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. Calls & live monitoring
9. Team & roles
10. Plans & billing
11. API keys & webhooks
12. Troubleshooting

1. Getting started

1. Go to https://vaaniyantra.com and click Sign up.
2. Create an account with email + password or Sign in with Google.
3. You land on the Dashboard. A free Organization and Workspace are created for you automatically, on the Free plan.

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 callers warmly, answer questions about services and timings, and book appointments." We turn this into a polished behavior prompt you can review and edit.

2) Basics.

• Name — for your reference.
• Industry — pick from the list (Clinic, Restaurant, Salon, etc.) or choose Other. 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 & experts (for appointment agents).

• Business & service names — used in confirmations and calendar events.
• Experts — the doctors/stylists/staff a booking can be made with, each with their own calendar and days off.
• Confirmation message — a template with placeholders like {{name}}, {{service}}, {{time}}, {{date}}. Customers are messaged by SMS.
• Booking window — how many days ahead people 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) or Exotel (India/APAC).

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
   • Buy a new number, or
   • Add manually (enter the number in E.164 format, e.g. +919876543210).
3. Twilio numbers are auto-connected — we point the number's webhook at the platform automatically. Just 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.

There are per-plan limits on the number of documents and file sizes.

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 + Drive) — connect one Google account. Appointments are booked as calendar events; a summary of every completed call is saved to Drive as a Doc. Pick which calendar to use.

• SMS — send booking confirmations and reminders by text via your Twilio number. Ready as soon as Twilio is configured.

  Sending SMS to Indian numbers (DLT): Indian carriers only deliver business SMS that comes from a DLT-registered sender with a pre-approved template. Before going live in India you must:

  1. Register your business and a sender ID on a DLT portal (e.g. Vodafone Idea, Jio, or Airtel DLT) — Twilio has a guided flow under Messaging → Regulatory Compliance → India DLT.
  2. Register your confirmation/reminder message texts as DLT templates (the {{name}}/{{time}} variables map to DLT's {#var#}).
  3. Keep the message text in the agent's Messages step matching your approved template — carriers silently drop non-matching texts.

  Without DLT registration, texts to Indian numbers may work in testing but will be filtered in production.

• HubSpot CRM — paste a Private App access token (HubSpot → Settings → Integrations → Private Apps, with CRM contacts scopes). On every completed call, the caller is added as a Contact and a call note is logged. A free HubSpot account works.

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 by SMS.
• Sends reminders (24 hours and 1 hour before).
• Lets you cancel/reschedule.

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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. Plans & billing

Manage your subscription under Settings → Billing. Plans are priced per call minute — the bigger the plan, the lower your ₹/min rate:

• New accounts start on Free.
• Usage (agents, workspaces, call minutes this month, documents) is metered and shown on the billing page.
• Extra usage (overage): on paid plans your calls don't stop when the included minutes run out — extra minutes bill at the plan's overage rate on your next invoice (up to a safety cap of 2× your included minutes). On Free, outbound calls block at the limit.
• Payments run on Cashfree — subscribing sets up a UPI Autopay / eNACH / card mandate, and you can cancel it any time from the billing page (your org drops to Free).
• Enterprise is contact-sales for unlimited usage, white-label, SSO & SLA.

11. 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 Slack, Zapier/Make, or your own systems).

These are for developers — see the Developer Guide.

12. 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.