Why do I need a knowledge base?
You have hundreds of files and want to work with the knowledge inside all of them at the same time? That's what knowledge bases are for. You can seamlessly retrieve information from all your documents and work with the data inside.
Zeno serves as a mediator between your knowledge base and you by providing insights from your data with references.
You can centralize a multitude of data sources into your knowledge base. Access diverse information right on ZenoChat to boost its efficiency and adaptiveness.
Here are some popular use cases among other users:
- Connecting existing Google Drive files with 1 click and working with them
- Summarizing research papers or meeting notes
- Extracting key highlights in long PDF / DOCX files
- Analyzing CSV sheets with rows of data
- Reading publicly accessible web URLs and working with all the information there
How do knowledge bases work?
Your inquiry triggers Zeno to inspect and define the aim of your instruction. Based on the objective and the relevance as primary criteria, Zeno carefully looks through the vast accumulation of knowledge, giving you substantial and relevant pieces of information that match your intended goal.
Essentially, the AI acts like a search engine and only looks for the sections that are related to your query. If it's a question about Section A, it will try to go to Section A and fetch you the relevant information so that you can access it quickly and more efficiently.
Additionally, AI models have something called a "context window" which sets a limit for how many characters they can process in one run.
Therefore, AI cannot be expected to know everything uploaded in your knowledge base. Its actions are driven by on-demand instructions, needs and requirements within the context window. That's why being specific in your message / instruction greatly enhances the output you get.
What about summarizing?
Asking AI to summarize a whole knowledge base is most of the time not viable and often results in dissatisfaction since it lacks the general direction of an objective to achieve.
This is very similar to expecting a good outcome from the following query:
However, it is possible to refer to a website link inside a knowledge base and extract key points of that source. In this way, AI will have a general direction of where to look, and what to retrieve for you.
You can summarize large volumes of reading material: the best way to achieve this is by working with one document at a time. You can simply refer to a file inside your knowledge base by typing a slash symbol (/) in front of the name of your document.
This will give Zeno a focused scope to understand which file to work with. But make sure that the amount of words inside the document is within the context window of the chosen model.
Keywords and specific terms
It is also possible to look for certain keywords, terms or documentation and learn more about your internal processes: you can simply enable your shared knowledge base and insert your inquiry about the information you are searching for. If there is a relevant source inside the knowledge base that can correspond to your message, Zeno will fetch it for you.
Can different sources/different systems be consulted and searched?
Yes, any source that has been uploaded to a knowledge base can be consulted and information can be retrieved.
Can connections/comparisons be made between different documents?
Yes, you can refer to multiple documents and ask Zeno to make connections between them. But keep in mind that the AI does not have an infinite memory to process a lot of information in one go.
If you are referring to way too many files with a lot of text data in one message, some of the documents might not get referred or taken into account when generating responses due to the overwhelming number of characters and insufficient context window of the models.
Therefore, it is best to split major tasks into smaller sub-tasks and work with a handful of data at a time.
Create your first knowledge base
1. Navigate to the Knowledge section on our app. From there, click on the Knowledge Bases tab and hit the +New button.
2. Select a name for your Knowledge Base and then upload your desired files. We support various file formats such as PDF, DOCX, CSV, and PPTX to ensure seamless integration with your existing documents.
3. Once your files have been uploaded, you can head over to ZenoChat and choose your Knowledge Base under chat settings.
Note: Keep in mind that all files are processed by TextCortex without the use of third parties. Refer to our article "How We Handle Data at TextCortex" for more information.
Integrations (Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive...)
You also have the option to connect third-party accounts such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and many more to come. These integrations enable you to import all of your existing data into your knowledge base seamlessly with one click.
You're ready to go!
That's it! You're now ready to harness the full power of your knowledge bases. Go ahead and ask questions to your files.
IMPORTANT: Please keep in mind that Zeno does not do a full scan of all the documents across your knowledge base (yet). At the current rate, it only retrieves the relevant sections that match the intent of your message.