How to use Custom Agents

Learn how to query your uploaded knowledge in seconds with Ask SIA Custom Agents

Skip to:
Introduction
How to access your Custom Agents
How to ask a question
How the Agent generates its Response
Understanding the response
Providing feedback

 

 

Introduction

 

How to access your Custom Agents

Ask SIA can be accessed via:

• The Summize web application
• Outlook & Gmail integrations
• Teams & Slack integrations

 

Summize web application:

Click the Ask SIA button in the top right of the screen:

Outlook & Gmail:

Click the Ask SIA button in the top of the add-in:

Teams & Slack:

When opening the Teams or Slack chat bots, you will see a section for Ask SIA at the bottom of the 'Get started' message.

In Teams:

In Slack:

 

How to ask a question

Once you have accessed Ask SIA, you will see the list of Custom Agents made available to you under the title 'Ask a Custom Agent':

Select the appropriate Agent and type your question:

Based on your question, the Agent will scan all the documents that have been uploaded as knowledge sources to find an appropriate response. 

 

You can continue asking questions about the same topic in this thread, or switch to a different topic relating to the same Custom Agent at any time. To start a conversation about another topic, either enter your new question within the same chat window or click the "New chat" button at the top of the page.

Note: Starting a new chat will remove the previous conversation history.

 

As well as interacting directly with a Custom Agent, you can also use your Custom Agents whilst in a thread with a Summize Agent.

For example, if you’re reviewing a data protection clause in a signed contract using the Repository Agent, you could bring your InfoSec Agent into the same thread to check whether that clause aligns with your company’s data protection policy.

To do this, ask a question to the Repository Agent:

Then, in response, type '@' to bring up the available Custom Agents, and select the appropriate option:

And then direct a question to your Custom Agent:

And your Custom Agent will respond in your thread, using the knowledge available to it alongside the context it can see in the messages above:

You can now continue messaging your Summize Repository Agent. If you have further questions for the Custom Agent, ensure you @ message them at the start of the question, otherwise the Summize Agent will assume you're messaging them. 

 

 

 

How the Agent generates its response

When knowledge documents are uploaded to the Custom Agent, Summize splits those files into individual blocks of data. When a question is asked, the Agent scans all of those blocks of data, orders them into relevancy order and bases its response using the most relevant information. The number of blocks it refers to when generating that response depends on this setting when building the Agent:

Increasing this number helps the agent consider more context, while lowering it keeps answers more focused. 

 

 

Understanding the response

Beneath each response your Agent provides, you will see 'Explain this asnwer':

You can click this to understand why your Agent has provided a certain response. A panel will open which outlines the Agent's reasoning:

It will also list all of its information sources, listed in relevancy order:

Those sources can be expanded to view the blocks of text that were used to generate the response:

 

 

Providing feedback

Beside 'Explain this answer', you will also see thumbs up/down icons:

Clicking either option will present an open text box where you can provide more context:

This feedback can be viewed by both your account's Power users, to help understand how useful the wider business are finding the responses, and by Summize, so we can use your feedback to assess and continually improve the Agent's reasoning.