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A knowledge base is a collection of documents your agents can search while they are talking. Without one, an agent answers from its prompt, and when the prompt does not cover something it improvises. With one, it looks the answer up.

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Create one

Go to Knowledge and click Create Knowledge Base. All it asks for is a name.
Creation is not instant. You will see a message saying the knowledge base is scheduled for creation and to check back in a few minutes, and it will not appear in the list straight away. Nothing has gone wrong. Refresh after a minute or two.
Name it after the questions it answers rather than the file it came from. “Returns and refunds” is easier to reason about later than “policy-doc-v3”.

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Add documents

Open the knowledge base and drag files onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. Supported file types are PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX and HTML.
Spreadsheets are not supported. There is no CSV, XLS or XLSX. If your content lives in a spreadsheet, export it to one of the formats above first.
Uploaded files are listed with an ID and a name.

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Let an agent use it

Creating a knowledge base does not connect it to anything. Open the agent, go to the Data tab, find Knowledge Bases, and click Add Knowledge Base.
This is not under Choose Skills, which is where most agent abilities live. It is on the Data tab.
Each attachment asks When should this be used?, and that answer is what decides when the agent searches. It is an instruction, not a label. Write it as the list of things a customer might ask about, in their words. A vague description means the agent never searches and answers from the prompt instead. The Knowledge Search page covers this in full.

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What to put in

Documents written for people to read work better than documents written for filing.
  • Prefer answers over policy. A page that says what happens is more useful than one that says what the rules are.
  • Split by topic. Several focused knowledge bases with clear descriptions beat one large one, because the description is what routes the search.
  • Leave out anything you would not want read aloud. The agent is speaking, not linking.

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Where to go next