Repository and index design
Connect selected sources with identifiers, metadata and update rules, including the treatment of removed or superseded documents.
Enterprise AI search
Find the right source across your internal knowledge.
Improve discovery across approved repositories using appropriate keyword, semantic or combined retrieval. Preserve source permissions and help users inspect relevant documents rather than requiring them to trust a generated answer.
- When it starts
- An employee searches for a document, record, policy or piece of evidence needed for a business task.
- Who owns the decision
- Knowledge and repository owners, with the teams responsible for access policy and search relevance.
- The intended output
- Ranked, permitted source results with useful previews, freshness context and a direct path to the authoritative material.
Workflow design
From search intent to inspectable source results
This use case focuses on finding evidence. Query interpretation, ranking and previews help the user reach the right source; answer generation is a separate workflow with additional evaluation requirements.
- 01
Connect and index
Read permitted repositories, retain source identifiers and track updates, deletion and access metadata.
Output
An indexed corpus with ownership and freshness
- 02
Interpret the query
Use the user’s terms and permitted context to choose keyword, semantic or combined retrieval.
Output
A search request bounded by user access
- 03
Rank and explain context
Return relevant permitted results with source labels, useful previews and filtering suited to the task.
Output
An inspectable result list
- 04
Open and improve
Send users to authoritative material and review permitted feedback about missed or irrelevant results.
Output
Source access and relevance-improvement evidence
Controls across the workflow
- Source permissions
- Index updates
- Relevance evaluation
- Query-data handling
Decisions that shape the scope
- Keyword, semantic or hybrid retrieval?
- Exact identifiers and specialized terms may favor keyword retrieval, while meaning-based queries can benefit from semantic methods. Compare approaches against representative searches before choosing.
- What can appear in a preview?
- Apply access policy to titles, snippets and metadata as well as document links. Hiding the full document does not make an unauthorized excerpt acceptable.
- Does the user need a source or a generated answer?
- Search supports discovery and inspection. If users need synthesized answers, evaluate the knowledge-assistant solution and its grounding, fallback and response-review requirements separately.
Evidence before expansion
Define what better means.
These are proposed evaluation measures, not reported client results. Agree the baseline, sample and acceptance threshold before the pilot, then review the evidence with the workflow owner.
- Relevant-source discovery
- Evaluate whether known useful sources appear within the results users can reasonably inspect for representative tasks.
- Access correctness
- Test result titles, snippets, metadata and source access across roles, including restricted and removed documents.
- Freshness and task effort
- Review how updates reach the index and how much effort users need to reach the correct source, including failed searches.
Before you commit
Is this the right engagement?
Employees know the information exists but struggle to find the right document or record across repositories, terminology and access boundaries.
- What we need from you
- Approved repositories, access roles, representative search queries, known relevant sources, source update behavior and content ownership.
- How you accept the work
- Check whether representative users can find relevant sources, verify result and preview permissions, and test changed or deleted content before releasing the search experience.
- Scope & alternatives
- This use case delivers source discovery and ranked results. It does not automatically include generated answers, unrestricted repository access or correcting conflicting source content.
Capabilities
What the implementation includes
Select the relevant components after reviewing the current process, data and decision ownership.
Retrieval and result experience
Implement query handling, ranking, filters and previews that help users distinguish relevant and authoritative material.
Access and relevance validation
Test permission boundaries and representative search tasks, and define how missed results and index failures reach an owner.
Frequently asked questions
Questions before a pilot
01Is enterprise AI search the same as a knowledge assistant?
Is enterprise AI search the same as a knowledge assistant?
No. This page focuses on ranked sources and discovery. A knowledge assistant synthesizes answers from retrieved material and requires separate checks for response support and fallback behavior.
02Can semantic search replace keyword search?
Can semantic search replace keyword search?
Not for every task. Codes, identifiers and exact phrases can behave differently from conceptual queries. Compare keyword, semantic and combined approaches using your actual search examples.
03How are document permissions preserved?
How are document permissions preserved?
Map source access into the search path and test it across indexing, ranking, previews and opening results. Permission changes must also be reflected through the update process.
04What happens when a document is deleted or superseded?
What happens when a document is deleted or superseded?
Define how the connector and index receive that change, how stale results are detected and who responds to update failures. Retaining a source link alone does not establish freshness.
05Which repositories can be connected?
Which repositories can be connected?
Assess the available interfaces, access rules, content formats and change notifications for each source. The initial scope should identify supported repositories and any gaps requiring a separate connector.
Start a conversation
Start with one task worth improving.
Share the current steps, representative inputs and the person who owns the decision. We will help define an implementation scope and an acceptance test.