How can I use custom actions in Chatref for employment law support?

Custom actions turn your chat widget into a workflow engine. In an employment law context, you can design actions that:

• Gather structured intake data (e.g., employee name, issue type, relevant dates).
• Run quick eligibility checks against your knowledge base (e.g., “Is this claim covered by the handbook policy?”).
• Trigger document generation or case flags for your team.
• Send automated follow-up messages with next-step information.

Each action is defined by a user prompt and a set of instructions you configure, so every response stays grounded in your own materials.

Setting up a custom action takes a few minutes and no code. Here’s how:

1. Open your agent in the Chatref dashboard and navigate to Custom Actions.
2. Click Add Action and give it a name that reflects the task (e.g., “Collect harassment complaint”).
3. Define the trigger—what the visitor says or selects that starts the action.
4. Add steps: request specific information through fields or buttons, then decide what happens next (e.g., store data, call an external system, or hand off to the AI agent).
5. Save and test the flow in the playground before publishing.

You can chain multiple actions to handle multi-step processes, such as confirming eligibility before offering a referral.

Custom actions are most powerful when they work alongside your knowledge base. The AI agent can reference your employee handbooks, statutes, and internal guidelines while an action runs, ensuring answers are always grounded in your content. For example, after a visitor tells the widget they were terminated, the agent can pull the relevant policy paragraph, confirm a 60-day reporting window, and then trigger a notification to your team—all within a single conversation. This eliminates manual cross-checking and gives every response the same authoritative foundation.

Custom actions can integrate with your existing tools. When you configure an action, you can add a step that sends data to an external system via a webhook or API call. This means you can automatically create a case note in your practice management software, log a client intake record, or push a task to your calendar—all from the chat. Setup requires the target system’s API endpoint and authentication details, which you enter once inside the action editor. Chatref then invokes that endpoint as part of the action flow, passing the collected information securely.

What types of custom actions can I create for employment law support?
You can build actions for initial consultation intake, discrimination or harassment report collection, leave-of-absence eligibility checks, document request forms, and automatic referrals to specialists. Any structured data-gathering or routine decision-making process that follows a clear set of rules can be turned into a custom action.

How do I set up custom actions in Chatref?
In the agent editor, go to the Custom Actions tab, add a new action, and define its trigger, fields, and outcomes. You can test every flow instantly in the side-by-side playground. Chatref provides templates and prompts to guide you; no coding is required.

Can custom actions integrate with my practice management software?
Yes. Custom actions support outgoing API calls, so you can connect to many practice management systems that offer a REST API. Provide the endpoint and authentication, and Chatref will send structured data (for example, a client intake summary or task creation request) directly to your software as part of the action sequence.