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Valid for AI Receptionist.
Procedures act as reusable mini-scripts or building blocks for your AI Receptionist. Instead of writing out the same step-by-step instructions every time your bot needs to perform a common task, like verifying a caller's name or collecting a phone number, you can build a single Procedure. This guide explains how to set up these helpful routines so your AI Receptionist handles repetitive tasks smoothly and consistently.
Note
Always design your Procedures to be general and flexible. Because they can be triggered from many different conversational paths (Scenarios), they need to work reliably regardless of the current topic of conversation.
Why use Procedures?
Setting up Procedures helps you maintain a high-quality experience for your callers by:
- Making sure common tasks are handled the exact same way every single time.
- Keeping your bot's backend organised by eliminating repeated instructions.
- Allowing the assistant to adapt naturally based on information it has already gathered about the caller.
Accessing the widgets area
- Log in to your IONOS account.
- Click on Menu > AI Receptionist in the title bar. The AI Agent Portal opens.
- Click on Customer Portal under Actions for the desired receptionist. The Dashboard opens.
- Click on Widgets from the left-side menu.
Adding and managing Procedures
For information on adding, editing, and removing Procedures, please see the article “Managing conversational flows using widgets”.
Formatting Procedures
Just like standard chat flows, your Procedures need clear labels and rules so the system knows exactly how to read them.
- Title: Always stick to a strict naming convention for the heading. Use the layout: ## **<Procedure Name>** procedure (for example, ## **Gathering User Name** procedure).
- Body instructions: The inside of your Procedure needs to be very clear about how the bot should act. You must define:
- The specific moment or trigger that causes the bot to use this Procedure.
- Any background checks or conditions it needs to review before speaking.
- Exactly what the bot should say or do depending on the situation, including examples of phrasing to keep the conversation sounding natural.
Using customer details and context
You can make your assistant sound much smarter by having it reference information it already knows or pull details directly from the active conversation.
Saved attributes: If you want the bot to look up a specific piece of saved information, wrap the system ID in double brackets. For example: [[customer_account_status]].
Active context: If you want to drop in fresh details from the current chat, use single square brackets. For example: “Just to be sure, your address is [caller address], right?”
Procedure example
Title
## **Reconfirming or Gathering User Name** procedure
Body
When gathering the user's name, check the [[UserInformation]] section, which may already contain this information.### **If [user full name] resembles a name**: reconfirm, Your name is [user full name], is that right?### **If [user full name] is either not set or null**: ask, May I please have your name? Note: It's okay if the user has provided only their first name.