Use External Tools, Knowledge

You've made the agent reachable through real phone calls. Now let's make it useful during the call.

Your agent can hold a conversation. But can it check an order, or answer a policy question correctly? That's what this page is about.

There are two ways to connect real information to your agent. A tool is for anything live, data that changes, or an action that needs to happen, like checking an order or looking up availability. A Knowledge Base is for anything written down, like your return policy or an FAQ, that doesn't change from call to call.

Here's the setup used in the video: an order support agent named Maya, for a store called QuickMart. A customer can ask what's in their cart, and Maya calls an API to check it. A customer can also ask a policy question, and Maya answers from a document you uploaded.

Step 1: Create the tool

Open the node where most of the conversation happens, in this case Maya's main support node. Scroll down and click Create a Tool, then choose External HTTP API. Name it get_cart_details.

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The description matters more than anything else here. It's what the agent reads to decide when to call the tool. Write it plainly: "Use this tool when the caller asks about cart details. It returns the cart's products, quantities, total, and discounted total."

For the endpoint, this demo uses dummyjson.com, a public sample API. Copy this exact URL and test it yourself, no backend required:

GET https://dummyjson.com/carts/1

No auth, no parameters. It's a GET request because you're fetching information, not changing anything. In your own setup, this would point at your CRM or order system instead.

Save the tool.

Step 2: Attach the tool to the node

Creating the tool isn't enough by itself. Go back to Maya's node and select get_cart_details under Tools, then save.

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A tool only becomes available once it's attached to the node that needs it. If you skip this, the tool exists but the agent will never call it.

Step 3: Upload a Knowledge Base document

Click Upload Document, or go straight to Knowledge Base Files. Pick the document you want the agent to read from, a return policy, a shipping FAQ, whatever your customers actually ask about.

IntraCord asks how it should retrieve from this document:

• Full Document works best for small files, where the agent can see the whole thing at once. It does not require an embeddings model.
• Chunked Search is for large documents, where the agent should only pull the relevant section. Configure an embeddings model before selecting this mode; otherwise document processing or retrieval will fail.

A short policy document is a Full Document case. Upload it, then wait for the status to say Completed.

Step 4: Attach the document to the node

Same rule as the tool. Go back to Maya's node, scroll to Knowledge Base Documents, and attach the file.

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Uploading isn't enough on its own. The document has to be attached to the node where the agent should use it.

Step 5: Tell the agent when to use each

In the node's prompt, spell out which mechanism handles which question. Don't leave it to guesswork:

If the caller asks about cart contents, order items, quantities, total, or discounts,
use the get_cart_details tool before answering.

For questions about returns, refunds, or cancellations,
use the attached Knowledge Base document.

Save the node.

Step 6: Test it

Start a Web Call and try both:

• "Hi Maya, what's inside my cart?" Watch the transcript. Maya decides the tool is relevant, calls the API, and answers from the response instead of guessing.
• "What's the return policy?" Maya retrieves the answer from the document and responds from that context.

That's the difference that matters: for cart details, Maya uses the tool because the data changes call to call. For the return policy, she uses the Knowledge Base because that answer lives in a document and doesn't change. Tools connect your agent to systems. Knowledge Base connects it to documents. Together, your agent starts to feel connected to your actual business, not just reciting a script.

Next Steps

You've now got the full loop: calls trigger automatically, data flows in and out, your number is connected, and the agent can act on live data and your own documents.

• Full tool reference: parameter types, authentication, and best practices in HTTP API Tools.
• Full Knowledge Base reference: chunking behavior and embedding setup in Knowledge Base.