Asking questions about one or multiple documents

Use the Content Assistant to ask questions about one or multiple documents in your repository. It provides accurate answers within the context of the selected document content.

Before you begin

You need to set up the Content Assistant in your CPE and Content Navigator environment. For more information, see the topic Setting up the Content Assistant.

About this task

After the Content Assistant setup is complete, you can start asking questions to the assistant about one or multiple documents in your repository.

Procedure

Log in to IBM® Content Navigator by using your credentials.

Note: Use only HTTPS connection to access the IBM Content Navigator when the Content Assistant plugin is installed.
Go to the object store where you want to use the Content Assistant.
Select the documents about which you plan to ask questions to the Content Assistant.
- Option 1 - Click Browse and select either an entire folder or individual documents in the object store.
  If you selected a folder, you can choose to include files from all sub-folders within the selected folder. To include files from sub-folders, click the icon and select the option and enable the option to Include documents filed in subfolders.
  
  After you select the documents, you can ask questions about documents that are vector indexed. The icon before a document name indicates that the document is vector indexed. The Content Assistant includes the number of indexed documents that you select in the current scope of a query.
  Note: When the number of selected documents exceeds 1000 documents, you are prompted to choose a repository search instead of a search across multiple documents.
- Option 2 - Select an existing search or Click Search > New Search in the IBM Content Navigator console.
  Execute the search and then you can ask questions about documents that were returned in the search results, which are vector indexed. The icon before a document name indicates that the document is vector indexed. The Content Assistant includes the number of indexed documents that you select in the current scope of a query.
  Note: When the scope of a question about multiple documents exceeds 1,000 documents, you are prompted to use the Ask Your Repository search instead.
- Option 3 - Select one of your five most recently asked questions.
Click the icon on the Content Navigator web console.
The Content Assistant opens.
Ask a question to the Content Assistant about the selected document content.
- Option 1 - Type your own question in the query box.
  Tip: When you type a request that asks the Content Assistant to summarize all documents in your selection, the responses can be suboptimal. For better summary results, you need to access the watsonx ad hoc summary for your document selection. For more information, see the topic Accessing the watsonx ad hoc summary for your document selection.
- Option 2 - Click the icon to ask a commonly asked question.
  Select a question from the Suggestions page to ask a question to the Content Assistant. The page lists the commonly asked questions for your desktop and also lists queries from any recent interactions with the assistant.
When you submit a question to the Content Assistant, the Content Platform Engine initiates a vector search against the vector database in your environment. The vector database retrieves document chunks based on the relevancy score threshold that you configured, and returns only the 8 most relevant results.
If none of the retrieved document chunks meet the relevancy score threshold, the Content Assistant returns an error.
Note: When you select only one document, relevancy score filtering is enabled by default. This helps ensure that the answer is related to the selected document.
If your question is not related to that document, you can re-run the query with relevancy score filtering disabled. When relevancy filtering is turned off, the Content Assistant may generate answers that are not relevant to the selected document.

Note: Relevancy score checking is disabled for a selection with only one document. In such cases, if your question is not related to the document, the Content Assistant generates answers that may not be relevant.

For more information, see the topic Adjusting the relevancy score filter level.
Review the generated response.
You can do one of the following actions:
- Copy the Content Assistant response - Click the icon to copy the generated response to your clipboard.
- View document excerpts - Click the to view up to six document excerpts for the generated response.
- Provide feedback about the response - Click or to submit your feedback about the response.