Procedures
Procedures: your standard operating procedures, followed step by step by your AI agent
Write down how your team handles a refund, a cancellation or a rescheduled appointment. The agent follows those steps in order: it asks for what it needs, calls your API, checks the result and asks the visitor to confirm before anything changes.
Visitor: I want a refund for my order.
Agent: I can help with that. What is your order number?
Visitor: It's 1042.
Agent: I found order 1042. It was delivered 12 days ago, so it can be refunded. I will refund order 1042 in full. Shall I go ahead?
Visitor: Yes, please.
Agent: Done: the refund for order 1042 has started. The money should arrive within 5 to 10 days.
Free-form AI is the wrong tool for requests that change things
A chatbot that answers from your knowledge is great for questions. A refund is different. It needs the order number before the lookup, the lookup before the decision, and a clear yes from the customer before the money moves. Left to its own judgement, an AI model may skip a step, ask in the wrong order or call your refund API too early. Procedures give the agent a fixed path for one kind of request, the same way a standard operating procedure guides a new team member. Your steps decide the order. intoCHAT checks the risky parts on its own servers, not in the AI.
Why give your agent procedures
Repeatable handling for the requests where order and safety matter.
The same steps every time
The agent does one step at a time, in your order. It does not skip steps or make up the result of an action, and it can still do several steps in one reply when the visitor already gave the answers.
Risky actions only where you put them
Mark an action Only inside procedures and the agent never gets it in a normal chat. A call at any other moment is refused and nothing is sent to your API.
A real yes before anything runs
With visitor confirmation, intoCHAT only runs the action after the visitor has sent a new message, and only with exactly the values they were shown.
A person can approve first
On Pro and Enterprise, a step can wait on the Approvals page until someone from your team approves it. The visitor is told the outcome in the chat.
You see what happened
Why this answer shows each step the agent took, and the transcript header shows how far every procedure got and the answers the visitor gave.
How to build a procedure
Start from a template or from scratch
On the Actions tab, add a procedure. Templates for a refund request, cancelling a subscription and rescheduling an appointment give you the steps; you pick one of your own actions in each action step.
Say when it applies
Describe the request in your customers’ words, for example: the visitor asks for their money back for an order they placed, not for general questions about the refund policy. The agent starts the procedure only when a request clearly matches.
Add the steps
Up to 15 steps of five types: Instruction, Ask the visitor, Call an action, Condition and End. Save answers under names like order_number and pass them straight into your action’s inputs.
Lock down the action
Switch on Only inside procedures for the action that changes data, tick Ask the visitor to confirm first on its step, and add team approval where a person should check.
Test it in the Playground
Run through the request as a visitor would, then open Why this answer to see every step. The Playground calls your real actions, so use a test order or a test endpoint.
What a procedure can do
Instruction steps
Explain a policy, or offer a hand-off to your team, a chat form or a booking. Built-in tools stay available, so a step can tell the agent to use them.
Ask the visitor
One question per step, saved under a name. intoCHAT keeps an answer only if it comes from what the visitor wrote: every number in it must appear in their messages, so the agent cannot fill a step with a guess.
Steps that call your API
Call one of the agent’s server-side API actions. Inputs you fill from earlier answers, such as {{order_number}}, are sent exactly as given and the AI cannot change them.
Conditions and branches
Check something in plain words, such as “the order was delivered less than 30 days ago”, and go to one step if it is true and another if not, or back to an earlier step.
Confirmation checked by the server
The first call only prepares the action. It runs when the agent calls it again with the same values after a new visitor message. Change the order number and the visitor is asked again.
Team approval (Pro and Enterprise)
The values wait on the Approvals page with an expiry of 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours or 3 days. Your team is notified by email, and by Slack alerts or webhooks if you set them up.
Frequently asked questions
What is a procedure in an AI chatbot?
A procedure is a step-by-step playbook for one kind of request, written by you. When a visitor’s request matches its description, the agent follows the steps in order: it asks questions, calls your API actions, checks conditions and ends with the message you wrote. It is the chatbot version of a standard operating procedure (SOP).
Which plans include procedures?
Starter includes 3 procedures per agent, Pro 10, and Enterprise has no plan limit, with a maximum of 50 per agent. The Free plan does not include procedures. After a downgrade nothing is deleted: the agent follows the first enabled procedures in your list up to the new limit.
How do I stop the agent from refunding orders on its own?
Switch on Only inside procedures for the refund action. The agent then gets it only while a procedure is on the step that calls it; at any other time the call is refused and nothing reaches your API. Add Ask the visitor to confirm first on that step, and on Pro or Enterprise, team approval for refunds a person should check.
Can the AI talk its way past a condition?
Conditions and the decision that a visitor said yes are the agent’s judgement, so a determined visitor may try to argue past them. What intoCHAT enforces on its servers is the order of steps, procedure-only actions and the confirmation rule. Let your own API refuse what must never happen, such as refunding an order that is not eligible.
How does team approval work?
On Pro and Enterprise, tick Requires team approval on an action step. When the procedure reaches it, the action does not run: its values wait on the Approvals page and the visitor is told the request is being reviewed. Approving runs the action once with exactly those values and the procedure continues. A rejection or an expiry stops it, and the visitor is told in the chat.
What kinds of procedures work well?
Requests with a clear path and a real action at the end: refunds, cancelling a subscription, rescheduling an appointment, changing a delivery date or checking a warranty claim. Keep one kind of request per procedure, and describe what it is not for when it could be confused with a general question.
Do procedures work outside the website widget?
Procedures run in saved conversations, including the Playground and chats through the REST API. They are not used in temporary chats, because nothing in a temporary chat is saved.
Give your agent a playbook for the requests that matter
Create your agent free, then add procedures from the Starter plan: start from the refund template and test it in the Playground.
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