Training AI Agents: A step-by-step guide

In this chapter, we’ll walk you through the many ways you can train an AI Agent with Jotform, step by step.

How to train your AI Agent

To prepare your agent for interactions with your customers you’ll first need to train it. Like any other employee you might hire, the more training you give your agent, the more prepared it will be to handle your customers. Uploading a database of previously asked customer questions and answers into your agent’s Knowledge Base would be a great way to start to train your agent, for example.

The Train page in the AI Agent Builder lets you access multiple training methods for your agent. Before exploring these methods in detail, here’s a little primer that will help you quickly understand which method does what.

AI Agent training method	What it does	Strengths	Key differentiator
AI Persona	Customize your agent’s name, role, language, tone, and conversation style	Good building blocks for the agent’s conversational development	Allows you to craft the style of your agent’s language, allowing for more natural conversation
Knowledge Base	Upload external information sources (URLs, files, Q&As, etc.) to train your agent	Harnesses a variety of information that provides your agent with the background knowledge to handle questions	Your agent can ingest external information so the right answer is given at the right time
Actions	Specify actions your agent will take if certain conditions are met (for example, providing specific information, sending an API request, or triggering a workflow)	Guarantee specific desired actions and responses	Automate a variety of action options, including mentioning specific things, not mentioning specific things, asking for more information, and sending emails
Tools	Set up integrations with third-party apps	Build a robust agent that can set appointments in Google Calendar, send files to OneDrive, send Slack messages, and more	Access integration options for Google Workspace, Slack, OneDrive, and other apps and tools
Forms	Connect forms to your agent	AI Agents can obtain required information from users, automatically filling out connected forms for them	Combine form-filling with customer service; connect multiple forms with a single agent
Teach Your Agent	Prep your agent via an interactive back-and-forth conversation	Simply chat with your agent to get it ready to talk to users	The most casual and conversational of methods

Now let’s dive in a little more on each training method.

AI Persona: Build your friendly AI Agent

You know your business better than anyone and have your own style. You’ve created a level of professionalism your customers have come to expect. So we’ve made it easy for you to customize your AI Agent’s role and communication style in a way that perfectly aligns with your brand.

You can even control the level of detail in your agent’s responses to strike the right balance between concise and conversational.

You can name your agent and assign it a role in the AI Persona window. It’s fun to choose a name that reflects the spirit of your brand. Defining the role of your AI Agent to match its function helps you tailor your agent’s behavior to meet the specific expectations of your customers.

Importantly, you can choose your agent’s default language from almost 20 different language options, giving you great flexibility to cater to a given region.

Perhaps the biggest benefit here is how you can hone your agent’s communication style and tone according to your, or your brand’s, preference.

Whether you want your agent to be super chatty or right to the point, casual or professional in tone, you can adjust that here. 

Or if you just want to specify how the agent should speak during the conversation, use the Chat Guidelines to provide instructions that will ensure the agent matches your communication style and minds your business requirements.

Learn more about customizing your agent’s persona.

Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base is a great way to prepare your agent with contextual information about your organization, form topics, frequently asked questions, and more.

The Knowledge option lets you add custom information to help your agent provide better answers.

The Link option lets you add websites you’d like your agent to crawl. When you add a site, its subpages will automatically be listed as well.

Select which subpages you would like your agent to crawl and learn from, then select Save.

The File option lets you upload files for your agent to ingest information from. You can also stipulate what your agent should do with the file content, such as presenting certain data from the file when a user asks a relevant question.

In the Questions & Answers option, you can enter direct questions your users might ask and the specific answers you’d like your agent to respond with.

When you’re done adding your training content, you’ll see an overview of all the knowledge you’ve added in the main Knowledge Base window. You can easily modify existing knowledge or remove knowledge that isn’t relevant anymore.

Hover over the knowledge and select Edit to modify it, or select the three-dot icon and Delete to remove it. To add more knowledge, just select Add new knowledge.

Actions

The Actions window lets you designate specific actions your agent will perform when specific conditions are met. This serves a similar function as conditional logic in forms. This lets you have confidence that when your agent encounters the scenario you’ve specified, it will act according to your instruction.

All of your actions will be listed in the window when you’re finished. To modify or remove an action, select the three-dot icon, then Edit or Delete. Select Add new action to add another action.

Tools

The Tools window lets you select specific action patterns for your agent to perform, including linking your agent with third-party platforms. For example, the Take Note tool lets you instruct your agent to automatically notify you when certain topics are discussed. The Set Appointment with Google Calendar tool lets your agent automatically add appointments to your Google Calendar. You can also have your agent automatically trigger workflows, send documents to Google, gather signatures, and so on.

The more tools you equip your agent with, the more it’s capable of doing automatically, freeing you up to get more strategic work done.

Here, I’ve used the Show Video tool so my agent will show a specific video anytime a user asks the agent about dressing for the photo shoot. Simple!

And if I want my agent to show other videos in response to different requests, I can add others.

The Take Note tool will send you a heads up when certain topics are mentioned in a user conversation. Also, if you have a tool in mind that isn’t listed, let us know so we can make it available for everyone!

Forms

One of the coolest things about Jotform AI Agents is the ability to seamlessly link your forms to your agents, so your agents collect relevant data directly from the users they’re interacting with.

Linking forms with your agent not only gives your agent a clear mission, it saves you time by combining customer service features with automated form-filling.

You can link your agent with one form or multiple forms, depending on your vision for your agent. Just select Add New Form to get started. To edit or remove a form you’ve added, select the three-dot icon, then select Edit or Delete. Customize how the agent interacts with a form by selecting Settings.

Teach Your Agent

The most natural way to train your agent is by having a conversation with it!

We get it, talking to AI can seem a little awkward. But imagine explaining a concept to a child or discussing ways to use a computer with an elder. These scenarios are very similar to starting a conversation with your agent.

Here, I’ve asked my agent to bulk up her knowledge of photo shoot planning by including details about the kind of equipment that would be used.