QnA: How to Set Up and Use Knowledge With the QnA Skill

The QnA (Question & Answer) skill allows you to create a natural conversation layer over your data, answering questions asked by your users. Answers can also prompt responses from the user and contribute to a conversation.

The QnA knowledge base can contain many topics, with each topic containing many questions and answers. Alternative phrasing for a question is also available giving the administrator the ability to link a number of questions and phrases with a single answer. In addition, you can also have follow-on QnA's, as well as actions linked to them based on the question, pre-empting the user's needs and providing additional guidance.

This article shows you how to set up knowledge and the QnA skill, covering the following topics:

• Adding Knowledge
• Adding the QnA Skill to Your Assistant

Adding Knowledge

You can add knowledge in preparation of using it within your assistants by clicking the left-hand QnA link, within the main navigation. From here, you can start to add topics and question and answer pairs, including follow-ons, action links, and metadata (for use within flow).

By using topics, you can group your question and answers into logical collections. If necessary, QnA's can be moved between topics.

To create your first topic and QnA, please follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to your QnA knowledge base by clicking QnA in the left-hand column.
2. You will then need to create a new topic, click the + Add Topic button in the top-right of the page.
3. Within the popup dialogue, enter a name for your topic followed by an optional description, then click OK to create your topic.
4. Questions and Answers must exist within a topic. Click on your newly created topic.
5. From here, you can now create your first QnA by clicking the + Add button, which appears next to your topic's name.
6. Enter a question and answer for your QnA, followed by clicking the OK button. If required, there is more information about how to format your answer within the popup dialogue.
7. You should now see your QnA on the main page. From here you can:
   1. Continue adding more QnA content.
   2. Save your changes.
   3. Generate Questions; additional questions can be generated from the answer(s) you provided.
   4. Move to Topic; select a topic from the drop-down list. 
   5. Edit the QnA further, adding alternative phrasing, action links, follow-ons (if there are more QnA items), and metadata (for use in flow).
   6. Delete an existing QnA.
8. From the main QnA page, there is a Help button that will provide more information about QnA and how to optimize and test your question-and-answer content.

Adding the QnA Skill to Your Assistant

Once you have some knowledge ready, you need to make sure that information is available to your assistant. Please follow the steps below to link your knowledge topics with your assistant.

1. Navigate to your assistant. If you have not already created an assistant, please see the How to Create an Assistant page.
2. Once you are in your assistant's main page, click the Add Skill panel.
3. Click the Add Questions and Answers Skill button from the list of skills displayed.
4. Once created, select the skill to view the details. This is where your linked topics will appear.
5. To link your topics to your assistant, click the More button and select Linked Topics from the menu.
6. Using the popup dialogue, this is where you can select one or more topics so that the selected knowledge is available to users chatting with your assistant.
7. Once you have selected your desired topics, click the OK button to save your changes.
8. You will now see your selected topics appearing within the assistant's QnA skill, meaning the knowledge contained within those topics is now available to your assistant.

That's it! Your assistant now has access to knowledge, which means it can start to answer your users' questions.

For more information about managing knowledge, please view the Advanced QnA Features page.