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An agent only answers from the folders it has been given access to. Use this page after you have published articles and want an agent to start using them, or when you want to check whether an agent is really reading a folder.

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Before you start

  • The articles you want the agent to use are published. Drafts are never used, whatever folders are connected.
  • You know which agent handles the conversations in question. Each agent has its own folder access; see Agents overview.

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Connect folders to an agent

1

Open the agent

Click Agent in the sidebar and open the agent.
2

Turn folders on

Open the Knowledge tab. The Knowledge base panel (“The agent answers from the knowledge bases you turn on.”) lists every folder with its description and a switch. Turn on each folder the agent should search. If you have none yet, New knowledge base takes you to Knowledge to create one; once you have some, Manage knowledge does the same.
3

Save and publish

Click Save and review, then Publish changes in the dialog. Connecting a folder is part of the agent’s draft: until you publish, live conversations keep the previous setup. See Test and publish for what publishing offers.
The same thing has two names in the app. On Knowledge it is a folder; on the agent’s Knowledge tab it is a knowledge base. Both mean one group of articles.
Turn a folder off and publish again to stop the agent using it. Deleting a folder on Knowledge deletes its articles, so any agent still connected to it finds nothing there.

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How the agent uses connected folders

  • The agent gets one search per connected folder. The folder’s description is what tells it which folder fits a question, so a folder called Policies with the description Return, exchange, refund and warranty rules is far more useful than one called Misc with no description.
  • The agent takes a folder’s name and description when you save the agent. If you rename a folder or rewrite its description later, the agent picks up the new wording the next time you save the agent with Save and review and publish it.
  • A search returns the best-matching passages from that folder’s published articles, and the agent writes its reply from them.
  • The agent decides on every message whether to search at all. Your instructions can push it to always check knowledge before answering policy questions and to say when it does not know; see Writing agent instructions.

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Test it

1

Publish first

The test chat talks to the published version of the agent, so publish the connection before you test it.
2

Ask a question

In the Test your agent panel (from 1280 pixels wide) or the Test agent dialog, ask a question an article answers, in the words a customer would use. Under the reply, Searched the knowledge base shows that the agent looked in your folders.
3

Check the reply

The reply should match the published text. If it does not, work through Troubleshooting.
4

Look at the sources

Chats from the agent page are real conversations, so open yours in the Inbox. Under the AI reply, Searched the knowledge base has a Sources (N) button when specific articles were cited. It opens Message source: Tool used names the search the agent ran, and Knowledge used links each Article it cited, with the version that was live (for example v3). If the agent searched but cited no specific article, the button reads Details and Knowledge used links to the folder that was searched.

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Confirm articles are being used

On Knowledge, the Used by agent column shows a badge for every article the agent matched in the last 30 days. Open an article and look at Details for the figures: Click either figure to open Recent conversations. Each entry has an Open conversation link to read how the article was used, and conversations where it was cited carry a Cited tag. The same Sources (N) button appears on live customer conversations in the Inbox, for WhatsApp and Website chat alike, so you can audit real answers the same way. See Working with conversations.

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Several agents, different knowledge

Folders are the way to give agents different knowledge. A sales agent on Website chat can have Products and sizing and Delivery; a support agent on WhatsApp can add Returns and Warranty. Each agent searches only its own folders, and an article is used by every agent whose folders include it.

Create folders and articles

Write, import and publish the articles the agent will use.

Knowledge, tools, channels and notifications

Everything else you connect on the agent page.

Test and publish

Drafts, publishing scope and version history for agents.

Custom tools

For answers that need a live lookup in another system.