Suggestions

Suggestions let people on your team tell an expert something it should know, or send a document for it to learn from, without being able to change your knowledge base themselves. An admin looks at each one and decides whether it goes in. Nothing a person suggests reaches an expert until you approve it.

Open it from Knowledge Base under YOUR EXPERT, then choose Suggestions. When something is waiting, a number appears next to it. If the group is closed, the number sits on Knowledge Base instead. When the sidebar is collapsed to icons, a small dot on the Suggestions icon takes the place of the number. The Documents page also shows a banner with a Review link.

How people send a suggestion

In the chat, a person has two ways in.

• Open the Tools menu next to the message box and choose Suggest knowledge.
• Click the small bulb under an answer. Its tooltip reads Suggest something the expert should know. This carries the answer they were looking at into the form, which is handy when an expert got something wrong.

The form asks Which expert? and What should it know?, with an optional Attach documents field for up to 5 files. They finish with Send for review. A What you have sent list shows each suggestion as Waiting, Added or Declined, so they hear back.

Attached files follow the same rules as documents: the same file types, up to 50 MB each, and a malware check.

Who can suggest and who can approve

Two permissions control this, both set on the account type under Accounts in the sidebar. See Account types.

Reviewing the queue

The table lists Suggestion, From, Expert, Files, Sent, Status and Actions. Waiting items come first. The left side filters by status (Waiting, Added, Declined, All) and by expert, with a count beside each choice. An expert that is not taking suggestions is shown dimmed. Below the experts, a row called No expert named collects suggestions that were sent without choosing an expert. It only appears when there are some.

Click a row to open it. You will see the full note, any attached files and, where it came from a chat, what the person asked and how the expert replied. That is usually enough to tell whether the suggestion is right. There is also a box for an optional note back to the person.

For a waiting suggestion you can choose:

• Add, shown when files are attached. The files go into your library, are processed like any upload, and are attached to the expert the person chose. Documents added this way show approved by and your name in the Added by column on the Documents page.
• Done, shown when the suggestion is only text. It marks the suggestion as handled. Nothing is added to the library, so make the change yourself, for example by uploading a corrected document.
• Decline. Any attached files are discarded. The person sees Declined and your note.
• Decline & mute. Declines it and stops that person sending more. Their name then appears in a Muted strip at the top of the page, with unmute beside it.

A waiting suggestion is not a document. It uses no storage and cannot influence any answer until you approve it. Once reviewed, the row shows who decided and when.

Keeping the queue manageable

The Settings card under the filters has the controls.

• Accept suggestions is a switch for each expert. Select an expert in the list and it appears. It is on by default. A policy expert that should never change can have it off. The same switch is in the expert's own settings. Under All experts the card shows how many experts are taking suggestions, for example 2/3.
• Most one person can send per day is a limit that counts across all experts. It starts at 5. A value of 0 means no limit, and the highest you can set is 500.
• Each person can also have at most 5 suggestions waiting at once. They can send more after you have reviewed some.

On Business, the daily limit field is greyed out with a Professional tag. The limit of 5 is still enforced, and you can still mute a person. Professional lets you change the number.

If no expert is accepting suggestions, a notice at the top says your team cannot send any. People who try to suggest are told that no expert is taking suggestions and to ask an admin.