Knowledge sources overview
Learn how website pages and private text sources give your Zeltino assistant reliable business information.
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The quality of an assistant's answer starts with the information it has available. In Zeltino, that information comes from knowledge sources you choose and maintain, so your team stays in control of which business facts can support customer conversations.
You can use public website pages or private text written directly in Zeltino. This guide will help you choose between them, understand when a source is ready, and build a knowledge set that remains easy to trust over time.
In this article, you'll learn:
- When to use a website source or text source
- How knowledge differs from assistant behaviour
- How to build and test a reliable knowledge set
- What each source status means
- How to keep knowledge current
Choose the right source type#
Begin by asking where the approved answer already lives. If customers can read it on a current public page, use a website source. This works well for delivery details, service descriptions, pricing explanations, help content, and return policies. You can add a known page directly or ask Zeltino to find useful pages for you to review.
Use a text source when the approved information does not have a suitable public page. A sales qualification guide, a support procedure, or a carefully maintained internal answer can all be useful text sources, provided the content is appropriate for customer conversations.
Keep facts separate from behaviour#
Knowledge and behaviour work together, but they solve different problems. Knowledge answers questions such as “What are your delivery areas?” or “How does cancellation work?” Behaviour controls how the assistant communicates those facts.
Put policies, product details, and procedures in knowledge sources. Put voice, emoji preferences, and conversational boundaries in Settings > General settings > Behaviour. This separation gives you a clear place to look when something needs to change.
Read Configure assistant behaviour for the communication settings.
Build a reliable knowledge set#
You do not need to import everything before the assistant can be useful. Start with the questions customers ask most often and add one authoritative answer for each topic.
For every source you add:
- Choose one authoritative source.
- Give it a specific source hint that explains when it should be used.
- Wait until it is ready before testing.
- Ask a direct question and a realistic follow-up in the installed widget.
- Correct or remove older sources that conflict with the preferred answer.
Useful source hints name both the topic and the intended use. For example: Use for delivery countries, delivery times, and shipping restrictions. A vague hint such as General information gives less guidance and makes the source harder to distinguish from the rest of your knowledge.
Understand source status#
After you add or change a source, it needs to be processed before you evaluate the answer. The source list shows where it is in that process:
- Fetching means Zeltino is retrieving or processing the content.
- Fetched or Complete means the source is ready to use.
- Needs refresh means the stored source should be processed again before you rely on its latest content.
Use Refresh after a public page changes or after you update a text source. Wait for the ready state, then repeat the same test question so you can compare the result.
Assign ownership#
Knowledge stays reliable when someone knows they are responsible for it. Give one person or team ownership of each policy area, and agree on what should happen when the underlying information changes.
Review frequently changing information—such as promotions, pricing, availability, and operating hours—more often than stable company information. A small current source set is more useful than a large collection nobody feels responsible for.
Developers, Admins, and Owners can manage knowledge sources. Support agents can use the resulting knowledge in customer work but cannot change this configuration.