Wire up Vance, your cold call agent.
Vance dials real prospects, has real conversations in real time, and books meetings live on your calendar. He needs a voice provider for the call itself, a model for the conversation logic, and a scheduling link to drop into the booking handoff. This page walks through all three in the order they need to land.
Before you start
What Vance needs hooked up
All four pieces are independent accounts, you bring your own keys so you keep ownership of the dialer and the calendar.
- A Vapi account. Vapi runs the actual phone call (voice synthesis, transport, recording). Free tier is enough to test, paid tier when you go to volume.
- A phone number on Vapi. Bought through Vapi (cheapest), or imported from Twilio if you already have a number you want to keep.
- A Gemini API key. Vance's reasoning loop runs on Gemini, the keys live under your Google AI Studio account.
- A Cal.com account with at least one event type. Vance reads availability and books meetings against this. Setup of cal.com itself is on its own page.
Walkthrough
Open the Vance settings tab
Head to /dashboard/settings and click Connections. The Vapi, Gemini, and Cal.com cards all live here, you'll fill them in order.
Paste your Vapi keys
Sign in at dashboard.vapi.ai, open API Keys from the left rail. You'll see two strings, the private key (used to dial and check call status) and the public key (used by the dashboard to render live transcripts). Both need to land in Ciela.
- PrivateTop of the keys page, click
Copy, paste into the Private field. Never expose this in a browser, Ciela stores it server-side and only ever sends it from the cron worker that drives Vance. - PublicBelow the private key. Safe to expose, this one drives the live-transcript widget in the call detail view.
Hit Save Vapi keys. Ciela validates them against Vapi before storing, a bad paste fails fast.
Buy or import a phone number
Inside Vapi, open Phone Numbers, click Buy Number and pick a US local area code that matches the region you're dialing. Local presence (a Boston area code calling Boston prospects) lifts pickup rates by a meaningful chunk over toll-free.
If you already have a Twilio number you want to keep, click Import instead and follow Vapi's Twilio import prompts, you'll need your Twilio account SID and auth token.
Copy the number's id (long UUID, not the phone number itself), you'll plug it into a Vance assistant in step 5.
Add your Gemini key
Go to aistudio.google.com/app/apikey while signed into the Google account you want to bill, hit Create API key, copy the string, paste it into the Gemini API key field in Ciela settings, and save. Vance uses it for his real-time reasoning loop, you'll see usage land in the AI Studio billing console.
Build a Vance assistant in Vapi
Open Assistants in Vapi and click Create Assistant. Pick a voice you'd be happy hearing on a real call, the rest of the wiring (system prompt, tools, model) gets pushed up by Ciela the first time you launch a campaign with this assistant ID, you don't hand-edit it in Vapi.
Copy the assistant's id (UUID under the name). You'll paste it, plus the phone number id from step 3, into the cold-call campaign modal as the per-step assistant and number, this is the same place sequence templates ask for it.
Connect Cal.com
Vance can't book a meeting if he can't read your calendar, the cal.com integration is what closes that loop. Setup is on its own page, Cal.com setup, walk through it before you launch a cold-call campaign.
Test with one number
Before you point Vance at a list of three thousand, hand-test with a single contact (your own phone). Create a cold-call campaign, drop one row in the list, set the call-window to "now", and let Vance dial. You'll get a transcript on /dashboard/team/vance inside thirty seconds, and you'll know the voice, the pacing, and the booking handoff all work end-to-end before you scale.
Common errors
When the call fails, read this first
Most cold-call setup failures come from one of these five.
vapi_unauthorized
The private key was pasted wrong or you copied the public key into the private field. Re-paste both, the validate step on save catches typos before the dialer ever runs.
no_assistant_id
The campaign step doesn't have an assistant id set, Vance has nothing to call with. Open the cold-call step in the campaign modal and pick an assistant from the dropdown.
no_phone_number_id
Same family as above, the per-step phone number id is empty. Set it on the cold-call step, or let the dropdown autofill from your single number if you only have one.
gemini_quota_exceeded
Gemini's free tier hit the day's request ceiling. Either wait for the daily reset, switch to a paid Gemini key in AI Studio, or pause cold call campaigns until the quota refreshes.
calcom_not_connected
Vance reached the booking handoff but Cal.com isn't wired in, the call ended without a booked meeting. Connect cal.com (see /docs/calcom-setup) and the next call's booking step will go through.
What happens next
Keep reading
Need help?
Ciela can walk you through any step. Or write to support@ciela.ai and we'll jump on the connection with you.