Your agents in Tess AI can do much more than just process information — they can act. Advanced App Integration Steps (App Integration) are the feature that connects your agents to external systems, allowing them to perform tasks in the real world or gather information from other platforms.
This guide explains the logic behind this powerful step block, showing how you can give "arms and legs" to your agents so they become active participants in your workflows.
The Logic of the Step: Getting Information vs. Performing Action
To understand App Integration, it helps to contrast it with other types of steps.
Data Collection Steps (like Audio Transcription or Web Search) are designed to GET INFORMATION and bring it into the agent so it can analyze it.
App Integration Steps are designed to PERFORM ACTIONS outside the agent, using the information it already has.
It’s the difference between an agent that reads a sales report and an agent that updates a customer’s status in your CRM.
How It Works in Practice
Setting up an integration follows a simple logical flow in AI Studio:
Add an Advanced Step: In your agent, add a new App Integration step.
Choose the App and the Action: Select the app you want to connect (e.g., Google Calendar) and the specific action the agent should perform (e.g., "Create Event").
Map the Information: Set up the action fields (like "Event Title" or "Guest Email"), filling them with the corresponding variables from your User Inputs.
The crucial point is that the agent doesn’t run this action randomly. Your prompt works as the brain of the operation, setting the rules so these steps happen at the beginning of the chat (chat agent) or before the final result (text agent).
Quick Example: Qualification and Scheduling
Imagine an automated closing and scheduling process, where a customer lands in your internal communication platform, letting the support team know about a new sale. This will be a trigger to activate Tess and fill in the information for the Google Calendar step, with name, email, and demo details through the Integration Step.
The agent then takes the variables collected in Slack and uses them to fill out and execute the "Create Event" action in Google Calendar, sending the invite automatically.
In this case, the message in Slack was the trigger, and the Integration Step was the action tool.
Expanding the Possibilities
There are plenty of use cases, and they let you automate a bunch of processes:
Update a Google Sheets spreadsheet
Collect information from Google or Meta campaigns
Upload a file to Drive or Box
App Integration Steps are what turn your agent from an informational assistant into a proactive and functional member of your team. By mastering the logic of connecting your agent's intelligence with the tools that drive your business, you can automate processes, increase efficiency, and create truly integrated solutions.
