Internal vs external knowledge access levels

Assist's knowledge management system allows you to control which documents are available for different use cases by categorizing them as either internal or external knowledge. This ensures that sensitive internal processes remain private while making customer-facing information readily available for AI-powered responses.

Understanding access levels

What is Internal Knowledge?

Internal knowledge consists of articles and documents that should only be accessible to your internal team members, such as agents and team leads. These documents typically contain:

• Internal processes and workflows
• Escalation procedures
• Special exception policies (e.g., refund policies with agent discretions)
• Team-specific guidelines
• Sensitive operational information

Example: A refund policy document that includes various exceptions an agent can make for customers, along with approval workflows.

What is External Knowledge?

External knowledge includes articles and documents that are appropriate for customer-facing interactions. These documents contain information that:

• Customers can safely access
• Provides self-service solutions
• Contains public-facing policies
• Offers general product guidance

Example: A self-service password reset guide or standard product FAQ.
 

How can Assist handle the two?

In our document syncs, Assist is able to distinguish whether an article is internal or external. How Assist decides this is platform dependent, as every knowledge base platform has its own set of unique permission rules for who can read what.

With the articles labeled as internal or external, Assist is instructed to only surface external knowledge when drafting a customer reply, but Assist can still use internal knowledge as references when drafting the reply in Copilot. Assist is also instructed to only cite external knowledge sources in their customer facing replies.

Note that for internal replies, such as question and answer, Assist can still freely cite anything and reference any article, as the assumption there is that the agent is asking Assist a question about their policies, so Assist's answer will only be directed to the agent, and not the end user.

Managing document access levels

Viewing access levels

To see how your documents are currently categorized:

1. Navigate to Configure > Assist setup > Knowledge
2. View the Access level column in the knowledge base table.
3. (Optional) Use the access level filter to view only internal or external documents
    

Changing access levels for individual documents

To modify the access level for a single document:

1. In the Knowledge documents table, locate the document you want to edit
2. Click the overflow menu (three dots) in the document's row
3. Select Edit
4. In the edit dialog, adjust the document's access level settings
5. Click Save to apply the change

Bulk editing access levels

When you need to update multiple documents at once:

1. Select documents: Use the checkboxes to select the documents you want to modify
     - Select individual documents by checking their row checkboxes
     - Select all visible documents using the header checkbox
2. Open bulk actions: Click the Bulk actions button that appears when documents are selected
3. Choose access level action: Select Change access level from the dropdown menu
4. Set new access level: In the dialog that opens:
   • Choose Internal for documents that should only be visible to internal team members
   • Choose External for documents that should be available for customer-facing AI responses
5. Confirm changes: Click Update [X] articles to apply the new access level

The system will display a success message confirming how many documents were updated.