Anatomy of an App Action

Every App Action is made up of four components that work together in sequence: basic information, inputs, steps, and variables. Understanding how these components relate to each other will help you build App Actions that work reliably.

Basic Information

When you open a new App Action in the builder, the first section asks for:

Name – Give the App Action a clear, descriptive name. Gladly uses the name to understand when and how to use the action during a conversation.

Description – Describe what the action does, what input it needs, and what it returns. Gladly uses this description to understand when and how to trigger the action accurately in conversations. You can also use the description to give the AI specific instructions about how to handle the data — for example, "Don't tell the customer that you are looking up their email."

The Active/Inactive status is displayed at the top of the builder and can be changed from the ⋮ menu using Set as active.

Inputs

Inputs are the values your App Action needs in order to run. For example, if your App Action looks up a specific order, it likely needs an order ID as an input. Inputs are optional — some App Actions require no inputs at all and rely entirely on built-in Gladly customer context instead.

Inputs are referenced within your steps using JSONPath syntax: $.params.inputName

Steps

Steps are the operations that run when the App Action is triggered. They execute sequentially, and each step can reference inputs and the results of any previous step.

There are four step types: App Platform, HTTP Request, Transformation, and Secrets. App Actions commonly use one or more of these in combination — for example, an App Platform step to retrieve data, followed by a Transformation step to filter or reshape it. However, some App Actions may use only a Transformation step, relying on built-in Gladly customer context rather than an App Platform step.

Each step type is covered in detail in Step Types.

Variables

Variables are the outputs of your App Action — specific values extracted from the final step's results and made available to the AI. For example, after filtering an order, you might define variables for orderStatus, trackingNumber, and estimatedDelivery. The AI can then use those values to respond to the customer.

Variables are extracted using JSONPath queries that point to specific fields in the step's output.