Train your knowledge
Connecting your first sources to Living Knowledge
Connecting your first sources to Living Knowledge is a crucial step to enable your Unless AI Customer Agent to provide accurate, up-to-date answers by drawing from your organization’s comprehensive knowledge base. Living Knowledge acts as a self-maintaining library that continuously ingests and restructures content from multiple sources, ensuring your AI assistant always has the latest information to serve your customers effectively. This article guides you through the process of adding your initial sources and explains how to manage and optimize them for the best AI performance.
understanding Living Knowledge and its role
Living Knowledge is the foundational knowledge base that powers your Unless AI agent. It aggregates content from all the relevant documents, websites, tickets, and other data your organization uses, creating a unified, always-current library. Unlike traditional knowledge bases that require constant manual updates, Living Knowledge automatically updates itself by re-reading connected sources, incorporating new conversations, and applying team corrections.
This continuous update cycle ensures that the Customer Agent, Team Assistant, and Help Center all draw from the same accurate and consistent information, eliminating duplication and reducing maintenance overhead.
types of sources you can connect
To build Living Knowledge, you need to connect one or more sources that contain the information your AI agent will use to answer questions. The platform supports a variety of source types, including:
- Website pages: Crawl entire sites via sitemap.xml or add individual URLs. You can narrow the scope with include/exclude rules.
- FAQ entries: Import or write question-and-answer pairs directly, ideal for content not already published on a webpage.
- Files: Upload PDFs, DOCX, Markdown, CSV, or Google Drive files. Well-structured content with clear headings and short paragraphs works best.
- Helpdesk content: Integrate tickets and articles from platforms like Zendesk, Freshdesk, Jira Service Management, or Zoho Desk to keep support content in sync.
- Knowledge bases: Connect systems such as Confluence, Google Drive, BookStack, Zenya, ClickHelp, Azure DevOps Wiki, or WordPress.
- Team collaboration tools: Include support tickets and developer merge requests where institutional knowledge often resides.
- Custom connectors and MCP servers: For internal systems using custom protocols.
Choosing the right source depends on where your most accurate and frequently updated information lives.
how to add your first source
Before adding sources, ensure you have installed the Unless snippet on your website and configured your workspace languages. Once ready, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the Train > Knowledge base > Sources section in your Unless dashboard.
- Click to add a new source and enter the URL or connect the integration for your chosen source type.
- Unless will crawl or ingest the content, process it into the Living Knowledge content library, and make it available to the AI agent.
For example, if your main help center or product documentation answers most customer questions, start by adding that as your first source.
monitoring and optimizing your sources
After connecting sources, you can monitor their status and quality in the dashboard. Each source shows a connection status such as Connected, Syncing, Error, or Disconnected, and a quality score indicating how well the content is structured for AI use.
Use the quality score to identify sources that may need improvement, such as better formatting or clearer headings. You can also organize sources into topics to scope the AI’s answers to specific products or audiences, preventing confusion across different areas.
If needed, you can exclude certain documents or pages from feeding the agent to avoid outdated or irrelevant content.
keeping your knowledge current
Living Knowledge automatically updates as your connected sources change. It re-reads sources, incorporates new tickets and conversations, and applies team edits and overrides. This self-maintaining approach means your AI agent always answers from the latest, most accurate information without requiring manual content updates.
conclusion
Connecting your first sources to Living Knowledge sets the foundation for a powerful, accurate AI customer experience. By carefully selecting and managing your sources, you ensure your Unless AI agent has access to the best possible information. This leads to more relevant answers, reduced maintenance effort, and a seamless, consistent knowledge base that supports your customers and team alike. Once your sources are connected and optimized, you can further enhance your AI capabilities by configuring actions, audiences, and workflows within the Unless platform.