Your AI agent can do more than just talk. With tools, your agent takes real actions mid-conversation—checking a calendar, looking up a customer, handing off to a teammate, or calling one of your own systems.
You set up the tools once, write a clear description of when each should fire, and your agent uses them on its own when the conversation calls for it.
Tools depend on your agent type#
dialnote has two kinds of agents, and each has its own set of tools. Pick the right list for the agent you're building (see Creating an AI Agent).
Voice agent tools#
Voice agents handle phone calls. They support six tools:
Transfer to a teammate — Route the call to one or more team members. Set a ring strategy (simultaneous or sequential) and how long each phone rings (5–120 seconds, default 30). A message the agent plays if nobody picks up comes pre-filled with default text you can edit.
Hand off to another agent — Pass the live call to a different AI agent in your organization. Useful for routing, say, a sales call to your booking agent.
Send an SMS — Text the caller during or after the call. Write a fixed message, or let the AI compose one from a prompt you give it.
Check Availability — Read open time slots from a connected calendar so the agent can tell callers when you're free.
Book Meeting — Schedule an appointment on a connected calendar and confirm it on the call.
Custom webhook — Call any external HTTPS API. This is how your agent looks up an order, checks stock, or triggers a workflow in your own systems.
Hanging up is automatic
There's no "end call" tool to set up. Ending the call politely is built into every voice agent—it happens on its own when the conversation is finished.
Message agent tools#
Message agents handle text conversations in the Inbox. They support a different six:
End conversation — Close out the chat when everything's resolved.
Transfer to a human — Hand the conversation to a teammate.
Look up contact — Pull up the contact's record to personalize the reply.
Send a link — Share a URL with the contact (you can restrict it to approved domains).
Book Meeting — Schedule an appointment. Set a default duration (15–480 minutes, default 30).
Custom webhook — Call an external HTTPS API (GET or POST). Requests time out after 10 seconds by default, up to 30 seconds.
Creating a tool#
You add tools in Step 4 (Actions) of the agent wizard. Here's the flow:
- Click Add action to open the tool modal
- Pick the tool type
- Fill in the shared fields:
- Name — For voice agents, the name must start with a letter and can only contain letters, numbers, and underscores (max 64 characters). It also has to be unique within the agent.
- Description — Tell the AI when to use this tool (10–1,000 characters for voice agents)
- Configure the tool-specific settings
- Save, and the tool is available to your agent right away
The description does the heavy lifting—it's what tells your agent when to fire the tool. Be specific. Instead of "Book appointments," write "Book a consultation when the caller wants to meet with a sales rep."
Pro tip
Start with the simple built-in tools (Transfer to a teammate, Send an SMS) before building a custom webhook. They cover most cases and need zero code.
Custom webhooks#
A custom webhook lets your agent call an external API during the conversation. It's how you connect dialnote to your existing business systems.
When you set up a voice-agent webhook, you'll configure:
- Webhook URL — The HTTPS endpoint that receives the request
- HTTP Method — GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, or DELETE
- Speak while executing — An optional line the agent says while it waits for the response (e.g., "One moment while I check that for you...")
- Speak with result — Whether the agent reads the API response back to the caller
HTTPS only
Webhook URLs must use HTTPS. Plain HTTP endpoints are rejected. Keep your endpoint fast—if it's slow to respond, the caller is left waiting on the line.
Example use cases#
Order lookup — Caller asks "Where's my order?" Your webhook hits your e-commerce API and the agent reads the tracking info back.
CRM update — After the agent captures lead details, the webhook pushes them to your CRM. (For built-in syncing, see CRM integrations.)
Inventory check — Caller asks about a product. The webhook queries your inventory system and the agent answers with live stock levels.
Scheduling tools#
The Check Availability and Book Meeting voice tools connect to Calendly or Cal.com.
To set one up:
- Choose Check Availability or Book Meeting
- Pick your provider (Calendly or Cal.com)
- Enter your API key (or pick a calendar you've already connected)
- Select the event type the agent should use
The agent uses its own timezone (set on Step 1, Basic Info) for every booking, so the calendar always matches the agent's clock. After setup, you can run a test connection to confirm the credentials work—dialnote reads real availability and, for booking, creates then auto-cancels a test slot.
Warning
Make sure your event type has open availability. With no free slots, the agent can't book anything.
See Calendar integrations for connecting Calendly and Cal.com.
Tips for better tools#
Write clear descriptions. The AI relies on your description to know when to use each tool. "Transfer to team when caller asks to speak to a human or the AI can't help" is better than "Transfer call."
Test before going live. Use the test feature to check that your tools trigger correctly. Try different phrasings to see if the AI picks up on the right cues.
Keep webhooks fast. Callers don't like waiting. If your API is slow, add caching or move heavy processing to a background job.
Don't overload your agent. Five well-configured tools will outperform fifteen poorly-described ones. The AI can get confused if too many tools have overlapping purposes.
What's next#
- Configure your agent — voice, language, and instructions
- Add knowledge bases so your agent can answer from your own content
- Test your agent before it takes real calls