Quickstart

Create your account (~1 min)

Go to the sign-up page and create your PolyAI account.

• Google SSO
• Email and password

1. Click “Sign up with Google”
2. Select your Google account or enter your credentials
3. Click “Continue” to authorize PolyAI

1. Enter your first name, last name, and email address
2. Create a password (at least 12 characters, with 3 of 4 character types: lowercase, uppercase, numbers, special characters)
3. Click “Create account” and verify your email

Once signed in, you’ll land on the Agent Studio home page.

Create your agent (~2 min)

From the home page, click + Agent to start the agent creation wizard. You can create a blank agent or import an existing configuration.Configure the basics:

• Agent name, internal identifier for your project
• Response language, primary language for responses (see multilingual support for additional languages)
• Voice, select from available text-to-speech (TTS) voices
• Welcome greeting, first message users receive (can be customized later in agent settings)

Click Next to enter Agent Studio.

You can also duplicate an existing agent by clicking the three-dot menu next to any agent on the home page.

Add knowledge (~5 min)

Navigate to Knowledge > FAQs in the sidebar.Click Add topic and provide:

• Topic name, what this topic covers (e.g., “Store hours”)
• Sample questions, up to 20 ways users might ask (e.g., “When are you open?”)
• Answer, the response your agent should give

Click Save to create the topic.

Changes save to your Branch in Sandbox as you go, ready to test. Learn more about environments and versions.Optional: Add more topics to expand your agent’s capabilities. You can also:

• Upload PDFs or URLs to auto-generate topics
• Connect external knowledge sources like Zendesk or Google Sheets using the Connected tab in Knowledge
• Add actions to trigger handoffs, SMS, or other behaviors

See the full FAQs guide for details on how RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) powers topic matching.

Test your agent (~2 min)

• In-browser call
• Webchat
• Phone

The fastest way to test, uses your device’s microphone directly.

1. Click the phone icon in the top-right corner
2. Select Sandbox from the environment dropdown
3. Begin speaking to your agent

Test with text-based chat, directly from Agent Studio.

1. Go to the agent main page
2. Click the webchat icon to open a text-based conversation

The chat window shows tool calls and topic citations alongside the conversation. Click the Settings icon to toggle these.

See webchat setup for more details.

Test the way a customer would by calling a connected number. Phone numbers connect to Staging and Live only. Publish your agent first (step 5), or move your Branch to Staging if your project uses Branches or Sub-branches mode.

1. Go to Voice > Numbers in the sidebar
2. Click “Add number” to purchase a number or connect an existing one
3. Call the number to speak with your agent

See Numbers for setup instructions.

Testing tips:

• Use specific keywords to trigger your agent’s topics
• Test with different accents and speaking styles
• For multilingual agents, switch languages mid-conversation to test detection
• Review conversations in the Conversations dashboard after testing

Publish to Live (~1 min)

Publish your agent onto Live:

1. Go to Deployments in the sidebar
2. Optional: move your Branch to Staging for user acceptance testing (Branches and Sub-branches modes only)
3. Click Publish (top-right) to put your Branch on Live

Staging and Live can each have their own phone number and configuration. Sandbox has no phone number, so you test there over an in-app call or chat.

When you publish, your changes merge onto Live. If a change goes wrong, you can roll Live back to any previous version in one step. See the Deployments guide for details.