Knowledge sources

A knowledge source is somewhere your documents already live — a documentation website, an Outline wiki, or a SharePoint site. AINOX PLATFORM copies its pages into the workspace knowledge base ahead of time, so the assistant can answer from them and cite them. This page covers adding a source, configuring how its documents enter the knowledge base, choosing who reviews them, replacing its stored credential, and removing a source again.

Prerequisites

• The manage knowledge sources workspace permission — owners and admins have it. Without it the page shows an access-denied notice.
• Whatever the source itself needs: nothing for a public documentation website, a personal API token for an Outline wiki, or Microsoft Entra app credentials for SharePoint.
• The source must be reachable from the platform. Adding one runs a connection check first, and a source that cannot be reached is not created.

Admin → Knowledge Sources lists every source in the workspace as a card: where it points, how far it crawls, when it last synced, how many documents it holds, its auto-sync schedule and its import policy.

Add a documentation website

1. Click New Knowledge Source and pick the kind of source you are connecting. All three kinds end up in the same list; they differ only in what the connection form asks for.

   

2. Sync from website opens a one-step form. Name is what the source is called inside the workspace, and Seed URL is the page the crawler starts from — it follows links from there.

   

3. Max pages and Max depth bound the crawl: how many pages it may fetch in total, and how many links deep it may follow from the seed. Exclude paths drops any URL containing one of the listed path fragments — one per line — which is how you keep changelogs or other language versions out. Description is a note for your colleagues.

   

   Keep the excluded paths and the seed compatible: the connection check requires the seed to reach at least one other page that is still in scope, so excluding everything the seed links to makes the source fail to connect. For a genuinely single-page source, set Max pages to 1 instead.

4. Import policy decides what happens to the documents this source finds. Publish automatically puts them straight into the knowledge base. Require approval holds each new or changed document until a reviewer accepts it. Workspace default follows the workspace-wide setting and names the policy it currently resolves to.

   

5. Choosing Require approval reveals a Reviewers picker. It is optional: leave it empty and everyone who can manage knowledge sources reviews this source, or name specific members and the queue becomes theirs. You can change this later.

   

6. Click Connect. The platform checks the source is reachable, creates it, and starts the first sync immediately. The summary repeats what you configured; Add another keeps the dialog open for the next source.

   

7. Done returns to the list, where the new source now has its own card.

   

Find a source in the list

Once a workspace has more than a handful of sources, use the toolbar above the grid: the search box matches a source's name or its URL, and the two dropdowns narrow by source type and by sync status. A counter on the right shows how many of the total match, and Clear resets everything.

Open a source's settings

Every card has a … menu with the two actions for that source: opening it, and removing it.

Settings & sync history opens the source's own page. The identity header carries its type, document count, URL and crawl scope, alongside a Sync now button. Below it sit the source's settings cards — import policy, reviewers, and for a source that authenticates with a credential, that credential — and below those, two tabs: Documents and Sync history.

Choose who reviews the incoming documents

While a source has no reviewer mapped, an amber note explains the fallback: everyone who can manage knowledge sources sees its review queue and receives its digest emails.

1. Pick a member from Add a reviewer…. Any workspace member qualifies — reviewing a source does not require the manage permission, so you can hand a source to the team that owns its content.

   

2. The member appears in the list straight away. Mapping is the grant: from now on this source's queue is theirs, and the digest emails go to them instead of to the managers. Remove a reviewer with the ✕ on their row.

   

Change a source's import policy

The Import policy card carries the same three options as the create form, plus a caption naming the effective policy — the one actually in force once Workspace default has been resolved.

Switching a source to a policy that publishes automatically always asks first, because the change is not only forward-looking: everything currently waiting for approval is imported the moment you confirm. The dialog names how many documents that is. Files a reviewer already rejected are left out — they only return if the source publishes a newer version of them.

After confirming, the caption reflects the new effective policy and the released documents move into the knowledge base — the Documents tab shows them as Importing while that runs.

Replace a source's API token or client secret

An Outline wiki or SharePoint site carries a stored credential, and the settings page shows it as its own card — API token for Outline, Client secret for SharePoint. Only a masked hint is ever displayed: the secret is write-only from the moment it is saved, so the card reads stored encrypted, never shown in full. A documentation website has no credential, so the card is absent for that kind.

When the token expires or is revoked at the source, Update replaces it without recreating the source:

1. Enter the replacement in New api token (or New client secret).
2. Save. The platform checks the new secret against the source's existing location before storing it. If the source rejects it, the dialog stays open with the reason and the old credential keeps working — a mistyped rotation cannot break a working source.
3. On success the card shows the new masked hint. Nothing else moves: documents already synced are left untouched, and the next sync run uses the new secret.

Read what a source holds

The two tabs below the settings cards answer different questions about the same source.

Documents lists every document the source has produced and scores each on two axes: Against source — whether the copy in the knowledge base still matches what the source published, including documents awaiting approval and ones the source has retired — and In knowledge base — whether the assistant can currently answer from it. Needs attention counts the documents on one of those axes that are not settled, and doubles as a filter. The caption above names the sync the comparison is made against.

Sync history is the record of every attempt: its status, what triggered it and who, how many documents it changed, when it started and how long it took. Click a run to see the individual documents it touched.

Running and scheduling syncs is covered on the Sync a knowledge source page.

Set the workspace default import policy

The Default import policy card at the top of the list page governs every source left on Workspace default, so you can set the rule once instead of per source.

If any source currently follows the default, changing it asks what should happen to those sources: Apply new default keeps them following along, so the new policy governs their documents; Keep current policy pins them to the old policy and stops them following the default. When the new default publishes automatically, the dialog also names how many pending documents would be imported immediately.

Other source types

Sync from Outline connects an Outline wiki. Alongside the name it needs the wiki's Base URL, the Root document or collection ID that marks the subtree to sync — the id from the Outline URL, slug or UUID — and a personal API token. The token is encrypted before it is stored and is never shown again.

Sync from SharePoint is a three-step wizard. Step 1 takes the Microsoft Entra app registration details — Tenant ID, Client ID, Client secret and the Site URL — and the built-in Setup guide explains where to get them. Step 2 picks the document libraries and folders to sync, step 3 sets the same schedule and import-policy options as the other kinds. Afterwards the card menu gains an Edit synced folders action for changing the selection.

Remove a source

1. Choose Remove from the card's … menu. The confirmation names the source and warns that its synced documents go with it.

   

2. Confirm and the card disappears, together with the source's synced folder under Admin → Files. This cannot be undone; re-adding the source syncs everything again from scratch.

   

Notes

• Sources are synced ahead of time, not queried live. Answers use the copy in the knowledge base, so a change at the source only reaches the assistant after the next sync.
• Documents held by Require approval wait in the Review queue, where a reviewer approves or rejects them.
• Changing reviewers takes effect immediately, so a member you remove loses the queue on their next request.
• Removing a source also discards the credential it had stored, so re-adding it means entering the token or secret again.