Your first expert

An expert is a named assistant that answers from the documents you give it. Creating one takes a short wizard. You name it, pick its documents, choose how it answers, and optionally give it a personality.

Before you start

• Have one or two real documents ready, such as a policy or a product guide. PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text, CSV and image files all work. The Documents page has the full list and the limits.
• Your plan sets how many experts you can have. If you have reached the limit, the wizard shows a banner saying so. You can still walk through it, but Create expert stays switched off until you delete an expert or upgrade.

Start the wizard

1. In the sidebar, open Experts under Your expert, then choose All experts.
2. Click Create Expert, next to the search box.

The wizard is titled Create an expert. It has seven steps, shown in a rail on the left with a progress bar. Steps 1 to 3 are essentials, steps 4 to 6 are optional, and step 7 is the review. Nothing is created until the last step, so you can go back and forth freely. Click Continue to move on, or Skip on an optional step.

The seven steps

1. Name. Enter a Name that your team would say out loud, such as HR Assistant. The Description is optional and is limited to 40 words. People see both when they pick the expert in Chat.

2. Documents. This is the step that makes the expert yours, and you must pick at least one document. Drop files into the box or click Choose files to upload new ones. They join your Knowledge Base, and every expert can use them. Below the box is your existing library, with a search box and a folder drop down if you use folders. Tick the documents this expert should answer from.

A document that is still being read can't be attached yet. The wizard tells you how many are still being read, and they become available when they are ready.

3. Answering. Sensible defaults are already chosen, and everything here can be changed later.

• Models are what the expert answers with. At least one must be ticked. If you tick more than one, the person asking can choose between them in Chat. The AI models page explains the differences, and the list depends on your plan.
• Show sources is on by default. Answers list the documents they came from, with a clickable source beside each point.
• Search the web is off by default. When it is on and your documents don't cover a question, the expert looks it up online instead of saying it doesn't know. Leave it off if you want answers to come only from your own documents. It is not available on every deployment.
• Accept suggestions is on by default. Your team can propose knowledge for this expert, and you review every suggestion before anything is added. See Suggestions.

4. Persona (optional). Gives answers a consistent voice. You can set a Name such as Emma, a Role such as HR Advisor, and a Tone: Default, Warm, Formal, Concise or Playful. Additional instructions take up to 200 words, for example "Always point people at the staff handbook before quoting a policy." Shorter instructions are followed more reliably. If you skip this step you get a plain, capable assistant.

5. Instructions (optional). Lets you attach shared rules that you wrote once and reuse across experts. They need the Professional plan. On Business the step says so, and on Professional with none written yet it points you to Instructions in the sidebar. See Instructions.

6. Starter questions (optional). Up to four questions, each up to 120 characters, shown as buttons before anyone has typed anything. Real questions this expert can answer teach people what it is for. If you leave them blank, people see general suggestions instead.

7. Review. The page lists everything that will be created. Click any line to go back and change it, then click Create expert. A progress list shows each part being saved: creating the expert, the persona, instructions and starter questions, attaching the documents, and the model and answering settings.

The expert is created first, and it exists from that moment. If a later part fails to save, that line in the list is marked as failed, a message says which part did not save, and the expert is kept. You still go on to the expert's page, so you can fix the failed part there. If the creating step itself fails, nothing is created and you stay on the wizard with the reason shown. Once everything has been saved you land on the Overview of the new expert, where you can keep configuring it.

Or start from a template

If you'd rather not begin from a blank expert, open Templates under Experts. Each template is a ready configured expert for a department, such as HR or IT. Open one, check what it needs, attach your documents and click Create this expert. See Templates.

Try it in Chat

1. Open Chat in the sidebar. It opens in a new tab.
2. Make sure your new expert is chosen in the expert picker at the bottom left of the message box.
3. Ask a question that one of your documents answers, then one it doesn't. The first should come back with sources. The second should get an honest "I don't know" unless you switched on web search.

If answers look thin, the usual cause is that a document is still being read or the wrong documents are attached. Check the status of your documents on the Knowledge Base page, and look at the Documents section of the expert's page. Chatting with an expert explains everything the chat screen can do.

What to do next

• Fine tune the expert's name, persona, start screen and switches in Creating and editing experts.
• Add more documents, or organise them, in Documents.
• Invite colleagues on the Members page.