AI-powered decisions in your workflow

Make AI-powered workflow decisions with agentic actions

Overview   

Agentic actions, powered by Zia, help you make smarter automation decisions. You can set up agentic actions by configuring the Run agentic action in your workflow. Instead of manually selecting the next step for your workflow, simply describe what you want to accomplish and Zia will choose and execute the most suitable action for your workflow.

Here's a sample usecase:

Whenever a new support ticket is created in Zoho Desk, Zia summarizes the ticket details to highlight the key issue, then notifies the support team with this concise information. Next, the system intelligently decides the best routing for the ticket based on its content and priority. If the ticket requires advanced attention, it is escalated directly to a senior agent to ensure prompt and effective resolution. This automation helps reduce response times and improves overall support efficiency.

When to use agentic actions 

Use agentic actions when:

  • You want to find the app action that fits your workflow best.

  • You want to speed up automation setup with natural language input.

Every execution consumes certain tasks from your current cycle. Learn more about the tasks used in your workflows from Settings → Billing & Usage.

How to configure agentic actions 

Agentic actions transform how you build automations. By understanding your natural language prompts, Zia intelligently configures the right action, helping you save time, simplify logic, and build smarter workflows.

Prerequisite: Navigate to Settings and choose AI Setup. Click 'Enable AI' to enable the option to let Zia generate workflows automatically, enrich content, and execute agentic actions. This is an essential step to start using AI-assisted workflow creation.
Note: Only an organization admin or owner can enable or disable AI.



Step 1: Configure actions the agentic actions can use 

  1. Navigate to Settings → AI and select AI Setup.



  2. Click the Add Action button if you haven't created an action yet.
  3. Choose an application to configure an action and click Next.
  4.  Select the action you want to configure, then click Next.



  5. On the configuration page, select one of the available options from the dropdown to define how the field value should be handled. You can choose to enter a value manually, allow AI to generate the value dynamically, or leave the field empty. After making your selection, click Save & Next.



    For example, when configuring a field such as Email address, and you want it to always use a fixed value, select Let me enter the value and provide the email address in the text box. In this case, every email sent will use this same email address by default.

    Alternatively, if you select Let AI decide, the value for the field can be provided dynamically at runtime. For instance, you can issue instructions such as “Send an email to Frank@zylker.com” or “Send an email to Jessie@noemail.com,” and the AI will use the specified email address for that run.

    The key difference between these options is flexibility. When a value is hardcoded in the UI, it remains constant and cannot be changed dynamically. However, when the field is marked as Let AI decide, you can supply different values at runtime, allowing greater adaptability based on the use case.



  6. Verify the description of the selected action. You can also edit the description here. Once you have verified the action description and the field descriptions, click Done. This action description will be used by Zia to decide which smart action to use in the flow.
    All the action descriptions that you've configured for your application will be listed under Agentic actions.
  7. You can enable or disable an action. When enabled, Zia will select this action while configuring your workflow, choosing the best option from the list of enabled actions.

Step 2: Configure 'Run agentic action'

  1. In the Builder, navigate to AI > Agentic AI and drag and drop Run agentic action into your workflow.
  2. In the configuration window that appears, select either JSON or Plain Text from the Response Type dropdown. This specifies how you want to receive the response.
    If you choose JSON as the response type, you’ll need to enter the key-value pairs that you want Zia to extract from the file for use in the workflow. Zia processes only these specified values and makes them available for use in subsequent actions.
    3. The extracted response will be available to the following actions as the AI Response. You can easily map it to fields, just as you do with other actions.
    Click
    Done.
















  1. Describe what you want the flow to do in the What do you want the agentic action to do text box. You can either enter the input or map data from previous steps.

  For example, if a new file is uploaded in Dropbox, post a message in the team’s Slack channel.

      4. Click Done.
 

Frequently asked questions  

1. Do agentic actions replace decision blocks?
No. It complements them by helping you choose the right actions intelligently. You can still use decision blocks for custom branching, when required.

2. Can I edit Zia’s suggested action?
Yes. You can modify all fields, mappings, and conditions after Zia adds the action block.

3. Is my data used to train Zia?
No. Zia only analyses your prompts and app connections within your Zoho Flow workspace, your data remains private.