By James Aspinwall
Jimmy, this is the guide to NIS — the Network Information System built into WorkingAgents. It’s a personal CRM that lives inside the MCP server, which means you manage your contacts, companies, and sales pipeline by talking to your AI assistant at workingagents.ai/chat. No clicking through forms. Just tell it what you need.
What NIS Does
NIS tracks five things:
- Contacts — people you know, with priority, stage, tags, follow-up schedules
- Companies — businesses you’re working with, deal values, pipeline stages
- Notes — interaction logs tied to contacts or companies
- Websites — URLs linked to contacts or companies
- Activities — tasks and to-dos linked to your CRM entities
Everything is per-user (your own private database) and permission-gated.
Getting Started — Adding Contacts
Just tell the assistant to create a contact. It calls the nis_create_contact tool behind the scenes.
You: Add a contact — Hans Mueller, based in Munich, runs a garment wholesaler. Stage is lead, priority 7. Tag him “retail” and “germany”.
The assistant creates the contact and returns the full record with an ID. That ID is how you reference Hans in future commands.
You: Add another contact — Sarah Klein, she’s Hans’s buyer. Priority 5, stage prospect, tag her “retail”. Link her to Hans’s company once we create it.
Adding Companies
You: Create a company called “Mueller Textil GmbH”, location Munich, stage lead, priority 7, deal value 25000, tags “retail,wholesale”.
Now link Sarah to the company:
You: Update Sarah Klein — set her company to Mueller Textil GmbH.
The assistant looks up the company ID and updates the contact.
Logging Interactions
Every call, email, or meeting gets logged as an interaction. This updates the contact’s last_contact_at and optionally schedules a follow-up.
You: Log an interaction with Hans Mueller — we had a call about their Shopify integration needs. Channel was phone. Next action: send them a proposal by Friday.
This creates a note tied to Hans, updates his last contact timestamp, and creates a follow-up note with a due date. Now Hans will show up in your “due” list when Friday arrives.
Checking What’s Due
You: What’s due for follow-up?
The assistant calls nis_due and returns all contacts and companies with overdue next_contact_at dates. This is your daily “who do I need to reach out to” list.
Searching
Full-text search across everything — contacts, companies, notes, websites.
You: Search NIS for “Shopify”
Returns any contact, company, or note mentioning Shopify, with snippets showing where the match was found.
Pipeline View
You: Show me the NIS pipeline.
Returns contacts and companies grouped by stage (lead, prospect, client, partner, inactive) with counts and total deal values per stage. This is your bird’s-eye view of where everything stands.
Example output:
- Lead: 3 entities, $45,000 total value
- Prospect: 2 entities, $15,000
- Client: 1 entity, $75,000
Stats
You: Show me NIS stats for the last 30 days.
Returns activity statistics: contacts added, notes created, activities completed, stage changes, and overdue count.
Real-World Workflow Example
Here’s how a typical day looks using NIS through the assistant:
Morning:
You: What’s due today?
The assistant shows you three overdue follow-ups. You pick the most important one.
After a call:
You: Log interaction with Sarah Klein — discussed pricing for spring collection. She wants a 15% volume discount. Channel: phone. Next action: prepare discount proposal, due in 3 days.
Adding a new lead from a conference:
You: Create contact “Thomas Berg”, location Hamburg, stage lead, priority 6, tags “logistics,expo-feb”. Background: met at the Berlin expo, runs a fulfillment company, interested in AI inventory management.
End of week review:
You: Show me the pipeline. Also show stats for this week.
Available MCP Tools
For reference, here are all 15 NIS tools your assistant has access to:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
nis_list_contacts |
List contacts with filters (stage, tag, sort, priority) |
nis_get_contact |
Get full contact details by ID |
nis_create_contact |
Create a new contact |
nis_update_contact |
Update contact fields |
nis_delete_contact |
Delete a contact |
nis_list_companies |
List companies with filters |
nis_get_company |
Get full company details |
nis_create_company |
Create a new company |
nis_update_company |
Update company fields |
nis_delete_company |
Delete a company |
nis_search |
Full-text search across all entities |
nis_due |
Show overdue follow-ups |
nis_pipeline |
Pipeline view grouped by stage |
nis_log_interaction |
Log a call/email/meeting with follow-up scheduling |
nis_stats |
Activity statistics for a date range |
Web UI
There’s also a browser interface at workingagents.ai/nis. Same data, same permission gate — just a visual alternative when you want to browse through contacts or see the pipeline as a kanban board.
The Key Idea
You never need to remember tool names or field names. Just talk naturally:
- “Add a contact named…”
- “Log that I called…”
- “Who’s overdue?”
- “Search for anything about…”
- “What does the pipeline look like?”
The AI assistant maps your intent to the right tool. That’s the whole point — your CRM works at the speed of conversation.