Browsing and searching Knowledge Bases

Find Knowledge Bases, search across their documents, open one, and export it.

For: Any signed-in user · Last updated

A Knowledge Base is a collection of documents your Coworkers can draw on and cite when they answer. Documents can come from uploaded Word, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint, image and text files, from web pages and from text you write by hand; see Documents. Open Knowledge Bases in the top navigation to see them. The page is introduced with "What your Coworkers can draw on and cite when answering." When Coworkers is not in use, the introduction reads "The documents your company keeps and searches."

Knowledge Bases follow their switch on Settings, then Features; when the switch is off, the area is absent.

The list#

Each Knowledge Base is a card you can select to open it, showing:

  • its name
  • a People only pill when Coworkers are not allowed to use it (see People-only Knowledge Bases)
  • its owner
  • its description, shortened to two lines
  • "Used by" followed by the Coworkers that use it. A Knowledge Base that no Coworker uses says it is not attached to any Coworker, or "For people only" when it is human only. This line follows the Coworkers switch on Settings, then Features; when that switch is off, it is absent.

You see every Knowledge Base in your company, except those that are limited to Teams you do not belong to. See Team access.

When there are none, the page shows a short invitation to add one instead of cards.

The search box at the top of the page reads "Search every Knowledge Base you can read…".

  1. Type your question or keywords.
  2. Select Search (the button next to the search box).
  3. Select a result to read the full document in a panel on the right. The panel shows the file name and the Knowledge Base it belongs to; select the Knowledge Base name to open it.
  4. Select Close to dismiss the panel.

When a result comes from a document that lives somewhere else, such as a web page or a file synced from SharePoint, an Open source link appears with it. Select it to open the original in a new tab. The link is on the result itself and in the panel next to Close. Selecting the link does not open the panel. Documents you uploaded or wrote by hand have no original elsewhere, so they show no link.

Results are ranked by how relevant they are to your question, and passages that are not relevant are left out. A question unrelated to your documents can therefore return nothing. Each result shows the Knowledge Base, the file name and a snippet of the matching text. If nothing matches, you see "No matching passages." Search covers every Knowledge Base you can read, including human-only ones. If the search tells you an administrator needs to finish setting up search in Settings, ask your administrator to do that.

Filters#

Select Filters under the search box to narrow a search. Select Hide filters to collapse them again.

Filter What it does
Path or URL prefix Keeps only documents whose path, or web page address, starts with what you type, for example https://docs.example.com/guides/.
Updated after Keeps only documents last updated on or after the date you pick.
Updated before Keeps only documents last updated on or before the date you pick.

While any filter has a value, the page shows how many are active, for example "2 filters active", with Clear filters to empty them. Filters apply the next time you select Search. If nothing matches while filters are set, you see "No matching passages for these filters."

How Coworkers use Knowledge Bases#

A Coworker knows which Knowledge Bases are attached to it and reads each one's description to decide where to look. Before answering a question that could depend on your organization, such as a policy, a product, a process or a number, it looks in its Knowledge Bases itself instead of relying on general knowledge. It can search by meaning, search for an exact word or phrase, and read a whole document or a range of lines from one. If the Knowledge Bases do not contain the answer, it says so, and it names the document it used when it does answer from one.

Passages the Coworker finds are listed under Show sources below its reply. Select one to read the document beside the chat; for a web page or a SharePoint file, Open source there takes you to the original. A reply where the Coworker did not look anything up has no sources. Because a Coworker relies on each Knowledge Base's description, keep it specific (see Creating a Knowledge Base).

The Knowledge Base page#

Select a Knowledge Base card to open it. At the top, Back takes you back to where you came from, and Export downloads the Knowledge Base and the full text of all its documents as a single JSON file.

The About card shows the owner, editors, teams and whether Coworkers can use it. The description sits under the title; owners and editors can change it with Edit. Below it are the sections described in these articles:

Anyone who can see a Knowledge Base can read its documents, open the page and export it.