What are tools?

Understand how DGbot tools extend your chatbot beyond Q&A to take real actions on your behalf.

---

What are tools?

Tools extend your chatbot beyond question answering. While the knowledge base lets the bot answer from static content, tools let it take actions: look up live data, capture information, send messages, and connect to external services.

A bot with no tools is like a very knowledgeable FAQ page. A bot with tools can actually do things — look up your customer's order in real time, capture their email address, or call your custom API.

---

How tools work

When a visitor sends a message, DGbot's AI router decides whether to:

1. Answer from the knowledge base — for information questions ("What's your return policy?")

2. Use a tool — for action-oriented requests ("What's the status of my order?") or configured triggers ("Show lead capture form")

The router uses the visitor's message intent to decide. You don't need to write rules for this — the AI understands context naturally.

Tool results are woven into the bot's response. If the visitor asks "Where is my order?", the bot calls the order lookup tool, gets the result, and writes a natural-language response: "Your order #12345 was shipped on Tuesday and is due to arrive Friday."

---

Available tools

Tool	What it does	Status
Shopify actions	Look up order status, search products, check inventory	Live
Self-learn	Learn from human handoffs to suggest knowledge base improvements	Live
Capture leads	Collect visitor name and email with a conversational form	Live
Send email	Send a structured email when a visitor completes an action	Live
Custom API action	Call any external API endpoint you configure	Live
Appointment booking	Let visitors book appointments from the chat	Soon
CRM sync	Push lead and conversation data to your CRM	Soon

---

Enable a tool