
• In Conversations, click Explanation to view the AI’s reasoning and raw API call.
• If the API call fails, test it with Postman or similar, adjust, and re-import the cURL.

Example Custom Capability: Product information lookup

Example tool configuration

Parameters

• product_id (string, query) — the unique identifier of the product

Headers

• X-API-Key: YOUR_SECURE_API_KEY

Prompt snippet

# Product Lookup Assistant
## When to use
- ONLY call `LookupProductDetails` when the user asks about a product's price, description, or features.
- Do NOT call this unless the user has provided a specific product name **or** ID.

## Information Needed
- Before calling the tool, you MUST identify `product_id`.
- If the user only gives a name, ask for the ID.

## Tool Parameters
- Set `product_id` to the user-provided ID.

## How to respond
- If successful: "I found **[Product Name]**. The price is **$[Price]**. Description: **[Description]**."
- If not found: Apologize and suggest the user double-check the ID or browse products online.

Sample conversation

Customer: “Can you tell me the price of the blue wireless headphones?”
AI: “Sure! To make sure I have the right product, can you confirm if you mean the BlueWave Wireless Headphones?”
Customer: “Yes, that’s the one.”
(AI calls LookupProductDetails with product_id for BlueWave Wireless Headphones)
AI: “Great! The BlueWave Wireless Headphones are priced at $89.99. They offer 20 hours of battery life and come with a two-year warranty.”

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