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Knowledge Base is a powerful capability that allows the within a to access and leverage your organization’s documents when responding to your questions. This feature transforms generic AI responses into contextual, organization-specific answers grounded in your proprietary information.
Knowledge Base retrieval process illustration

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What is a Knowledge Base?

A Knowledge Base in Omnifact is a curated collection of documents that are accessible to a Space’s AI assistant. It serves as the specialized knowledge foundation for each Space, providing:

Document Repository

A secure storage location for important files relevant to the Space’s purpose or domain.

Contextual Intelligence

Source material that enhances the AI assistant’s ability to provide relevant, accurate, and organization-specific information.

Proprietary Knowledge

A way to leverage your internal documents that aren’t available to general AI systems.

Shared Reference

A common information source that all Space members can benefit from through the AI assistant.

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Benefits of Knowledge Base Retrieval

Domain-Specific Expertise

Knowledge Base retrieval enables the AI assistant to develop specialized expertise in your unique domain. By accessing your organization’s documents, the AI can:
  • Understand your specific terminology, products, services, and processes
  • Reference internal guidelines, policies, and best practices
  • Provide answers that reflect your organization’s unique approach and perspectives
  • Deliver insights based on company-specific data and reports
The Knowledge Base ensures everyone gets consistent, accurate information:
  • Centralized access to important documents through questions
  • Consistent answers across the organization based on the same source materials
  • Quick of information that might otherwise be buried in folders or drives
  • Reduction in time spent searching for information across multiple sources
Knowledge Base retrieval offers secure access to sensitive information:
  • Proprietary documents remain within your secure environment
  • The automatically protects sensitive information during processing
  • Information access respects Space membership permissions
  • Your confidential data becomes useful without being exposed externally

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How Knowledge Base Retrieval Works

When you ask a question in a Space with a Knowledge Base, the AI assistant intelligently processes your and leverages relevant documents to formulate its .
1

Query Analysis

When you ask a question, the AI assistant analyzes what you’re asking to determine if Knowledge Base documents might contain relevant information.
2

Document Retrieval

If relevant, the system searches the Knowledge Base to find documents containing information that might help answer your question.
3

Privacy Protection

Before processing, the Privacy Filter automatically detects and masks any sensitive information in the retrieved documents. When the Privacy Filter is enabled, images are also restricted from being sent to AI models not hosted within the EU.
4

Information Processing

The AI assistant reads and understands the relevant sections from the documents, extracting the information needed to answer your question.
5

Response Generation

Using both its general knowledge and the specific information from your Knowledge Base, the AI creates a comprehensive, contextual response.
Knowledge Base retrieval works best with clearly structured documents and specific questions. For optimal results, ask direct questions about information likely to be in your documents.

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How to Recognize Knowledge Base Responses

When your AI assistant is using your Knowledge Base to answer questions, the experience looks noticeably different from regular AI responses. Here’s what to look for:

Progress Indicator

During retrieval, a progress indicator at the top of the assistant’s answer area shows real-time status updates like “Understanding query” and “Retrieving documents from Knowledge Base.”

Retrieval Completion

When retrieval completes, the progress indicator shows a filled icon with a message indicating how many documents were found, such as “Retrieved 3 documents from Knowledge Base.”

Multiple Retrieval Attempts

The assistant may perform multiple retrievals during a single response if it needs additional information or if initial results weren’t sufficient, with each attempt showing in the progress indicator.

Source References

The AI response often includes specific references to source documents, helping you understand where information originated and providing transparency about knowledge sources.
Example of Knowledge Base citation in AI response

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Asking Effective Knowledge Base Questions

To get the most from Knowledge Base retrieval, phrase your questions in ways that help the AI assistant find and use the right information.
  • Good: “What is our company’s policy on remote work according to the employee handbook?”
  • Better than: “Tell me about working remotely”
Specific questions help the AI pinpoint exactly what information to look for in your Knowledge Base.
  • Good: “Based on our quarterly reports, how has our market share changed in 2023?”
  • Better than: “How is our market share doing?”
Mentioning the type of document can help the AI narrow its search to the most relevant files.
  • Good: “Summarize the key findings from our recent customer satisfaction survey”
  • Good: “What are the three main concerns raised in our project risk assessment documents?”
The AI assistant can digest large documents and extract the most important points.
  • Good: “Compare our current marketing strategy with the approach outlined in last year’s plan”
  • Good: “What’s different between our 2022 and 2023 compliance requirements?”
The AI can identify similarities and differences across documents in your Knowledge Base.

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Common Questions

No, Knowledge Bases are optional. Spaces can function effectively without Knowledge Bases for general topic-focused discussions. A Space with well-crafted Space Instructions but no Knowledge Base still provides a specialized AI assistant, just without access to your organization’s documents.
The AI assistant can process common document formats including PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, OpenDocument text/presentation formats, plain text files (TXT, JSON, Markdown, CSV, SVG), and images (PNG, JPEG, WebP, HEIC/HEIF, AVIF, BMP, GIF, ICO, SVG, and TIFF). The system extracts and indexes the text content from documents and analyzes visual content from images to make them searchable.
The AI assistant accesses the current version of documents in your Knowledge Base at the time of your query. When you update documents in the Knowledge Base, the AI will use the new information in subsequent conversations.
Yes, you can explicitly instruct the AI to focus on your Knowledge Base by phrasing your question like: “Based only on our Knowledge Base documents, what is our policy on…” or “Referring specifically to our internal documents, how do we…”

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Best Practices

Curate Your Knowledge Base

Keep your Knowledge Base focused and relevant. Include only documents directly related to the Space’s purpose to improve AI retrieval accuracy.

Update Documents Regularly

Maintain current versions of documents in your Knowledge Base to ensure the AI provides the most up-to-date information available.

Use Clear Document Naming

Name your Knowledge Base documents clearly and descriptively to help with organization and make references in AI responses more meaningful.

Test Different Question Types

Experiment with various question formats to discover what works best for retrieving specific types of information from your Knowledge Base.

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Adding Knowledge to a Space

To start using Knowledge Base retrieval in your work, you’ll need a Space with documents added to its Knowledge Base. Here’s what to know:
  • Use Existing Spaces: The easiest way to benefit from Knowledge Base retrieval is to use Spaces that colleagues in your organization have already created and shared with you
  • Join Team Spaces: Many organizations create specialized Spaces with rich Knowledge Bases for different departments or projects
  • Admin Permissions Required: If you want to build your own Knowledge Base, note that only Space admins can add or manage documents
  • Your Own Space: When you create a Space, you automatically become its admin
  • Simple Document Upload: Adding documents is as simple as uploading files through the Space Settings
For a more detailed look at how to add and manage documents in a Space’s Knowledge Base, see our page on Managing Knowledge Bases.

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Next Steps

Now that you understand Knowledge Base retrieval, you might want to explore:
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