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Precursive AI
Precursive AI

Creating and Configuring Actions

This guide is for admins. It covers how to create reusable Actions that Builders can attach to agents, enabling the AI to recommend or automatically take actions based on generated insights.

  • 06-May-2026
  • Knowledge

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Creating and Configuring Actions
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Creating-and-Configuring-Actions
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To create and manage Actions, you need the Precursive AI Admin permission set.

What are Actions?

Actions are reusable Salesforce record operations - either creating a new record or updating an existing one - that can be triggered from an insight. Admins define Actions and make them available for Builders to link to agents. Builders decide which actions are relevant for a given agent and whether they should require user confirmation (Supervised) or run automatically (Autonomous).

Examples of Actions:

  • Create a follow-up Task when no contact has been logged in 14 days
  • Update a Health Rating field on a Project when a risk is detected
  • Create a new Opportunity when an account shows signs of demand for services

Creating an Action

  1. Go to the App Launcher in Salesforce
  2. Search for Actions
  3. Click New
  4. Fill in the Action fields (see below)
  5. Click Save

Action Fields

Action Name

A friendly name for the Action. Example: "Create Follow-up Task", "Update Project Health".

Action Type

Create or Update. Create generates a new record. Update modifies an existing record.

Source Object API Name

The Salesforce object the insight is running against. Example: Opportunity, Project__c. This is the record the agent analysed.

Target Object API Name

The Salesforce object the action will create or update. Example: Task, HealthRating__c.

Relationship Field API Name

The field on the target object that links it back to the source record. Example: WhatId on Task links the created task back to the source Opportunity.

Action Instructions

The prompt that describes what the action should do and how to populate the target record. Be specific - the AI uses this to determine field values when the action runs. These instructions form the base behaviour for any agent that uses this Action. Builders can refine this for their specific agent (see below).

Is Active

Enables or disables the action. Inactive actions are not available for builders to link to agents.

How Builder Instructions Combine with Yours

When a builder links your Action to a Zen Agent, they can optionally add their own Agent Action Instructions that customise the action's behaviour for that specific agent. These do not replace or override your admin-level Action Instructions. Both are passed to the AI as separate, named inputs:

  • Your admin-level Action Instructions define the base behaviour
  • The builder's Agent Action Instructions add agent-specific guidance on top

The AI sees both and uses them together. Write your Action Instructions to capture the action's general purpose, and trust that builders will refine for their specific use cases without losing your base behaviour.

Adding Field Mappings

Field Mappings define how individual fields on the target record are populated when the action runs. Each Action can have multiple Field Mappings - one for each field you want to set.

  1. From the Action record, navigate to the Action Field Mappings related list
  2. Click New
  3. Fill in the Field Mapping fields (see below)
  4. Click Save
  5. Repeat for each field you want to populate

Field Mapping Fields

Target Field API Name

The API name of the field to set on the target record. Must be a valid field on the target object.

Value Source Type

How the value is determined. Options: Fixed Value, Source Field, or AI Generated. See below for guidance on each.

Fixed Value

Used when Value Source Type is Fixed Value. The value is always set to exactly this. Example: a Task Subject of "Follow up required".

Source Field Path

Used when Value Source Type is Source Field. A field path from the source record. Example: OwnerId to assign the created task to the record owner.

Field Mapping Instruction

Used when Value Source Type is AI Generated. A prompt to the AI to generate the field value based on the insight context. Example: "Write a concise two-sentence description of the risk identified."

Is Title Field

Marks this field as the display title in the UI. Only one field mapping per action should be marked as the title.

Order

The processing order for this field mapping. Lower numbers are processed first.

Choosing a Value Source Type

Fixed Value

Use when the value is always the same regardless of the record or insight. Good for status fields, record types, or standard labels.

Source Field

Use when the value should come directly from the source record without any AI interpretation. Good for lookup fields, IDs, or dates that already exist on the record.

AI Generated

Use when the value should be generated by the AI based on the insight content. Good for description fields, subject lines, or any content that should reflect the specific situation the AI identified.

Making Actions Available to Builders

Once an Action is created and set to Active, it becomes available for Builders to link to their agents. Builders see the list of available Actions when configuring Agent Actions on a Zen Agent record.

When linking an action, builders can:

  • Set the Execution Mode: Supervised (user confirms before the action runs) or Autonomous (the AI runs the action automatically based on the insight, when its confidence is high enough)
  • Set a Run Order if multiple actions are linked and sequence matters
  • Add Agent Action Instructions to refine the action's behaviour for their specific agent (see "How Builder Instructions Combine with Yours" above)
  • Toggle the Agent Action as Active or Inactive without affecting the underlying Action record

Builders cannot modify the underlying Action definition, Field Mappings, source or target object configuration, or relationship field. Those remain under admin control.

Action Audit Trail

When the AI evaluates an action, the result is captured on an Action Result record. For Autonomous actions, this includes the AI's confidence in the recommendation (0-100) and the rationale for that confidence. For Update actions, the prior field values are also captured so you can see exactly what changed. This gives you a full audit trail of what the AI did, what data it used, and how confident it was.

For information about how recommended actions are surfaced to end users (citations on rationale, supervised vs autonomous behaviour from the user's perspective), see Viewing Insights and Taking Action. 

Deactivating an Action

To prevent an Action from being used in new agent configurations, set Is Active to false. Existing Agent Actions that reference a deactivated Action will stop running. Builders will no longer see the Action in their list of available options.

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