Understanding AI Assist’s Data Sources

The instructions below are for desktops and laptops only.

AI Assist relies on your data sources to deliver accurate and helpful responses. The quality of the data you provide is crucial; the better it is, the more accurately AI Assist will respond on your behalf.


AI Assist can read multiple sources simultaneously, and grab relevant information based on the context and relevance. If you have multiple AI agents, they share all data sources except Text.


In this guide, we’ll walk you through the different types of data sources, and how to leverage them to provide exceptional customer service.

Accessing the data sources

Follow these steps to go to AI Assist’s data sources:


1. Log in to your tawk.to account.

2. On your dashboard, select the property for which you want to access the data sources. Hover over the property name to ensure you’ve selected the correct one.

3. Click Add-ons on the top menu.

4. Click Settings under AI Assist.

5. Select your AI agent.

6. Click Data Source. You can provide data sources in the following forms:

  • FAQs

  • Plain text

  • Documents (PDF, CSV, or TXT files)

  • Shortcuts

  • Knowledge Base articles

  • Websites

How AI Assist uses your data sources

AI Assist looks at your data sources and selects up to 5 chunks of information according to the context of each inquiry.


Each chunk of information can be:

  • A shortcut (in Shortcuts)

  • A question-and-answer pair in FAQs

  • A row in a CSV file in Documents (up to 1,000 characters)

  • A snippet from Text, a Knowledge Base article, a PDF or TXT file in Documents, or a Website (up to 1,000 characters)


Once AI Assist has selected the 5 chunks of information, it generates a response according to your instructions in the Base Prompt.


We recommend organizing your data sources to avoid duplicate information in multiple sources. This helps AI Assist to access your data effectively, increasing the accuracy of its responses.


Other reference sources are the Base Prompt and API integration, which this article covers further below.


Let’s look at the individual data source types, starting with shortcuts.

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are templated responses to common inquiries. They’re very useful for sending customers files, forms, and suggested messages, tagging chats, and transferring conversations to other agents or teams.

Click Add Shortcut to create new individual or batch shortcuts.


You can enter up to 5 questions containing related keywords within each shortcut. If AI Assist finds matching keywords in these questions, it’ll send the shortcut message to customers and prioritize it in the future. 

AI Assist will respond with the exact message you’ve written unless Revise answer based on context is enabled in the Behaviour settings.
FAQs 

Upload a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and their responses.

Click Add FAQ to add new FAQs and ensure they’re Enabled. You can add individual FAQs or import them in batches with CSV files.
Text

Describe your business, products, and services in simple plain text. Text is unique to each AI agent, allowing you to tailor its responses to your customer’s specific needs and preferences.

Enter your text, hit Save, and ensure it’s Enabled.

Documents

AI Assist can analyze text files, PDFs, and CSVs for relevant answers to customers’ questions. Ensure your documents contain text that can be copied as this enables AI Assist to read your documents easily.

Click Add Document to add new documents and ensure they’re Enabled.


Note:

  • For CSV files, please ensure

    • Each row contains 1,000 characters or less.

    • The first row is treated as a header with column labels.

    • Each cell contains a text string without line breaks, separated by a comma, instead of a semi-colon.

    • There are no empty cells in between cells with data.

  • AI Assist only analyzes the text in your documents. Images won’t be analyzed.

Knowledge Base

Create articles about your products and services in your Knowledge Base. Detailed articles help to equip AI Assist with the know-how to answer even the most in-depth customer queries.

To learn more about the Knowledge Base, check out these articles:

What is the Knowledge Base?

Setting up your Knowledge Base

Creating a new Knowledge Base article

Websites

AI Assist can scrape data from websites containing relevant information about your business. Depending on your AI Assist plan, it can process between 100 and 10,000 pages.

Click Add New to add new URLs and ensure they’re Enabled.


Note:

AI Assist only analyzes the text in the websites you list here. Images, carousels, and other visual elements won’t be analyzed. Some information in tables may not be covered, too. We recommend reviewing ingested pages for accuracy and relevance.


If AI Assist has difficulty crawling your websites, check out these guides:

Why AI Assist’s web crawler might not be able to crawl some sites
How to whitelist tawk.to's AI Assist crawler bot

Additional information

In addition to the data sources, AI Assist also refers to:

  • The Base Prompt

  • API integration


The Base Prompt

The Base Prompt is your personalized instructions for AI Assist. You can provide clear instructions and information in the Base Prompt to set the ground rules for AI Assist. This helps AI Assist understand your specific needs and priorities.


The Base Prompt typically contains default instructions, which you can modify anytime. Your changes are effective as soon as you hit Save.

API calls

You can integrate AI Assist with external platforms through API calls, allowing AI Assist to pull data from other systems and formulate relevant responses to your customers.

Your data sources in action

AI Assist grabs information from up to 5 relevant sources to answer your customers’ inquiries.


When testing your widget using the preview, you’ll see the following icon next to each response generated by AI Assist:

Click this icon to see which sources were used for each response.

If you need help fine-tuning your AI agents’ responses, check out this guide:
How to fix incorrect responses delivered by AI Assist


By providing a variety of data sources and prioritizing them strategically, you can empower AI Assist to become a true customer service champion for your business.


Important: Keep your data sources up-to-date. As your business evolves, so should the information available to AI Assist. This ensures your customers always receive the most accurate and helpful responses.

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