Citations and Sources

How citations work

Every answer the AI Knowledge Agent produces includes citations — direct links to the pages in your knowledge base that informed the response. Citations appear as numbered references or inline links depending on the interface you use (Slack, Teams, or web).

Citations serve two purposes:

• Verification — You can click through to the source page and confirm the answer is accurate.
• Deeper reading — If the answer is a summary, the linked page provides the full context.

What a cited answer looks like

When the agent responds, it attaches one or more source references. For example:

Your company's parental leave policy provides 16 weeks of paid leave for all new parents, regardless of gender. The policy applies after 12 months of employment. [1] [2]

Sources:

1. HR Policies → Parental Leave
2. Employee Handbook → Benefits Overview

Each source links to the specific page in your wiki. The exact display format varies by platform — Slack shows links in the message, Teams uses adaptive cards, and the web widget shows clickable inline references.

Verifying a citation

To confirm an answer:

1. Click the citation link in the agent's response.
2. The source page opens in your wiki (or in a new browser tab, depending on platform).
3. Review the relevant section of the page to verify the information.

If the source page has been updated since the agent last indexed it, the answer may reflect slightly older content. The agent re-indexes content on a regular sync schedule. See AI-Generated Metadata for details on how content is processed.

When the agent cannot find relevant content

The AI Knowledge Agent does not guess or hallucinate. If your knowledge base does not contain information relevant to the question, the agent responds with a clear statement that it could not find an answer. It does not fabricate content or pull from external sources.

Situations where this occurs:

• The topic has not been documented in your wiki.
• The documentation exists in a section the user does not have access to.
• The question uses terminology that does not match any content.

When you receive a "no information found" response, consider adding or updating documentation to cover that topic.

Accuracy expectations

The AI Knowledge Agent is designed to be faithful to your source content. However, keep these considerations in mind:

• Answers reflect your documentation as-is. If a page contains outdated information, the agent may surface it. Keeping your wiki current directly improves answer quality.
• The agent summarizes and synthesizes. It may combine information from multiple pages into a single answer. Citations let you verify each component.
• Complex or ambiguous content may produce less precise answers. Well-structured documentation with clear headings and concise paragraphs produces the most reliable results. See Tips for Better Answers for guidance.

Multiple sources in one answer

For questions that span several topics or pages, the agent may cite three or more sources. Each citation corresponds to a distinct piece of information in the answer. This is normal and indicates the agent synthesized content from across your knowledge base to provide a complete response.

Permissions and citations

Citations only link to pages the user has access to. The agent never reveals the existence of restricted content to unauthorized users — even in citation lists. This means two users asking the same question may receive different answers with different citations based on their permission levels. Learn more in Section-Level Permissions.