VaaniYantra — User Guide

VaaniYantra is an AI voice-calling platform. You create AI phone agents that handle real inbound and outbound calls — answering questions, booking appointments, and capturing information — in English and major Indian languages.

This guide walks a non-technical user through the whole product. For the REST API, webhooks, and integration details, see the Developer Guide.

Table of contents

1. Getting started
2. Organizations & workspaces
3. Creating an AI agent
4. Phone numbers
5. Knowledge base
6. Connectors
7. Appointments
8. Patients & your chatbot
9. Calls & live monitoring
10. Team & roles
11. What it costs
12. API keys & webhooks
13. Troubleshooting

1. Getting started

VaaniYantra is invite-only at the moment — accounts are created for practices we have spoken to, rather than by open sign-up.

1. Tell us about your practice at https://vaaniyantra.com/contact. We reply within one working day and set you up.
2. Open the invitation link we send you, and create an account with email + password or Sign in with Google.
3. You land on the Dashboard. An Organization and Workspace are created for you automatically, on the pay-per-minute rate.

Already inside an organization? Your owner invites you from Team, and the same link works for you.

The typical first-run path:

Create an agent → connect a phone number → assign the agent to it → place a test call.

2. Organizations & workspaces

• An Organization is your account/company. It carries your plan and billing.
• A Workspace is a container inside an organization for agents, numbers, documents, and calls. Most users need only the default workspace; larger teams use several (e.g. "Sales", "Support").
• Switch or create workspaces from the switcher at the top-left of the sidebar.

Numbers, agents, connectors, and API keys are scoped to a workspace/org. If something you created isn't showing, check you're in the right workspace.

3. Creating an AI agent

Go to Agents → New agent. The wizard has a few short steps:

1) Describe the agent (plain English). Write what the agent should do in everyday language — e.g. "You are the receptionist for Smile Dental. Greet patients warmly, answer questions about treatments, timings and fees, and book appointments." We turn this into a polished behavior prompt you can review and edit. Whatever you write, the agent never gives medical advice — anything clinical becomes an appointment.

2) Basics.

• Name — for your reference.
• Practice type — pick from the list (Clinic / Polyclinic, Hospital, Dental Clinic, Specialist Practice, Diagnostic Lab) or choose Other healthcare provider. This tailors the greeting and booking flow.
• Language — English (en-IN) or Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and more. Choose Auto to detect from the caller's number/region.
• Voice — pick from the available natural voices.
• Direction — inbound, outbound, or both.

3) Greeting & behavior.

• Greeting — the first line callers hear.
• Business hours — outside these hours the agent plays an after-hours message instead of taking the call.
• Human transfer (optional) — set trigger phrases and a number to forward to a person.
• End-call behavior and other tuning.

4) Booking & doctors (for appointment agents).

• Practice & service names — used in confirmations and calendar events.
• Doctors & consultants — the people a patient can be booked with, each with their own calendar and days off.
• Confirmation message — a template with placeholders like {{name}}, {{service}}, {{time}}, {{date}}. Patients are messaged on WhatsApp.
• Booking window — how many days ahead patients can book.

5) Knowledge (optional). Attach documents the agent can answer from (see Knowledge base).

Save the agent. New agents start Active. You can edit any field later.

You need a connected phone number before an agent can take calls. See the next section.

4. Phone numbers

Open Numbers. Each number, once it has an assigned agent, shows a ● live badge. Any number that isn't ready shows a "To go live, finish these steps" checklist right on its card.

You can bring numbers from Twilio (global), Plivo (global) or Exotel (India/APAC). In every case the number stays in your own carrier account — VaaniYantra connects to it, it never buys on your behalf.

Adding a number

In Add a number, pick your provider:

Twilio

1. Connect your Twilio account once (Account SID + Auth Token, from your Twilio Console). Credentials are stored encrypted.

2. Then either:

   • Find my Twilio numbers → Import an existing number, or
   • Add manually (enter the number in E.164 format, e.g. +919876543210).

   Buy the number itself in your own Twilio Console — VaaniYantra connects to numbers you already own rather than purchasing on your behalf.

3. Twilio numbers are auto-connected — we point the number's webhook at the platform automatically. Just assign an agent and it's live.

Plivo

1. Connect your Plivo account once (Auth ID + Auth Token, from your Plivo Console overview). Credentials are stored encrypted.
2. Then either Find my Plivo numbers → Import, or Add manually in E.164 format.
3. Plivo numbers are auto-connected — we point the number's webhook at the platform automatically. Assign an agent and it's live.

Exotel (India)

1. Connect your Exotel account once — Label, Account SID, API Key, API Token, Subdomain/region (e.g. api.in.exotel.com), and optionally an Outbound App URL. (Find the API Key/Token in Exotel → Settings → API.)
2. Find my ExoPhones → Import, or Add manually (ExoPhones can be local-format numbers like 04045901102).
3. Open the number's Settings → "Connect this number to your agent" and follow the one-time steps: in the Exotel dashboard, add a Voicebot applet to the flow assigned to your ExoPhone and paste the WebSocket URL shown (either wss://vaaniyantra.com/exotel or the dynamic URL). Then use Send test call to confirm the agent answers.

Why Exotel needs a manual step: Exotel has no API to configure call flows, so the Voicebot applet must be wired once in their dashboard. It's a one-time setup per Exotel account — the same flow serves all your ExoPhones.

Assigning an agent

On each number's row, choose an agent from the dropdown. In Settings you can also set a label, a caller-ID name, forward inbound calls to a human number, or disable inbound calls.

5. Knowledge base

Go to Knowledge. Upload documents (PDF, DOCX, TXT) that your agents can answer from. We split and index them so agents retrieve the right passage during a call (retrieval-augmented answers). Attach specific documents to an agent from the agent's Knowledge step.

File sizes are limited; the number of documents is not.

You can also add FAQs directly for quick question/answer pairs.

6. Connectors

Go to Connectors to let agents take real actions after a call:

• Google Calendar — connect a Google account and pick which calendar to use. Your agents then check real availability and book confirmed appointments as calendar events. VaaniYantra asks for calendar access only — it cannot see that account's Drive, mail or contacts.

  To get your data out, use Reports → Export CSV. You can download your calls, appointments, patients or updates, and any single call's full record from that call's page. No Google account is needed for this.

• WhatsApp — booking confirmations and reminders go out on WhatsApp from a shared business number, with your own number connectable instead. Proactive messages use Meta-approved templates, so the wording of a confirmation or reminder is fixed rather than free text.

WhatsApp is the only notification channel. SMS was removed once every proactive message had an approved WhatsApp template. There is no DLT registration to do, because DLT governs business SMS in India and none is sent; Meta's template review takes its place. The practical consequence is that a message with no approved template is not delivered at all rather than quietly arriving as a text.

7. Appointments

When a booking agent schedules an appointment, it appears under Appointments with the customer, service, expert, and time. The platform:

• Creates the event on the connected Google Calendar.
• Sends the customer a confirmation on WhatsApp.
• Sends reminders (24 hours and 1 hour before).
• Lets you cancel/reschedule — each sends its own WhatsApp notice.

Bookings respect each expert's calendar and days off, and your configured booking window.

8. Patients & your chatbot

Built for clinics: after a consultation you file what was prescribed, and the patient can reopen your own chatbot later to read it back or ask a follow-up question — instead of phoning reception for the third time.

Create your chatbot

Go to Patient Chatbot, give it a name (your clinic's name works best), and pick which agent it answers from — normally the same one answering your phone, so it already knows your timings, services and fees from your knowledge base.

You get a link like vaaniyantra.com/c/smile-dental, and every appointment confirmation carries it. When a patient taps it, they enter their mobile number and we text them a 6-digit code — so each patient reaches only their own prescriptions and visits, and the link itself is safe to print or share.

That means the mobile number on a patient's record is what they sign in with. If someone changes their number, update it on their page or they will not be able to get in. If a phone is lost, use Block access on the patient's page: it signs them out at once and stops any new sign-in until you restore it.

Record a consultation

Open Patients, choose the person, and fill in Record a consultation:

• Prescription — type it out. The chatbot answers dosage questions from this text, so a typed script is far more useful to the patient than a scan alone.
• Diagnosis and Advice — what you told them, in your words.
• Attachments — the scanned prescription or a report (PDF or photo, 5 MB each). Stored encrypted.
• Internal notes — staff only. Never shown to the patient, and never given to the chatbot.

Records are shared with the patient the moment you save. Untick Share with the patient right away to hold one back, and release it later with Share.

Deleting a patient

Delete patient is on the patient's page, for Admins and Owners only. It is permanent and there is no undo.

What goes: their record, every consultation, prescription, diagnosis, advice, allergy and attachment, and their access to your chatbot.

What stays: your appointment history. Past and upcoming bookings keep their date, service and doctor, but no longer show the patient's name, number or patient no. — so your day sheets and revenue still add up after someone asks to be removed. Call logs are kept too; those are governed by your data retention setting rather than by deleting a patient.

Family members on one number. If the person you are deleting is the main contact for others on the same mobile, the deletion is refused and says so. Delete or move those family members first — otherwise a child's record would be left with no adult attached to it.

What patients can do

• Read their prescriptions, diagnoses and advice, and open the scans.
• Ask questions — answered from their records plus your knowledge base.
• Book, move and cancel appointments, if you leave Allow booking changes on (needs Google Calendar connected and booking enabled on the agent).

The chatbot is told to read back what you prescribed but never to give new medical advice, change a dose, or interpret symptoms — it refers those to you.

About the link

Anyone holding a patient's link can read that patient's records. There is no password, which is what makes it usable for an elderly patient who just wants to check a dosage — but it also means a forwarded message hands over their history.

• The link is stripped from the address bar as soon as it opens, so it does not leak through browser history or screenshots.
• If a phone is lost or a link is shared by mistake, open the patient and use New link (kills the old one immediately) or Revoke.
• Every open and every file download is recorded in your audit log.

9. Calls & live monitoring

• Live Calls — see calls happening right now.
• Call History — every past call with direction, status, duration, the agent, an AI summary, sentiment, key topics, and any data the agent collected. Open a call to read its full transcript.
• Dashboard — headline metrics (total calls, talk time, completion rate, active agents) and a call-volume chart.

Placing an outbound call: from the Dashboard or Call History, use Place a test call — choose an agent, the caller-ID number, and the number to dial.

10. Team & roles

Invite teammates from Team. Members have roles (e.g. Owner, Admin, Member) that control what they can manage — numbers, integrations, billing, etc. Invites are sent by email; the invitee accepts and joins your organization.

11. What it costs

There are no plans. One rate, billed for what you use:

• Nothing is paid up front — no monthly fee, no minimum, no bundle of minutes to use up. A minute becomes billable only once the call has happened and is in your call log.
• Everything is included at that rate: unlimited agents, workspaces, branches, knowledge documents and the patient chatbot.
• Settings → Billing shows your rate, the minutes recorded this month and what they come to so far.
• There is a safety cap on monthly minutes so a runaway loop cannot run up a bill nobody can pay. Reaching it pauses calls and shows you who to email — we lift it straight away.
• Want the volume rate? Write to info@vaaniyantra.com with the call volume you expect and we will confirm it in writing.

On an older monthly plan? Accounts opened before August 2026 keep the plan and price they signed up on, including its included minutes and overage rate, for as long as they like. Email us if you would rather move to the per-minute rate.

12. API keys & webhooks

Under Settings you can:

• API keys — create keys to use the REST API (list agents, pull calls & transcripts, place calls, etc.).
• Webhooks — register a URL to receive a signed JSON POST when a call completes or fails (great for Zapier/Make, or your own systems).
• Slack — the same events, formatted as a card in a channel you choose.

These are for developers — see the Developer Guide.

What a connected Slack channel receives. Each card carries the agent, direction, call duration, sentiment, status, the AI summary of the call and any details the agent collected. The caller's phone number is shown as the last four digits only.

Worth knowing before you connect one: a Slack Incoming Webhook URL is the credential — anyone holding it can post to that channel, and everyone in the channel can read the summaries. Point it at a private channel that only the staff who should see call content can open, and treat the URL like a password.

13. Troubleshooting

"You need a connected phone number before creating an agent." Connect a Twilio or Exotel number under Numbers first (Twilio or Exotel).

A number isn't taking calls. Open its card — the "To go live" checklist lists exactly what's left (assign an agent, enable inbound, and for Exotel, wire the Voicebot applet).

An Exotel call rings my own phone instead of the agent. Your Exotel flow is set to forward. In the Exotel dashboard, replace the Connect/forward applet with the Voicebot applet pointing at wss://vaaniyantra.com/exotel, then send a test call.

Calls connect but go silent after the greeting. This is usually the AI provider (Gemini) key hitting a rate/quota limit. Contact your administrator to rotate/upgrade the key.

I can't see an account/number I set up. Check you're in the correct organization and workspace (top-left switcher) — everything is scoped to a workspace.