Building and managing Knowledge Bases — document upload, RAG pipeline, dynamic filters, AI metadata extraction
When you ask the AI a question and it replies “I don’t know” or gives an off-topic answer, that’s where the Knowledge Base comes in. By converting your internal documents into a form the AI can reference directly, the Knowledge Base enables accurate, document-grounded answers.
Searches hr-policy.pdf for related content, then answers
Accurate policy + citation
Each Knowledge Base can use a different Document Processing Profile with its own extraction method and chunking strategy. See Document Processing Profile Selection below for details.
View Knowledge Bases in Workspace > Knowledge Base
In Workspace > Knowledge Base, click the + New Knowledge button at the top-right.
Enter name and description, and set access permissions
Field
Description
Example
Name
KB name (required)
“HR Policy 2024”
Description
Purpose and content (required)
“HR team policies and guidelines”
Access
Public/Private and groups/organizational units
Public, or restricted to specific groups/organizations
2
Upload documents
Add documents to the new Knowledge Base. Click the Add Content (+) button to choose an upload method.
Use Add Content (+) to choose file upload, text input, or cloud sources
Upload methods:
Method
Description
Drag and Drop
Drag files onto the upload area
Upload Files
Select “Upload Files” from the “Add Content” menu
Upload Directory
Select “Upload Directory” — bulk-upload all files in a folder
Cloud Storage
Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint (visible when admin has configured)
Add Text
Write text directly to add as content
3
Wait for processing
Uploaded documents go through text extraction → chunking → embedding → indexing automatically.
A real-time notification appears when processing completes.
Files that take more than 10 minutes to process are auto-failed. Delete and re-upload the file in that case.
Bulk uploads:
5+ files or directory uploads switch to batch mode
A progress bar shows steps (upload → processing) at the top, with failures shown in red
3 files are processed in parallel
Progress state persists across page refreshes
4
Verify and validate
Click a document to view extracted text and connect it to an agent to validate retrieval quality. Toggle Summary in the file list to see the AI-generated document summary.
The default extraction engine recognizes text in the following formats. Switching the extraction engine widens this coverage (see Content Extraction Engine below).
Category
Supported Formats
Documents
PDF, DOCX, RST, EPUB, MSG (Outlook mail)
Spreadsheets
XLSX, XLS, CSV
Presentations
PPTX, PPT
Web / Markup
HTML, HTM, XML, MD
Text / Source code
TXT, PY, JS, TS, JSON, SQL, JAVA, GO, C, C++, CS, RB, RS, PHP, SH, and ~50 more
Extensions not listed can still be uploaded — they are read as plain text. However, binary files such as ZIP or executables may be ingested as garbled content, so we recommend uploading the formats above. An admin can configure an allowed-extension whitelist to restrict uploads to specific formats only.
Both values are unlimited by default. Leaving an admin field empty means no limit; entering a number rejects any file exceeding that threshold at upload time.
The agent description is an AI-only description that tells the agent when and in what situations to use this Knowledge Base.
Example of a good agent description
Use when there are questions about company HR policies and internal guidelines.Reference for HR-related questions like leave, benefits, and travel policies.
If no agent description is set, the KB’s general description is used instead. We recommend writing a specific agent description so the AI can pick the right Knowledge Base among many.AI auto-generation: Click the auto-generate button next to the agent description field — the AI drafts the description based on the KB name, description, and file list.
To rebuild the vector index for the entire KB, run reindex from Admin Panel > Settings > Documents. This is admin-only and processes all KBs at once.When you edit and save an individual file’s content, only that file is automatically re-processed.
Choose the engine for extracting text from documents in admin settings.
Engine
Strengths
Best For
Default (PyPDF/Langchain)
No setup needed
Plain-text PDF, DOCX
Tika
Server required, supports many formats
Mixed file formats
Docling
Server required
Complex layout documents
Azure Document Intelligence
Azure subscription required, high-precision OCR
Scanned documents, table-heavy PDFs
Mistral OCR
Mistral API required
PDF OCR
Google Cloud Document AI
GCP subscription required
Documents with embedded images
LLM Vision
Vision LLM-based, high precision
Complex layouts, charts
Image files (PNG, JPG, etc.) are not text-indexed by default — they are stored but their contents are not searchable. To search text inside images, set the knowledge base’s document processing profile to Google Cloud Document AI or LLM Vision. (Azure Document Intelligence and Mistral OCR handle PDF and Office documents but do not support standalone image files.)
Search settings have two layers — global (admin) and per-KB.
Setting
Default
Description
Top K
10
Chunks to retrieve via vector search
Reranker Top K
3
Final chunks after reranking
Reranker Threshold
0.1
Minimum reranker score (lower = more pass through)
Override search settings per Knowledge Base. Click the Search Settings icon on the KB edit screen. Leaving values empty applies the global admin settings.
When question generation is enabled, the LLM pre-generates “questions a user might ask to find this content” for each chunk and stores them as separate vectors.
State
Search Method
Effect
Disabled
Content vectors only
Standard search
Enabled
Weighted sum of content + question vectors
Improved accuracy with user-question-style phrasing
Enabling question generation adds LLM calls during document processing. Processing time and cost may increase.
Configure question generation per KB independently of the global setting. Use the “Question Generation” section in the search settings modal to enable/disable and select the LLM model.
By default, there’s no limit on file count or capacity. Admins can set limits via environment variables.
What happens if I re-upload the same file?
When a file with the same name is detected, a duplicate confirmation dialog appears with Overwrite, Skip, or Cancel options.
Is text inside PDF images recognized?
The default extraction engine extracts text from images embedded in PDFs to a limited degree, but for scanned documents or image-heavy PDFs, Azure Document Intelligence, Google Cloud Document AI, or LLM Vision engines are much more accurate. To upload a standalone image file (PNG/JPG) and search its text, a Google Cloud Document AI or LLM Vision profile is required. Check the extraction engine setting with your admin.
Does changing dynamic filter metadata require re-embedding?
No. Metadata changes only update the vector index’s filter fields; existing vectors stay intact. Processed quickly without re-embedding.
What happens to search settings when multiple KBs are connected to one agent?
When multiple KBs are connected, search settings merge as follows:
Top K, Reranker Top K: Use the largest value across KBs
Reranker Threshold: Use the lowest value across KBs (more results pass)
Does changing the Document Processing Profile affect existing documents?
Existing documents’ vectors are not auto-reprocessed when the profile changes. To apply the new profile to existing documents, delete and re-upload them, or run a full reindex from admin settings.
What's the cost of LLM Vision or Context Preservation?
For a 10-page PDF + 20 chunks: LLM Vision (19 calls) + Context Preservation (20 calls) ≈ 39 LLM calls. Bulk uploading large documents can cost a lot, so use selectively for important docs.