AI Agents Settings

Overview

CommBox empowers organizations to build automation that communicates with customers in a guided, focused, and brand-aligned way, ensuring every interaction reflects the company’s tone, standards, and objectives.

CommBox Automation

CommBox supports three types of automation agents:

• AI Agent (Beta) – Autonomous reasoning, goal-driven responses using knowledge, tools, instructions, and context
• AI Chatbot – Deterministic, flow-based chatbot enhanced with AI for intent detection and retrieval-augmented responses, using structured knowledge and instructions
• Chatbot – Deterministic, flow-based chatbot without AI, using intents, rules, and APIs to enable sophisticated automation.

The force behind these automated representatives is the CommBox Flow Builder, which adds a robust set of capabilities enabling the design of intelligent, dynamic, and highly automated customer journeys. With these tools, you can pave the road for the chatbot to follow, enhance operational efficiency, and elevate the entire customer experience from start to finish.

AI Agents use self-contained mini-flows called Abilities, which carry out different tasks and functions. These Abilities are designed as reusable functionalities that can be used as is or customized for their new application.

This guide focuses on the initial setup of an AI Agent. For instructions on creating and using Abilities, please refer to the Abilities guide.

About CommSite

CommSite uses an AI Agent or Chatbot to transform an organization’s website content into an AI-guided conversational experience. While AI-driven automation is central to CommSite, it is a separate product with its own functionality and purpose.

This guide does not cover CommSite-specific features. Click here to learn more about CommSite.

Steps to Set Up an AI Agent

1. Name the AI Agent
   Assign a clear and recognizable name.

2. Define the Agent’s Persona
   Specify tone and communication style, background and role, and preferred reply style and formats.

3. Provide Instructions
   Outline the mandatory elements for every communication (e.g., required notations) and the specific dos and don’ts the AI must follow.

4. Abilities
   Select the tools available to the AI Agent. You can choose predefined abilities, customize them to your needs, or create new ones from scratch.

5. Associated Knowledge Items
   Select specific knowledge base items that the AI Agent will use when interacting with customers. Note that some flows rely heavily on the Unknown steps. For such flows, you can disable the Knowledge Base altogether by toggling off at the top.

6. Configure Settings
   Apply general rules to the entire flow, including enabling or disabling AI capabilities.

Step I: Naming your AI Agent

1. At the main side bar, navigate to Automation Hub, select the Agents tab, and click the Create Agent button at the top corner of the page.
   

2. At the new dialog box, enter a name for the AI agent, select the AI Agent type, and click Create.
   
   A new AI Agent Settings page is now available.
   
   To rename the AI agent, click on the title.
   To add an Avatar (optional), click the camera icon, upload an existing image, or generate a new one using AI by clicking Generate Avatar. Zoom the image to fit within the clear circle, then click Add when done.
   

Step II: Agent Persona

1. Define your AI Agent's unique voice
   a. Enter your company’s name, the role of agent (support, sales, etc.), and industry. You can select from the list provided or enter your definition.
   b. Select the tone of the communication and the level of humor allowed (if any). Note that you can always add additional restrictions in the Instructions section.
2. Persona Add Ons (optional)
   Tell the AI Agent about themselves and the type of person the customer wants to meet. Explain their role in the company, including the brand name and industry.
   You can use available templates as a preset alternative. Adjust as needed.
3. Reply Style
   a. Choose the desired reply’s length: short and concise or detailed and comprehensive.
   b. Defines how often emojis are used, based on tone or brand standards.
   c. Define the AI agent's Response Language. Note that the AI Agent is part of an existing Flow with a predominant language.
   d. Select the Format of the Reply: Headers in front of blocked text, Bold Headings, and Hyperlink when applicable.
   e. Choose to present applicable information in an ordered list, an unordered list, or avoid listing altogether.

Step III: Add Instructions (optional)

1. Click + Add Instruction and choose where to apply the instruction.

• Agent Persona – Defines how the AI Agent behaves and responds. Use this to set tone, style, dos and don’ts, and brand-specific guidelines.
  Example (Humor Policy):

  • Use light, friendly humor when appropriate
  • Never make age-related jokes
  • Avoid sarcasm or humor that could be misinterpreted
  • If asked about your age, respond that you are an ageless AI agent and reply with a light, playful tone

• Dynamic Cards – Controls when cards (in general or specific ones) should or should not be displayed.
  Examples:

  • Do not display marketing or sales cards if the customer appears upset or frustrated
  • Show a “Contact Support” card when the user expresses confusion or requests human assistance
  • Display onboarding cards only for new users
  • Prevent showing promotional cards during service-related inquiries

2. Click Add to save the instruction.

Hover over the top-right corner of an instruction to access the options menu, where you can edit, delete, or deactivate it. Active instructions appear in bold.

The order of instructions may impact behavior, as the AI Agent follows them sequentially. To reorder, drag and drop an instruction to the desired position.

Step IV: Abilities

This is where the AI Agent’s actionable abilities are created and managed.

Abilities are self-contained, reusable mini-flows that execute specific tasks. They can be used out of the box, customized to meet specific business needs, or created from scratch.

Learn more in the Abilities guide.

Step V: Knowledge Base

This section defines the scope of knowledge the AI Agent is permitted to use when generating responses. By clearly limiting that scope, the agent provides more accurate and relevant answers, avoids pulling in unrelated or misleading information, reduces confusion, and improves overall response speed and efficiency.

1. Enable the Knowledge Items toggle.
   

2. To limit the KB items, click Selected Items at the top, followed by +Add Items in the center.

3. In the dialog box, select the relevant items for the AI Agent and click Save.
   
   An upload icon will appear while the data is being processed. Processing time may vary depending on the size of the data.
   Note that the AI Agent cannot be published while the upload is in progress.
   

4. Save changes made.

Note:

• If the items are organized in folders, click the folder name to view its contents.

• To add or remove items, click the Edit button at the top.

• When selecting a crawled item for an AI Agent, if the crawling process was not completed successfully, a Partial File icon appears in the Status column. This implies that some information may not be available to the AI Agent. We recommend reselecting this item for the AI Agent. If the problem persists, the crawling process may have been corrupted at the original stage, and you may need to repeat it for the general KB as well.

• If adding file(s) to the AI Agent fails, a dialog box suggests that you retry the process.
  

• When a file upload fails, a Failed icon will appear in the Status column. Verify that the file’s content is not corrupted, and repeat the upload process.
  

• Empty KB folders cannot be selected when adding items to the AI Agent.

Step VI: Dynamic Cards

If the AI Agent is designated for CommSite, this is where Dynamic Cards are created. Dynamic Cards are clickable information packets displayed to the user by the AI Agent as the conversation progresses.

Click here for the CommSite user guide.

Step VII: Settings

The Settings area is where you can define default actions for key scenarios such as idle customers, no response, navigation, data collection, and AI behavior. When building complex bots, configuring Flow Settings streamlines development and helps reduce both setup time and effort.

AI Settings

Enabling the AI Agent Settings unlocks advanced capabilities within the flow.

• The AI Agent can respond to customer inquiries based on organizational knowledge base items you provide, using a specific persona for that role.
• To use this capability, it must be activated both at the flow level and the module level, and requires a replenishing token account. For assistance, contact your Customer Success (CS) representative.

Default Actions

Default actions are triggered when:

• A customer becomes idle.
• A flow reaches the end of the branch with no End or Jump step.
  Note: This is not considered best practice. Ensure every branch leads to its intended path, ending by jumping to a specified step or transferring the conversation to a human agent.
  You can choose one, multiple, or none of the following default actions:

1. Repeat the Last Step
   When choosing to repeat the last step after a set time (from 20 seconds up to 8 hours), you can also add a message prompting the customer to respond.
   We recommend keeping it short and including an emoji. If the flow collects customer information, you can also include a dynamic field. Type double curly brackets followed by user-dot ( {{user. ) to display the available customer fields for selection.
   
   
   
2. Jump to a Specific Step
   You can redirect idle customers to a different step in the flow. If you also selected to send a message, make sure the “If no answer” time span is longer than the first “Resend last step” interval.
   
   
   
3. End the Flow with a Specific Step
   Select the default step that will be used when the flow ends.
   
   
   Note: Clicking on the actual Step icon will let you copy the Step ID. Use it in the search pane to locate the exact step in the flow.
   
   
   

Intent Detection in Ask steps

When enabled, the Flow can detect intents within an Ask step, allowing intent recognition during the data collection process—not only when end users enter free text in standard message nodes.
Note: Once enabled at the Settings section, a toggle will appear at every Ask step. Enabling that Intent detection applies to all questions asked at that step.

Constants

Constants allow you to create reusable Fields within the flow.

• Example 1: Define a field called Age with a value “<21.” Customers who are under 21 can then be directed to a dedicated step for younger drivers.
• Example 2: Create a field called MembershipStatus with a value “Premium.” This allows the flow to automatically route premium members to a priority support queue, while regular members remain in the standard flow.