// Internal knowledge assistant
Find an answer and the source behind it.
An illustrative assistant that searches approved internal knowledge and respects each person’s access permissions.
The starting situation
Guidance lives across documents and shared folders. People interrupt colleagues or rely on an outdated copy. This workflow helps employees find supported answers while making uncertainty and source freshness visible.
The proposed workflow
- Authenticate the person and determine which sources they may access.
- Search the approved collection within those permissions.
- Retrieve relevant passages and check source dates and ownership.
- Draft an answer with links to the supporting material.
- Flag missing or conflicting guidance and route unresolved questions to its owner.
Where a person decides
A knowledge owner approves source material and resolves conflicting guidance. If no supporting evidence is available, the assistant says so. Restricted documents and cached answers must remain inaccessible after permissions change.
Tools and data
An approved document collection, identity and access controls, and a retrieval service. Source indexing, deletion, and permission updates need a defined refresh process; the pilot starts with a limited collection.
What a pilot should measure
Measure supported-answer accuracy, citation usefulness, time to find information, and appropriate escalation. Include permission-denied and unanswerable questions in testing; fluent text alone is not a successful answer.
What to bring to an audit
Bring a curated set of documents, common questions, expected answers, and a permission map. Assign an owner to review gaps and keep the underlying guidance current.
