What is the difference between a system prompt agent and a workflow agent, and what are global nodes?

There are two ways to build how an AI agent talks.

The system prompt way: you write the agent's instructions in the prompt builder, the way you would instruct a new employee, and the AI follows them. This suits natural conversations. The opening greeting is how the agent answers the phone, or its first words on an outbound call.

The workflow way, also called a conversation flow: you map out the conversation step by step in the visual drag and drop builder, chaining conversation nodes together so you can see how the conversation flows. A flow starts with a trigger such as Conversation started, and conversation nodes control what the AI says. Use a workflow when a client needs the agent to say specific words, pause after a word or follow an exact script, for example greeting the caller, asking whether they want sales or support, then routing them. A workflow can control a voice call, an SMS conversation or any other channel. Steps such as Ask and save ask questions and save the answers to the contact.

While testing you can edit a node live, apply and save the change, then rewind the test conversation to that step and hear the new version without starting over.

If a workflow reaches an end with nothing after it, the agent keeps going from its system prompt. You can even put just an opening message in the workflow and let the prompt handle the rest.

Global nodes: any node can be made global. A global node does not need to be connected to the rest of the flow. You describe in the node when the AI should go there, for example a node called Speak with a manager that is used whenever someone asks for a manager or a boss. Because you cannot know where in the conversation a caller will say it, the AI can jump off track from anywhere and go to that node, and it understands similar wording such as supervisor.

Call forwarding node: a global node often leads into a call forwarding node. A node shown in red has a problem that still needs to be set up. To finish it, choose the phone number to use as the caller ID, enter the number to forward to, and set the business hours and days it forwards (for example Monday to Friday, nine to five). After forwarding, the flow branches into answered, not answered or outside hours, so the AI can continue the conversation if the forward did not happen.

One agent can have as many workflows as you want, for example AI reception and appointment booking in one workflow and following up with no shows in another, so a single agent can do everything. Workflows live inside the agent and are used for conversation flows, automation sequences, drip campaigns, email marketing and SMS follow-up. You can duplicate an agent, duplicate workflows, or copy and paste workflows from one agent to another.

You can build any step yourself in the drag and drop builder, or tell the AI assistant what you want and it builds the agent and its workflow for you.