What apps are

Vendu covers what most businesses selling online need. An app covers the part that is specific to yours — a calculation only your industry does, a record type nobody else keeps, a system only you use.

What an app can add

Its own records. A type of record with your own fields, stored in your workspace. A repair shop keeps vehicles; a clinic keeps appointments; a broker keeps quotes. Nothing about this is in Vendu by default, and nothing needs to be.

Its own tools for the agent. The agent can call a service the app provides while it is talking to a customer — to calculate a price, look something up, check something only that service knows. The customer sees one answer; they never see a tool being used.

Its own knowledge. Domain text the agent draws on when answering, on top of your own knowledge base.

Its own screens. A tab on a contact or product, or a page of its own in your dashboard.

What an app cannot do

An app cannot bypass the checks every answer goes through, cannot change a price, and cannot see another workspace's data. Reading your records and writing them are two separate permissions — an app that can read its records cannot create them unless that was granted as well.

Nothing an app does escapes the same safety checks a normal answer gets.

Where apps come from

• Industry packs at signup — a starting set for your kind of business.
• Built for you — by us, by an integrator, or by whoever maintains your other systems. An app is a configuration document, not a program installed on a server, which is why this is measured in hours rather than a project.

What it costs you to run one

An app's tools are called during conversations, so they have limits: a bounded number of calls per customer message, a timeout, and a size cap on what a tool may return. If an app's service is slow or failing, the agent answers without it rather than making the customer wait.

You can see what an app has actually done — every call, how long it took, what failed — in Settings → Apps → Activity.

When you need one, and when you do not

You probably do not need an app if what you want is:

• a different tone, language or set of rules for the agent — that is agent settings;
• an automatic reply, tag or handover on some event — that is a workflow;
• your CRM connected — that is an integration.

You probably do need one if what you want involves a record type Vendu has no concept of, or a calculation only your business knows how to do.