Actions reference
Every building block you can drop into a flow — what it does, when to reach for it, and what each setting means.
Actions are the building blocks of a flow. Each one does a single, well-defined job, and you assemble them on the canvas to shape a conversation. This section is the reference manual: every action, grouped by purpose, with each setting explained in plain language.
You don't need to memorize these. Most flows use a handful, and you can always come back to look up the details of one block. Think of this as the dictionary, not a novel to read cover to cover.
How to read this section
Actions are organized into five groups, matching how they appear in the canvas toolbox:
- Control — the skeleton of a flow: where it starts, where it ends, and the idle timer.
- Messaging & capture — talking to the customer and collecting what they say.
- AI & data — the intelligent blocks: asking the AI, the autonomous agent, classifying intent, searching and answering from your knowledge, extracting structured data.
- Flow control — branching and jumping between flows.
- Integration — reaching outside Vivollo: HTTP API calls, updating conversations, and help-desk (Connexease) actions.
The full toolbox at a glance
| Action | Group | In one line |
|---|---|---|
| Start | Control | The proactive opener — greet when a conversation opens, before the customer types. |
| Fallback | Control | The main handler for what a customer says — where your answering logic lives. |
| Inactivity (Idle) | Control | Wait for silence, then act — remind or escalate. |
| Resolving / Resolved | Control | Mark a conversation as being wrapped up, then closed. |
| Send Message | Messaging & capture | Send text, buttons, carousels, forms, or JSON. |
| Capture User | Messaging & capture | Ask for name, email, and phone, with validation. |
| Assign User | Messaging & capture | Route the conversation to a specific teammate. |
| Ask AI | AI & data | Hand a turn to an assistant for a single reply. |
| Agentic AI | AI & data | Turn the conversation over to an autonomous agent. |
| User Intent | AI & data | Classify what the customer wants and route on it. |
| Search Documents | AI & data | Find matching items in a collection. |
| Reply From Documents | AI & data | Answer from your knowledge, with sources. |
| Extract Data | AI & data | Pull structured fields out of a message. |
| Get Filter Vocabulary | AI & data | Discover a collection's filterable fields. |
| Conditional | Flow control | Branch on facts you already know. |
| Redirect to Flow | Flow control | Jump to another flow. |
| API Call | Integration | Make an HTTP request to an external system. |
| Update Conversation | Integration | Change status or set custom fields. |
| Connexease actions | Integration | Assign, archive, and update in your help desk. |
Two ideas that show up everywhere
Before you dive into individual actions, two concepts recur across nearly all of them. Learn these once and every action page reads faster.
Variables — carrying information forward
As a conversation unfolds, it gathers information: a captured email, an extracted order number, the result of an API call. Vivollo stores these as variables, and you reference them anywhere with double braces:
Thanks {{customer_name}} — I found order {{order_id}}.Variables come from a few places: the customer's profile and metafields, answers captured earlier in the flow, data returned by actions, and the agent's memory. If a variable doesn't exist yet, the action either skips it or falls back gracefully, so a missing value never crashes a conversation.
Routing — deciding what comes next
Most actions let you set what happens after they finish. Usually that's just the next block you've connected. But many actions offer conditional routing — a different next step depending on the outcome:
- An API Call can route one way on success and another on failure.
- Reply From Documents can branch on whether it found a good answer.
- Options buttons can each lead somewhere different.
- User Intent routes by the category it detects.
Wherever an action can branch, its page spells out each path so you're never guessing where a conversation will go.
Two actions that support Auto-translate — Send Message and Capture User — let you author in your own language while every customer reads in theirs. Look for the toggle on those blocks.
Start here
If you're new to actions, read these two first — they're the ones you'll use in almost every flow:
- Messaging & capture — how to talk and listen.
- AI & data — how to bring intelligence in.