Troubleshooting: prompt and tools
During-call actions (tools) and custom variables only work well when the condition, the description and the prompt line up. Below are the most common problems with their cause and fix.
After every change, check the result. The result of an action set to After the conversation is on the conversation in the Inbox, under Technical details, at What the actions did. An action set to During the conversation is not listed there: read in the Transcript what the assistant did with it, and check in your own system whether the request arrived. Conversations in Try it out do not reach the Inbox, and actions there are only simulated unless you turn on Perform actions for real.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| During-call action is not triggered | Action switched off, condition vague, or written in the prompt instead of on the action | Switch the action on and write a specific condition on the action itself |
| Action is triggered too often | Condition too broad | Make the condition more specific |
| Custom variables empty or wrong after the call | Variable not defined on an action set to After the conversation, or description vague | Define the variable on the action with a precise description |
| Parameters filled in incorrectly | No format hint | Add a format hint and a spell-and-repeat rule |
| Assistant ignores a prompt instruction | Prompt too long, not prescriptive, or instruction buried | Shorten, make it prescriptive, put the rule in Important rules |
| Tool response is not used | Response hint missing or response too large | Fill in the hint and keep the response short: the assistant receives at most 6,000 characters |
| Action only runs after the call | Wrong timing chosen | Set the action to During the conversation |
A during-call action is not triggered
The assistant decides whether to call an action based on the action's When should the assistant use this? field. If the condition only lives in the prompt, or is vague ("for order questions"), often nothing happens.
- Open the assistant, go to the Tasks tab, open the Actions card and check that the action is switched on.
- Open the action and in the When should the assistant use this? field write a concrete trigger, for example "When the caller mentions an order number".
- Remove the instruction from the prompt; the condition on the action is where the assistant looks.
See Actions.
An action is triggered too often
If the assistant calls a tool on every question, the condition is too broad ("when the caller asks anything about their order"). Narrow it down and tie it to a specific piece of information the caller must have given: "When the caller has given an eight-digit order number and wants to know its status".
Custom variables are empty or wrong after the call
Custom variables are extracted from the conversation once it has ended. That only happens if they are defined on an action set to After the conversation that is switched on, under Custom variables to extract, with a description the AI model can follow. A variable that is only mentioned in the prompt stays empty. Define it on the action (name orderNumber, Description for the assistant: "The order number the caller gave, digits only"). If the caller does not mention the detail, the variable stays empty. You can see what was found on the conversation under Technical details, at Details from the conversation.
Prefer the built-in variables such as personNumber and summary where they exist, as you do not have to define them. These can be empty too: personNumber when no phone number is known, summary when the caller said nothing. Built-in variables are not available on an action set to During the conversation: have the assistant fill in the detail under Parameters the assistant fills instead. See Actions.
Parameters are filled in incorrectly
If an order number arrives as "12 34 56 78" or a postcode arrives without letters, the model doesn't know which format you expect. Under Parameters the assistant fills, put a format hint in the Description for the assistant ("eight digits without spaces, for example 12345678") and add a prompt rule telling the assistant to have numbers spelled out and to repeat them before using them.
The assistant ignores a prompt instruction
Instructions get lost when the prompt is too long, when they are phrased tentatively ("it would be nice if you...") or when they sit halfway through a paragraph. Shorten the prompt, make instructions prescriptive ("Always ask...", "Never mention...") and put the most important rules on the Instructions tab in the Important rules field, one per line. In Advanced mode, put them at the top of the Full prompt. See How to write a great prompt and Improve your assistant.
The tool response is not used
If your endpoint responds but the assistant does nothing with it, the Response hint explaining what the response contains and what the assistant should do with it is usually missing, or the response is too large. Fill in the hint ("Tell the caller the delivery date from the deliveryDate field") and keep the response short, with only the fields the assistant needs: it receives at most the first 6,000 characters.
Your endpoint has 6 seconds to respond. If it does not respond in time or cannot be reached, in a text conversation the assistant is told the lookup failed. On a phone call with a ChatGPT voice it then gets no result at all, so it does not know that the request failed. If your endpoint returns an error status, the assistant only hears that this happened. Look up rows (during the call) in Google Sheets has no hint; the assistant receives at most 5 matching rows. See Webhook during the call.
The action only runs after the call
The When field sets an action's timing: Before the call, During the conversation or After the conversation. A new action starts on After the conversation. If an HTTP request that looks something up is set to that, it does run, but too late to help the caller. If Google Sheets Look up rows (during the call) is set to that, the action does not run at all: What the actions did then shows a line that starts with skipped:.
Set any action whose result is needed in the conversation to During the conversation. On Google Sheets, check that Mode is on Look up rows (during the call) and that When is on During the conversation.
All three timings are only available on an HTTP request. Google Sheets can run during and after the conversation. Email, SMS and WhatsApp always run after the conversation.
Still stuck?
Can't find your problem here, or did the fix not help? Let us know via Report a problem and include the link to the conversation and the name of the action, so we can look into it.