Find answers in company knowledge
Help employees find supported answers across a bounded collection of internal documents. Start with one topic and a named content owner.
For: IT, knowledge management, and operations teams.
Start with the actual bottleneck
If employees cannot find an authoritative policy because several conflicting versions exist, resolve ownership first. Adding another search interface does not establish which version is correct.
Choose an implementation path
Try the search or assistant capabilities in your existing document platform first. Investigate a specialist search product when essential information spans systems. Consider custom retrieval when access or answer requirements cannot be met by those options.
Map the dependencies
Document repositories, identity groups, source owners, indexing and deletion behavior, and an interface for opening the original evidence. Treat document removal and permission revocation as requirements, including what happens to cached results.
Keep the first pilot bounded
Use a reviewed collection such as internal IT setup instructions. Exclude restricted personnel records and let the assistant answer or decline; do not give this pilot permission to modify documents or accounts.
Measure what matters
Record the current time to find a correct answer. Compare answer correctness, evidence support, refusal on unanswerable questions, access violations, latency, and total cost per useful answer. Have the source owner review results; do not rely only on a model judging another model.
Tests to require before rollout
These are proposed checks, not completed test results. Assign a reviewer and record actual outcomes in your pilot.
| Scenario | Expected behavior |
|---|---|
| A user asks about a document they cannot access | Neither its content nor sensitive metadata appears in the response. |
| Two policies disagree | The answer identifies the conflict and directs the user to the responsible owner. |
| The answer is absent from approved sources | The system says it cannot establish the answer rather than inventing a policy. |
| A document is removed or access is revoked | Behavior matches a documented removal deadline across search, answers, and caches. |
Pause when the foundations are missing
Do not expand the pilot without a source owner, enforceable access boundaries, a reviewed test set, and a working manual fallback. Agree on acceptance thresholds before collecting results.
Source and scope
Microsoft documents how existing permissions and oversharing affect Copilot access. This is a concrete reason to review source permissions before adding an assistant. Read the documentation.
Bring this to your team
Write down the chosen category, source owner, systems involved, allowed actions, and evidence needed for approval.
Review the full stack planning guide →
Read the Glean knowledge-workflow teardown → Review documented access rules, source freshness, and proposed pilot tests.