Knowledge base: share documents and write your own articles

The knowledge base holds the documents the AI assistants in Univents answer from. What is new: you decide per document who may ask questions about it — your team only, your crew in the staff portal, or every customer with a portal link. And you can write texts directly in Univents instead of creating a file first.

You find it under Master data → Knowledge base.

Who may ask? The three sharing settings

Every file and every article carries a sharing setting. It does not control who can see or download the document — it controls which document the AI assistant may quote from for which group.

The two outward settings are independent: a document can be shared with the crew but not with customers — or the other way round, or with both.

After this update your entire stock is set to team only. Nothing leaves your team until you share a document explicitly.

Who may share

Uploading, creating an internal article, editing, and deleting stays open to every back-office member, as before. Setting an outward sharing option and editing an already shared article require the right to edit settings. Withdrawing a sharing option is never blocked — you can always get back out.

The first time you tick ‘Every customer with a portal link’, Univents asks you to confirm. The reason: customer sharing is not limited to a single event. Do not share quotes, names, or contact details there.

Upload a file with a sharing option

1. Open Master data → Knowledge base.
2. Above the upload area, tick the boxes under Sharing for this file — both start out off.
3. Pick the file (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, TXT, MD, or CSV).
4. Wait until the status changes from Preparing to Ready. Only then can the assistant answer from it.

The boxes reset after the upload so the next file does not inherit the same sharing by accident.

Change a sharing option later

Every row in the list has a menu with Change sharing, Edit (articles only), and Delete.

Change sharing opens a dialog with the same boxes. Saving takes effect immediately — the document does not have to be analysed again, because sharing is applied at search time. A short confirmation then tells you what actually applies now, for example ‘Your crew can now ask about this’ or ‘Shared, but the AI assistant in the staff portal is off’.

Write your own articles

Not every piece of knowledge exists as a file. Write article creates a text directly in Univents.

1. Click Write article at the top.
2. Choose Start empty or a starter template — for the crew ‘Dress code and meeting point’ or ‘How the shift runs’, for customers ‘Directions and parking’ or ‘Schedule and services’. Templates contain placeholders in square brackets for you to replace; they do not preset any sharing.
3. Write the text. The editor handles headings, lists, tables, bold, and italic.
4. Click Save article. From then on the editor saves every 30 seconds by itself.

An article holds between 20 and 50,000 characters. From 45,000 characters the editor shows a counter. If you leave an article that has never been saved, the browser asks first — the very first save deliberately happens only via the button.

The status chip

If an article is shared outward and you lack the right to edit settings, the editor is read-only and says so at the top of the page.

Channels, monthly cap, and the emergency stop

Below the list sits the card AI assistant in the portals. It steers both channels separately.

Above it sits the portal status: one line per channel telling you whether the assistant is live, how many documents are shared, and — if it is not running — what is holding it up. Below that you see this month’s question count.

The switch is the emergency stop. To stop a channel right away, turn it off in this card. It takes effect instantly for everyone currently in the portal, and you do not have to touch a single sharing option. Anyone asking then reads ‘The AI assistant is currently unavailable’ and gets a way to reach you — not a blank page.

What the questions cost

Portal questions run on the same AI credit as the back-office chat. A typical question costs a few cents. The monthly cap counts exactly what the billing tab shows.

So the portals can never drain your back office, a reserve applies: if AI credit drops below 5 €, both portal channels pause automatically. The chat for your team keeps running. After a top-up the portals resume by themselves.

Greetings, thank-yous, and questions with no match in the documents cost nothing.

Test before anyone asks

The channel card holds the buttons Test as crew and Test as customer. They open the same chat the respective group sees, with the same documents and the same rules. That way you check a fresh sharing option yourself before the first real question arrives.

Frequently asked questions

Do crew or customers see the file itself? No. They get answers that name the title of the document as the source. The file can be neither opened nor downloaded.

Can the assistant quote from the whole document? Yes. Sharing always covers the complete document, not individual sections. Anything that must not go outward belongs in a separate document.

Are the questions stored? No. Conversations in the portals are not stored. For billing and the limits, Univents only counts that a question was asked — never what it said.

What happens if I withdraw a sharing option? It applies immediately. The next question gets no answer from that document any more.