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, 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.

   

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.

Check what a source will sync

1. Every card has a … menu with the actions for that source.

   

2. Preview documents fetches a live sample of what the source exposes right now. Nothing is synced or indexed by the preview — it is there to confirm you pointed at the right place before waiting for a full sync.

   

Open a source's settings

Settings & sync history opens the source's own page: the identity header with its type, document count and crawl scope, the two settings described below, and the record of its past syncs.

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 held documents are on their way into the knowledge base.

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 spells out what goes with it: the documents it synced into the knowledge base, and — for Outline and SharePoint — its stored credentials, which are scrubbed.

   

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.
• Keeping a source up to date — running a sync on demand, setting the auto-sync schedule and reading the run history — is covered on its own page; the Sync now button and Sync history table on the settings page belong to that flow.
• 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.