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How Service Assistant Matches Actions to Plan Steps
Service Assistant automatically adds actions to plan steps by comparing your action descriptions and input and output instructions against the record details and grounding sources.
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Service Assistant automatically adds actions to plan steps by comparing your action descriptions and input and output instructions against the record details and grounding sources. Service Assistant identifies actions to include in plan steps in two ways.
Context Matching
The first way an action is added to a plan step is through context matching. Service Assistant analyzes the record to understand the context in real time, and then reviews your grounding sources to find relevant information. How that matching works depends on your grounding source: subagent instructions or knowledge articles.
If a subagent instruction states to complete a required task or procedure, Service Assistant looks for an action description that reflects that language and adds the best matching action to the plan.
For example, if an instruction states: "As a first step, always retrieve the order transaction record using the customer's name and email." Service Assistant automatically searches for any related action to complete the text. If no action is found, it tells the service rep to gather the order information manually.
Knowledge articles don't directly map to individual actions. Instead, Service Assistant retrieves relevant article content based on the record context and then creates a plan step. Action descriptions that reflect the scenario and conditions described in the article are more likely to be matched at the right step.
| Component | Content Example |
|---|---|
| Knowledge Article | Name: Handling Billing Issues Content: When a customer contacts support about an incorrect charge, first investigate the recent transaction history to identify billing discrepancies or confirm whether there's a disputed charge on the account. |
| Action Description | Name: Get Billing History Description: Retrieves the customer's transaction logs and history. Use this action when a service rep is investigating a billing discrepancy or disputed charge. |
Because the action description explicitly uses the phrases "billing discrepancy" and "disputed charge" found in the article, Service Assistant can easily verify that the "Get Billing History" action is the correct tool to use when the article content is retrieved during a plan step.
Direct References
The second way an action gets matched is through a direct reference to the action name in your subagent instructions. This gives Service Assistant an explicit signal to include an action at that step. Here are examples.
- As the first step, always verify the customer's identity using the Verify Customer Identity action. After verification is complete, proceed to review the customer's open cases.
- Always send an email that summarizes the return policy, refund timeline, and next steps for the customer. Use the Send Email action.
- As a final step, always summarize the case and assistance provided and send a wrap-up email to the customer. Use the Summarize Case action.
This example shows how to call an action in a subagent instruction using a direct reference.
Choosing the Best Matching Strategy
The two strategies aren't mutually exclusive and are best used in combination. Choosing the right one depends on whether you need a step to be situational or mandatory.
| Matching Strategy | When to Use It |
|---|---|
| Context Matching (Automatic) | Best for situational steps where an action runs only when specific conditions are met. Because dynamic plans search grounding sources (knowledge articles and subagent instructions) in real time, this approach relies heavily on how well your action descriptions align with those sources. Focus on using specific language in your action descriptions that mirrors the scenarios and terminology in your grounding content. This keeps your instructions clean by removing the need to account for every possible condition. |
| Direct Referencing (Explicit) | Best for mandatory steps where a specific action always occurs, regardless of context. Use this option to force Service Assistant to include an action, providing the predictability needed for required procedures such as identity verification. |
Generally, use direct references for essential, non-negotiable steps. For conditional tasks, rely on context matching, where Service Assistant proactively searches and retrieves relevant information from your knowledge articles to identify the appropriate action.
Action Matching Considerations
As you set up and test action matching, keep these considerations in mind.
When you reference action names in subagent instructions, always use the action label, not the action API name. Referencing the API name causes errors in step creation.
After an action is executed, Service Assistant sometimes responds with an open-ended prompt rather than proceeding to the next step automatically. For example, it responds with something like "The record is updated. Let me know how to proceed." To make sure that the plan continues, explicitly state what happens next in your subagent instructions. For example: "After the action completes, immediately proceed to verify entry requirements."
As you test your dynamic plans, pay attention to which actions are presented and where they're missed. Refining an action description can improve automatic matching. Adding a direct reference increases the chances of a specific action running at the right step.
