Welcome to Shopbell — Onboarding Guide

You signed up at app.shopbell.ai/auth/signup, logged in, and landed on the dashboard. Welcome. This guide walks through exactly what every section does, what to click first, and the shortest path from an empty account to a working AI voice agent answering your business phone.

What you see first

After login you land on the Overview page. The left sidebar shows the main navigation: Overview, Workflows, Campaigns, Files, Telephony Configurations, Tools, Recordings, Reports, Usage, Billing, API Keys, Settings. The top right shows your organization name, the user menu, and a notification bell. If you have no workflows yet, the Overview will show an empty state with a prompt to create your first agent.

Do nottouch Telephony, Billing, or API Keys yet. Start at Workflows.

The 15-minute path to a working agent

Click Workflows in the sidebar, then the New Workflow button on the top right. You will land on the template picker page. It shows 204 pre-built industry templates organized into 13 categories: Sales & Marketing, Engineering, Design, Business Ops, Customer Support, Finance & Legal, Data & Analytics, Healthcare, Content & Media, Security, HR & Recruiting, Real Estate, and Education.

Click any category tab to filter, or scroll the whole grid. For most local businesses, the Finance & Legal, Healthcare, and Business Ops categories contain the closest match. If you run a credit repair practice, pick Credit Repair Specialist. If you are a dental office, pick Dental Practice Receptionist. If nothing matches, scroll up and use the 'describe your own' option at the top of the page.

When you click a template card, Shopbell asks the Majestic-Plus-System LLM to draft a workflow for your industry. This takes 5-10 seconds. You will see the workflow graph: Start Call node, Agent nodes, optional Transfer and End Call nodes, connected by paths.

Click the green Test Call button at the top right. A web call opens in your browser. The agent greets you. Talk normally. This works with zero telephony setup — Web Calls use your browser microphone and speakers. This is the fastest way to hear your agent before connecting a real phone number.

Connecting a phone number — the second session

Once the agent sounds right in a test call, connect a real phone number. Click Telephony Configurations in the sidebar. Click New Configuration. Pick Twilio. Paste your Twilio Account SID and Auth Token. Save. Click Add Phone Number and either buy a new number through Twilio or attach an existing Twilio number to the configuration.

Shopbell pushes the inbound webhook to Twilio automatically. Within a minute, calls to that number will be answered by your agent. If you see a Twilio error 22105 (invalid VoiceUrl), see the Connecting a Twilio Number guide — this is usually a single env-var fix in your self-hosted deployment.

To forward your existing business number, contact your phone carrier and ask them to forward all calls to your new Shopbell Twilio number. Customers keep dialing the same number they always have. Forwarding keeps you in control — you can turn it off any time.

Where to go next

After you have a working test call and a phone number connected, the next step is customizing the agent's prompt to your actual business. Open the workflow, click the Start Call node, and edit the greeting. Then click each Agent node and adjust the system prompt to match your services, hours, and booking rules. The Agent Node guide covers prompt patterns in detail.

Set up call summaries by adding a Webhook node at the end of the workflow. Connect it to Zapier, n8n, or Google Sheets via the HTTP API tool. The post-call summary lands in your inbox within seconds of every call. See the Tools & Integrations guides.

Frequently Asked Questions