How a call works

Every call, phone or meeting, has the same shape: your agent sends a brief, Smitline holds the conversation, and your agent reads a result.

The brief

A brief is a small JSON object your agent writes for you. The main fields:

• channel: phone, or meeting for a Zoom, Teams or Google Meet meeting.
• to: the phone number in international format, such as +14165550134, or the meeting's invite link.
• objective: what the call must achieve, in a sentence or two.
• questions: what to find out. The result answers each one.
• mayAgreeTo: what Smitline may accept without checking back, such as "any time from 6:30 to 8 pm".
• mustNotShare: what it must never say.
• context: background it may need if asked, such as an order number.

Your agent can check a brief before calling. If something is missing, Smitline says what, with a question to ask you. More on writing briefs: Phone calls.

On the line

A call moves through these statuses:

1. queued: accepted, not started yet.
2. connecting: dialing the number, or joining the meeting.
3. ringing (phone) or waiting (a meeting's lobby).
4. in_progress: connected and talking.
5. summarizing: the conversation is over and the result is being written.
6. completed, failed or canceled: finished.

When someone answers, Smitline says whom it's calling for and why, and during the call that it's their AI assistant. It never claims to be a person. If nobody answers, it leaves a short voicemail that says who it's calling for and that it's an AI, with no private details.

While the call runs, your agent can follow the conversation and step in. See Follow and steer a live call.

The result

When a call is completed, its result has:

• outcome: achieved, partial, not_reached, voicemail, declined, failed or canceled.
• summary: what happened, in a few sentences.
• details: the facts that matter, such as a confirmation number or a price, and the answers to your questions.
• decisions, actionItems and openQuestions.
• transcript: everything said, by whom.
• durationSeconds, and charge: what the call cost.

{
  "outcome": "achieved",
  "summary": "Booked an indoor table for 4 at 7:00 pm tonight under Sam Rivera.",
  "details": [
    { "label": "Confirmation", "value": "LG-2291" },
    { "label": "Table held", "value": "15 minutes" }
  ],
  "openQuestions": []
}

Unanswered and busy calls complete too, with a result that says so. If the person asks not to be called again, the result says so and the number goes on your do-not-call list.

Recording

Smitline transcribes every call so it can report back. It records a phone call's audio only when the brief asks for it ("record": true), and then says so at the start of the call. A recording plays from the call's page in the dashboard, and your agent gets a link to it that works for an hour.