Agents Overview
An agent is an AI worker that lives in one environment. It follows instructions, uses tools to reach your systems, and is published when it is ready for real traffic. This section covers building an agent, editing it, publishing it, giving it a phone number, and switching it off or deleting it.
Frontline and Background Agents
Every agent has a type, chosen when it is created. The type decides how the agent is reached, how it is tested, and what its sessions are called. See Frontline and Background agents for the definitions.
| Frontline | Background | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Answers inbound phone calls | Works on text and data behind the scenes |
| How it is reached | On its own phone number, or by its agent ID from your own telephony | When another system, a flow or another agent calls it |
| Sessions are called | Calls | Runs |
| Has a voice and a greeting | Yes | No |
| Can have a phone number | Yes, one at a time | No |
| Tested by | Voice, in the browser | Sample messages or data |
The type cannot be changed later. To move from one type to the other, build a new agent.
Draft and Live
Every agent has a draft, and once it has been published, a live version. See Draft and live.
- Editing changes the draft only. Callers and integrations keep reaching the live version, so it is safe to edit a published agent during the working day.
- Publishing makes the draft live. Callers hear the new version on their next call. Calls already in progress finish on the version they started on.
- An agent that has never been published has no live version. Nothing outside the team can reach it, and it has no sessions, metrics or playground tab yet. Opening it takes you back to wherever it was being built.
Agent Statuses
The agents list and the agent page show one status for each agent. It describes what a caller or integration would experience right now.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | The agent has never been published. It is unfinished rather than switched off. |
| Live | A Frontline agent that is published, enabled, and has a phone number pointed at it. Calls to the number reach it. |
| Ready | A published, enabled agent with nothing outstanding. For a Background agent this is the normal working state. For a Frontline agent it means there is no phone number yet, so it can only be reached by its agent ID. |
| Not taking calls / Disabled | The agent has been switched off. Frontline agents show Not taking calls and Background agents show Disabled. See Enabling and Deleting Agents. |
| Not answering | The agent is saved, but its phone number was never pointed at it. Callers hear nothing and no session is recorded. See Phone Numbers and Deployment. |
| Deployment unconfirmed | Pointing the phone number at the agent started but never recorded a result. |
| Building | A change is being applied. The status updates on its own. |
| Deleting | The agent is being removed. |
While a published agent has edits that have not been published yet, the editor shows an Unpublished changes badge beside Live. Callers are still on the live version.
How an Agent Is Built
There are two ways to build an agent, and both produce the same kind of agent:
- Describe it to IQ. Write a sentence or two about what the agent should do, answer a few questions, and IQ drafts the instructions, greeting, voice and tools. See Building with IQ.
- Configure manually. Open a blank editor and fill in every section yourself. See The Agent Editor.
An agent built with IQ can be opened in the full editor at any time, and IQ is available inside the editor through the Ask IQ panel.
Before You Start
- Role: Admin or Organisation Admin. See Roles and Permissions.
- An environment. Agents belong to the environment selected in the sidebar. See Environments.
- Twilio, only for phone numbers. Agents can be built, tested and published without Twilio. A Twilio connection is needed when a Frontline agent should answer a phone number, or when human escalation is used. Connecting Twilio is an Organisation Admin task. See Twilio.
In This Section
- Managing Agents. The agents list, search, filters and what each card shows
- Building with IQ. Describe, fine-tune, test and publish with IQ
- The Agent Editor. Every section of the full editor, including advanced settings
- Tools and Knowledge. Connecting an agent to your systems, and the knowledge setting
- Quick Config. Changing common settings from the agent page
- Publishing and Versions. Publishing, discarding changes and version history
- Phone Numbers and Deployment. Giving a Frontline agent a number and fixing deployment problems
- Enabling and Deleting Agents. Switching an agent off, and removing it