Best Practices in Knowledge Management

This guide outlines the best practices and operational workflows for establishing a robust Knowledge Management system. Following these standards ensures that your AI-driven assistant provides accurate, relevant, and secure information to your employees.

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1. Content Strategy & Selection

To maintain a high-quality knowledge base, focus on high-value content while eliminating "noise" that can confuse the assistant.

Docs: Best practices for structuring 'Knowledge Articles'

Scope & Format

• Target content: Focus on departmental knowledge such as HR and IT. Avoid syncing redundant information or departments that are not needed for your use case.
• Supported formats: PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.ppt/.pptx), HTML, and spreadsheets (.xlsx/.csv). Spreadsheets are fully supported and, when well structured, can even be queried for calculations and lookups. Native pages from connected sources (such as SharePoint and Confluence) and Google Docs/Sheets are also supported.
• Not supported today: Audio and video files — such as recordings, webinars, and training videos — cannot be read or answered from, and other non-text media is not indexed for search. If important knowledge exists only in a recording, add a written summary or transcript as the article so the content becomes searchable.
• Handle with care: Some content is harder to interpret and should be prepared thoughtfully rather than avoided outright:
  • Images that carry meaning (charts, diagrams, screenshots) are supported and searchable, but they work best when they are clear and accompanied by a short caption. Avoid using an image purely to display text — type the text out instead.
  • Spreadsheets are supported, but only well-structured sheets can be used for calculations. See the structuring guide for how to lay these out.
  • Scanned or handwritten documents can be read but far less reliably than digitally created files , especially for special characters (like non-English alphabets) or icons (like checkbox). So, please avoid relying on them for important content.
  • Redundant or duplicate content adds noise and should be removed.
• File size and length: Keep individual files under 200 MB and 500 pages (while this is a hard limit, recommendation would be to stay within 100 MB and 100 pages) — content beyond these limits is not ingested, with no error shown. More importantly, favour focused, single-topic articles over large multi-topic files: split a big manual (e.g. a full HR handbook) into per-topic articles so answers retrieve cleanly.

For detailed, article-level guidance on all of the above, see Best practices for structuring 'Knowledge Articles'.

Documentation Standards

[!TIP]
Pro tip: Always include external links to official policies or source sites. This allows employees to verify information and provides additional context for complex queries.

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2. Technical Configuration: Metadata & Permissions

Ensuring the right people see the right information at the right time.

Permissions Management

Security is paramount. You can use base system permissions or platform-converted permissions from metadata.

• Action required: Always ensure the "Fetch permissions" toggle is enabled when adding a new connector to maintain data privacy.

Docs: SharePoint, ServiceNow, etc.

Audience Creation from Metadata (available for Sharepoint)

In cases where permissions are not managed properly in your source knowledge base (e.g. SharePoint), it is recommended to create an audience using metadata.

The Dynamic Audience Mapping feature introduces an Access Control step within the Connector Setup Wizard, enabling administrators to govern document visibility by mapping user attributes, such as Department or Country, directly to document metadata.

• Metadata tagging: Specific audience identifiers are assigned to documents.
• Dynamic filtering: Search results are filtered at the time of a query based on the user's current profile.
• Real-time updates: Access updates (e.g. an employee changing departments) take effect without requiring a full re-sync of the knowledge base.

Docs: Dynamic Audience from Connector Metadata

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3. Quality Assurance & Testing

Before going live, use these built-in tools to audit your knowledge base for accuracy and redundancy.

Conflict Analysis

Identify duplicates or stale information by selecting folders (up to 1,000 articles).

1. Run the analysis to find conflicting information.
2. Correct the source document at the connector level (e.g. in SharePoint).
3. Re-check the conflict status to ensure a clean deployment.

Docs: Conflict Analysis

Smart Testing (Automated Audit)

Smart Testing is an automated tool that measures assistant accuracy before launch.

• The process: The system generates question-and-answer pairs from your uploaded documents, tests them against the assistant, and provides an accuracy score (0–100%).
• Evaluation criteria: Content accuracy, completeness, and relevance.
• Limits: Up to 100 articles per run; 1,000 cumulative test cases per day.

Docs: Smart Testing

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4. UAT to Production Workflow

Use the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) environment for incremental testing of new content within your knowledge base. This applies to all integrations (e.g. SharePoint, ServiceNow) by utilising a secondary account with the same credentials. The KM dashboard allows you to manage up to five such instances for incremental data testing.

Docs: Managing Multiple Instances of a Connector

Details about the different environments in Knowledge Management can be found here: Environments in KM.

Here is an example of such a workflow for a SharePoint integration.

The Workflow

1. Connect: Add a new site (e.g. a specific site rather than the whole tenant) in UAT.
2. Test: Validate the content and assistant responses thoroughly.
3. Delete from UAT: Delete the test site from UAT, then delete the UAT connection.
4. Deploy: Add the same site to Production. You have two options, described below.

Deployment Options

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