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Technical ManualLooking for step-by-step instructions? In the User Manual: User Manual

Technical Manual

This manual is for developers and IT: the people who install the CrestApps Orchard Core modules, configure them outside the admin screens, deploy and operate them, and extend them with code.

Looking for how to use the screens?

The User Manual is written for the people who use the app every day: agents, supervisors, managers and the administrators who work in the admin screens. It has step-by-step instructions, screencasts, use cases and training paths. Most pages in this manual link to the matching User Manual page, and the other way around.

The shared platform underneath these modules is documented at core.crestapps.com. Use that site for framework concepts such as orchestration internals, service APIs, tool pipelines, provider implementation details, or reusable .NET host guidance.

Start here​

  1. Getting Started: add the packages to your Orchard Core solution, or build and run this repository.
  2. Configuration: every setting the modules read from appsettings.json and environment variables, per tenant.
  3. Feature ID Reference: the feature IDs to enable in Tools > Features, in recipes, or in a [Feature] attribute.
  4. Release notes: breaking changes and what is new in each version.

What this manual covers​

  • Packages, feature IDs and feature dependencies
  • Configuration through appsettings.json, environment variables and per-tenant settings
  • Recipes and deployment steps
  • Architecture: how the modules fit together and how a call, a message or an AI request flows through them
  • Operations: deployment topology, runbooks and production support
  • Extension points: providers, tools, handlers, report sources and other services you can replace or add

Module groups​

Artificial Intelligence Suite​

The AI modules add Orchard admin experiences and feature wiring on top of CrestApps.Core AI services.

  • Artificial Intelligence Suite: module map and Orchard-specific scope
  • AI Services: foundational Orchard AI features and admin surfaces
  • AI Chat: chat UI and profile-driven conversations
  • AI Chat Interactions: ad-hoc chat experiences without requiring a profile
  • AI Providers: provider modules such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Inference, and Ollama
  • AI Documents: document upload, parsing, storage, and indexing modules
  • AI Data Sources: external knowledge source integrations
  • AI File Sources: scheduled ingestion of a local, FTP, or SFTP folder
  • Model Capabilities: what each deployment's model can do, and the slot it fills
  • Realtime Voice: live spoken conversations over a provider realtime session
  • MCP: Orchard Core MCP client, server, and resource modules
  • A2A: Orchard Core client and host support for the Agent-to-Agent protocol

Omnichannel Communications​

Telephony​

Contact Center​

Standard modules​

Samples​