BOTWISE step by step

In this article, we will explain how BOTWISE works. Step by step, we will go through the functions of the application, and also explain what BOTWISE actually is.

Why did we create BOTWISE?

In today's world, the excess of information and stimulants makes it difficult to quickly access the data we need at a given moment. Not everyone is aware of the fact that we spend a really significant amount of time during the day searching for information. Why is it important? Because, trivially speaking, "Time is money." When we are talking about employees who deal with an overwhelming amount of information daily (e.g. customer service consultants), paying attention to this process is especially important. The McKinsey study shows that, on average, an employee spends as much as 20% of the time during the day searching for information - that's actually an entire working day per week! You can probably come up with a better application for this time.

In response to this problem, we’ve created BOTWISE - a platform designed to facilitate management and access to the dispersed knowledge of the organization. What does this mean in practice?

Organization's scattered knowledge

What does it actually mean when knowledge is dispersed? As you may have guessed, the point is that the information that an organization has at its disposal is not in one easily accessible place. The company's knowledge includes documents, information on the functioning of the company, the way it works, guidelines, policies, training, etc. Most often such information  is located in various places. These can include paper documents, external links, files on the intranet, files on shared drives, and even unwritten know-how of company employees.

The concept of proper knowledge management is to make the information quickly and easily accessible to all those who need to have access to it. This is related to the concept of information democratization, i.e. the concept of not blocking access to information for only selected people, and, if possible, giving access to all secure information to a "common" employee. This allows for greater transparency in the company, and also for more effective management of processes in the organization.

In simple terms, BOTWISE is such a container for a knowledge base in an organization that integrates all these sources of knowledge in various formats, and then easily and instantly search them. This allows to significantly save the time that employees spend on searching for needed information, among others to answer customer questions.

Does the BOTWISE implementation require any specific preparation?

No. Our goal was to create an application that can be easily implemented by any organization that wants to facilitate access to knowledge for its employees. Before implementing BOTWISE, you only need to know in which team or department you want to implement the solution. Usually, it is not even necessary to involve IT or technical teams. We will take care of everything and guide you through the entire process of analyzing and implementing the tool. After quick file integration, you can use the BOTWISE platform right away!

BOTWISE interface

We'll start by introducing you to what the interface looks like. After logging in, we can see the entire screen of the BOTWISE application, and on the left side there are 7 tabs:

• Chatbot
• Search
• Issues
• Knowledge base
• Statistics
• Users

We will now go through each one of them.

Chatbot

This is the first tab in the BOTWISE app and probably the one you'll use the most for searching for information. You can ask the intelligent Chatbot what you want, 24/7 - it does not get tired and does not get offended :). All you have to do is enter your query in the natural language - that is, as if you asked it normally during the conversation (you do not need to specially formulate the query). The proprietary BOTWISE algorithms using artificial intelligence automatically process the added documents and match their fragments to the content of the question asked. Thanks to this, Chatbot immediately returns a response. If the record comes from knowledge resources, for example, a file or an uploaded URL, above the answer you will also find a link to the document from which the fragment comes - you can easily preview it.

Chatbot also has the autocomplete function and prompts the user in real-time which predefined questions related to the query are in the Knowledge Base, as well as on the URLs that have been added to the platform, e.g. pages with FAQs. This functionality can also be used in the Search tab.

In the example below, there is a question "What file formats does BOTWISE process?" As you can see, Chatbot displayed a ready answer from a website - without the linked file. This is because it is a ready answer prepared by users of the BOTWISE platform – in the Teacher or Manager role.

Such a ready answer in the knowledge base can be added in various ways - through the Manage function, which is under the answer, or from the level of the Knowledge Base tab. After clicking Manage, the answer editing screen opens. Here we can choose another of the existing answers that will appear the next time a given question is asked, add a new one or edit an existing one. Below you can see the screen editing the existing answer to the question "What file formats does BOTWISE process?" At this point, we can edit the answer substantively, visually, and combine the hints with a given question. It means that we can add the so-called buttons that you can associate with interacting with other chatbots.

At this point, we can edit the answer substantively, visually, and create the hints for a given question. It means that we can add the so-called buttons which can be associated to other chatbots and create interactions.

Next to the Manage function, there is also a Report option. Thanks to it, every user of the BOTWISE platform has the opportunity to report that there was something wrong with the response received from Chatbot - for example, it was off-topic, was too long, or was not there at all; it is also possible to enter your reason.

These reports are then displayed in the reports tab which is available to the Teacher and Manager roles.

Search engine

The search is nothing more than the classic search engine that you will meet in most applications. This is where you can search through all the resources and see what's on the BOTWISE platform.

It is an alternative to Chatbot, thanks to which one can easily check if something is in the knowledge base - and if not - add it to the Knowledge Base tab.

Records also show where the information is located - it is especially important when our database grows and documents are placed in folders or subfolders. We also receive information about when the document was last edited and by whom.

Issues

All user reports are listed in this place. Here we receive a list of applications along with the question that was reported, the author of the report, comment (reason for the report), and the modification date. Users with the Teacher and Manager permissions can access this screen. There is the Edit button next to each submission. After pressing it, the user is taken to the answer editing screen and can edit knowledge base records in the same way as after going through the Manage function.

Knowledge base

The Knowledge Base contains all the answers added by users - that is, those that have been edited from the submission screen or the Manage function. As in the case of the search engine screen records, we can see here: the title (i.e. the content of the question), the content of the answer that was added by the Teacher or Manager to the knowledge base using a text editor, the modification date, and the author. The list of records in the knowledge base is in abbreviated form, but at any time we can press the arrow next to a given record to see the full content of the answer. Knowledge base records can also be edited or deleted.

The Knowledge Base also has an internal search engine that searches only the answers added from the level of the text editor - without the files from the Documents section. When searching, we can use filtering, including BotwiseAI. This function shows users all the entries that the engine has created automatically and that is a potential answer to a given question.

For this purpose, the bot uses documents added by users and automatically transforms them into a form that can be displayed in a chat, and then divides them into smaller fragments. It is worth noting that the algorithm is also able to detect the structure of the document: paragraphs’ / sections’ titles; what is the question and what is the answer in the FAQ base. This information provides examples of queries that the user may want to ask. Sample questions are also suggested by the Autocomplete function.

The platform uses the proprietary AI engine to process documents and return the information they contain. This allows to automate the process of editing bot responses and returning precise pieces of knowledge in the search results immediately after loading the documents - explains Dariusz Semba, CTO.

Documents

Now we go to the Documents section - all knowledge resources added from files, external programs, and URLs are here.

At this point, the user can add the following file formats to the BOTWISE platform:

• Text: doc, Docx, ppt, pptx, pdf, Html, htm, msg, Xls, xlsz, txt, RTF, ODT, XML, CSV
• Images: pdf, jpg, png
• Tables: Xls, xlsx, numbers

It can be done by clicking the Add document button and then selecting the From file option. After sending, the document is ready and can be available to users as soon as they ask for the information contained in it, for example from the Chatbot level. Files placed in the Documents section can be viewed, downloaded, deleted, organized using folders, and - using the green slider on the left - temporarily disabled from the information resources searched by Chatbot.

At this point, the user also has the option of adding URL links - for example, a company page with a FAQ section, or articles that may be useful. All that has to be done is to click Add Document, choose From URL, then simply paste the link to the page from which the information should be included in the knowledge base - and that’s it! BOTWISE algorithms will automatically download and process the data on the website in a way that will allow them to be freely searched from the Chatbot level. If the user asks for information that is on a given website, along with the answer returned by Chatbot, he/she will receive a link to the page - similarly to documents, if the information comes from a file.

Each organization can add a virtually unlimited number of files from the Documents section to the BOTWISE platform - there is no real limit! In the case of a large knowledge base, however, we recommend organizing files using thematic groups and folders.

Statistics

Only users with the Manager role can access the Statistics tab. It includes statistics on the number of messages sent (sum of questions and answers), the number of users, the document submissions, and the number of changes. In the Statistics> Overview tab, it is also possible to generate a report of inquiries and responses in a selected period (or the entire history of system use). The report is downloaded to a local disk in the universal xlsx format and allows for an in-depth analysis of the most popular query topics, schemas, and user behavior. In the Statistics> Users section, you will find information about user-related statistics - for example, how many submissions have been sent by consultants over the last 7 days.

Users

The last tab of the BOTWISE app is Users. Authorized persons will see all system users in it.

We divide system users into 3 types of authorizations:

• Managers,
• Teachers,
• Consultants.

Users with Manager privileges have access to all parts of the BOTWISE application, Teachers can add answers and modify them in the knowledge base, as well as view and solve problems. On the other hand, Consultants are team members who have access to Chatbot and Search engine, with which they can easily and instantly search the necessary information and view Documents in read-only mode. From the Users screen, the administrator can add new users, give them functions, and modify and delete existing users' permissions.

BOTWISE widget

BOTWISE can also be used via a widget located, for example, on the company's website. This is a good option for companies that want to additionally relieve customer service consultants and give customers the ability to independently and easily find answers. An example of such integration can be found, among others on the website of the City Hall in Poznań.

We hope this guide has helped you understand how the basic version of BOTWISE works. If you have any questions, check the FAQ section on our website, contact us or sign up for a free demo, during which we will show you how to use our system live.