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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.dialai.ca/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

This page is the glossary. Everything else in the Building & Managing Flows group assumes you know these terms.

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Flow

A Flow is a structured sequence of states and transitions that guides a conversation between your AI agent and the customer. A flow has an initial state, branches based on what the agent learns during the conversation, and ends when the agent (or a function) decides the interaction is done. Flows are customer-facing. They run on every channel — voice, SMS, web chat, email, Slack. See: Flows, Building Your First Flow.

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State

A State is one step inside a flow. Each state has:
  • A Thought — the instructions that tell the AI agent what to say or do here.
  • A set of Functions the agent is allowed to call from this state.
  • Outgoing Transitions to other states, each triggered by an Event.
The agent stays in a state until a transition fires.

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Transition

A Transition is a directed edge from one state to another, triggered by a named Event. Transitions are how flows branch — different events from the same state can lead to different next states.

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Event

An Event is a named outcome a function can emit. Functions declare the events they may emit; transitions listen for them. Example: a Lookup Account function might emit AccountFound or NoAccountMatch, each driving the flow to a different state.

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Thought

A Thought is the natural-language instruction attached to a state. It tells the AI agent how to behave at this point in the conversation — what to say, what data to collect, when to call functions, how to handle edge cases. Well-written thoughts use strong directives (“must”, “will”) and reference function names explicitly. See Designing Thoughts for the full guide.

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Function

A Function is a piece of JavaScript the agent can call. Functions can:
  • Take in parameters from the agent, from conversation context, or from flow-level static configuration.
  • Return a response the agent will see.
  • Set context additions for use by later functions.
  • Emit an event that drives a state transition.
See Functions and Events.

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Parameter

Parameters are data values used inside a flow. Four kinds:
  • Normal parameters — passed to a function by the agent at call time.
  • Internal (context) parameters — values set by a previous function or by the runtime, available to later functions.
  • Static parameters — flow-level configuration (API keys, base URLs, feature toggles). Configured under Configure Flow > Variables.
  • Emitted context additions — context keys a function may write. Declaring these enables UI suggestions and a warning when a function writes an undeclared key.

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Agent

An Agent is an internal AI assistant your team uses inside the platform — for analysis, reporting, or back-office tasks. Agents are not customer-facing. They live alongside flows on the Build page for convenience. See Agents.

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Point of contact (POC)

A Point of Contact is the channel that connects a flow to the outside world — a phone number, SMS line, email address, web chat snippet, or Slack workspace. One flow can serve many POCs; one POC runs exactly one flow at a time. See Points of Contact.

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Skill

A Skill is a named capability that human agents have (e.g., Billing, Spanish, Fraud Assistance). When a flow hands off to a human, the routing engine matches the conversation’s required skills against the available human agents. See Operations > Skills.

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Draft vs Published

Every flow has a draft (the version you’re editing) and zero or more published versions. Points of Contact reference a specific published version, so editing a draft never disrupts traffic. Hit Publish to cut a new immutable version and update the POCs that should pick it up.

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Test Scenario

A Test Scenario is a recorded simulated conversation used to assert flow behavior. Scenarios can be replayed across flow versions to catch regressions before publishing. See Testing Flows.

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Document

A Document is reference material the AI agent can search during a conversation. Documents can be uploaded directly, or sourced from a connected S3 bucket or Confluence space. See Manage Documents.

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FAQ

An FAQ is a Q&A pair attached to a flow. FAQs are surfaced to the agent when the customer’s message matches the question. See FAQ.

Build your first flow

Apply the concepts.

Flows overview

Manage flows.

Flow configuration

Every flow setting, explained.