How the Email Knowledge Agent Works – Assembled

Assembled's Email Knowledge Agent automatically evaluates incoming customer emails and, when appropriate, generates and sends a reply using your company's knowledge base — no human agent required.

Knowledge Access

The Knowledge Agent has access to all documents in your company's knowledge base. Knowledge scope is configured per company and can be set to:

External only - The agent uses only customer-facing help center articles
Internal + External - The agent can use both internal documentation and external articles to inform its response (note: even when using internal sources, the agent will not expose internal-only content directly to customers)

Configuration

The Knowledge Agent is configured under AI support → Email agent in the Assembled app.

Activation Status

Control how broadly the agent is deployed:

Fully Active - Enabled for all eligible incoming emails
Gradual Rollout - Active for a defined percentage of eligible emails
Limited Rollout - Active for a defined number of eligible emails

Start with a limited or gradual rollout to build confidence before going fully active.

Operation Mode

Choose how the agent's responses are handled:

Automated - Responses are sent automatically without human review
Agent Review - Drafted responses are surfaced to agents for review before sending
Quality Review - Responses are held for QA review before sending

Use Agent Review or Quality Review when first enabling the agent to validate response quality before going fully automated.

Case Filters

Limit which emails the Knowledge Agent handles using the same filter logic available for workflows — by tag, brand, channel, ticket status, and more. Only emails matching your configured filters will be considered.

Use case filters to start narrow (e.g., a single topic or channel) and expand coverage over time.

Custom Instructions

Custom instructions allow you to define specific criteria for when the agent should or should not respond (e.g., skip emails related to billing disputes or VIP customers).

Note: Custom instructions run after a response is generated, not before. This means the agent will still draft a response for filtered categories — it just won't send it. You can review what the response would have looked like in QA Review, which is useful for validating your filters.

How an Email Goes from Received to Auto-Sent

Every incoming email follows this path:

Workflow check - The email runs through workflow selection first. If a matching workflow is found, it's handled there. The Knowledge Agent only steps in if no workflow applies.
Eligibility check - The system checks whether the email should be handled by the Knowledge Agent based on your activation settings and case filters. Custom instructions are not evaluated yet.
Intent assessment - The agent evaluates the email to decide whether to generate a response or pass entirely (as if no automation was triggered). Some emails — like those that are ambiguous or highly complex — are intentionally skipped at this stage.
Response generation - If the agent proceeds, it searches your knowledge base and generates a reply grounded in relevant content.
Quality checks - The draft goes through a series of safety and quality guardrails before sending:
- Some checks attempt to auto-fix issues and regenerate the response
- Others immediately flag the draft as ineligible to send
- Custom instructions are also evaluated here
- ✅ Passes all checks → email is sent automatically
- ❌ Fails a check → email is not sent, but the draft is available in QA Review so you can inspect what was generated and why it was skippeds

Relationship to Workflows

Workflows always take priority. The Knowledge Agent only handles emails that don't match any active workflow. Use this to your advantage — configure workflows for your highest-priority or most-structured cases, and let the Knowledge Agent handle the rest.

Questions about enabling Knowledge Answers for your account? Reach out to your AI Deployment Strategist.