- Question. What do I do if I do not get the desired results from my KB?
Answer. Analyze the performance of your KB file using Banter Workbench. For more information, see the Banter documentation. To locate the Banter documentation, see Banter Documentation.
- Question. If I import a new KB that has some of the same categories, what happens to my existing categories?
Answer. After you import a new KB, new categories are appended to the categories list in the Categories Administration screen. Existing categories are not overwritten or deleted and you do not lose the associations of templates and solutions with a category. For new categories, you must associate templates and solutions. For more information, see Associating Templates and Solutions with Categories.
- Question. What does the term bootstrapping mean, and when do I do this?
Answer. Bootstrapping is a method of training that allows the KB file to learn gradually as Smart Answer processes requests, and agents select templates and solutions associated with categories. You can use this training method when you start with an untrained KB file that contains categories. Use this method when your corpus does not contain emails for all your categories and you need to get the KB into production quickly.
For example, you want to create a time-sensitive category for information about a new promotion that you created after you trained the initial KB. You do not have existing emails to use for training the new category.
You cannot retrain your entire KB because the retrain operation erases your statistics. Therefore, you must add the category in two locations, as follows:
- Question. How long does it take a category to learn?
Answer. Learning time depends on the volume of incoming requests. Learning time can take from two hours to two days.
- Question. How do I change Smart Answer to return more or fewer than five categories?
Answer. Smart Answer assigns a confidence score to the five highest-scoring categories and these categories appear at the top of the categories list in the Outgoing Message form in the Communications Detail Response view.
You can override the default value for the number of categories that appear in the server component parameters for Smart Answer Manager server component. Navigate to the Server Administration screen > Server Components view, then query for Smart Answer Manager server component. Click the Component Parameters tab and query for the Maximum Number of Categories parameter. You can set the value for the number of returned categories in the Current Value field.
- Question. Which has a higher priority, the keyword or the learning in the KB?
Answer. The keyword has the higher priority. Keyword matches override any statistical modeling or intent analysis that Smart Answer does. That is why you must only use keywords when you are sure that you want to categorize an email a certain way, regardless of the intent of the email. Otherwise, use the NLP of Smart Answer to determine the intent.
NOTE: Banter refers to keyword matches as rules.
- Question. The KB file has not been updated since it was imported to the Siebel Server for production. How can this file contain learning if it has not been updated?
Answer. The learning is stored in memory at first, so initially you do not see the size of the KB file increase. The file is updated at specified intervals that you can set. There is a component parameter on the Smart Answer Manager server component called KB Write Back Interval. This is where you specify the number of feedback messages required before the memory copy is written back to the file. The default state is set at 100, so after 100 emails or messages where feedback has been sent, the KB is updated on the file system. Before the write back, you access the memory copy of the KB.
To locate the KB Write Back Interval parameter, navigate to the Administration - Server Configuration screen > Servers list > Components view. Query for the Smart Answer Manager component, then click on the Parameters tab. Query for the KB Write Back Interval parameter.
- Question. My KB has been working in a production environment for some time. How can I analyze the performance of my KB with all the learning and feedback that has occurred in production?
Answer. After you run Smart Answer for a sufficient amount of time, you can copy the .kb file from the \cms directory to the folder where your Banter Workbench project is for the initial creation of the KB. Open the project in Banter Workbench, then point to this KB and run the Banter Workbench reports to see the performance of your production KB. You can also create more messages and run Analyze only on those selected messages. The match statistics against the categories show you the performance of your production KB.
You can also start a new project, point to the new KB, and import your corpus from your existing project folder where you created the KB.
NOTE: Make a copy of your KB before you load the KB back into Banter Workbench for analysis.
- Question. After training the KB with additional sample emails, can I load the KB back into production without rebooting the server? Also, can I do this during operations or running, or must I wait until after business hours?
Answer. You can update existing categories while the KB is in production within your Siebel system. Send in an email, select the appropriate category, click the Send button and positive feedback is applied to a category. The learning process occurs in real time.
To add a new category, use Banter Workbench. Apply learning to the category that you want to add. Copy the new KB file to the \cms directory. Add the new category in Catalog Administration screen for the KB.
You do not need to reimport the KB. The reimport process loads the categories in the database. As long as the categories in your .kb on the Siebel File System match exactly the categories in your catalog in the Siebel application, there is no reason to reimport.
Similarly, you do not have to stop and start the Siebel Server. When you restart the Siebel Server, the Smart Answer Manager server component reloads the KB file. You do not need to restart the Siebel Server because the .kb file name has not changed.
If you want Smart Answer to point to a completely different KB with completely different categories, then it might be easier to reimport than to create a structure in the Siebel Server and that same structure in KB Editor.
If the name of your .kb file changes, reimport the KB so that Smart Answer Component picks up the correct KB. You must also stop and start the Siebel Server. Restart the Siebel Server during nonbusiness hours to avoid disruption.
- Question. If I import the same KB again, do I have to associate all the solutions and response templates with the categories again?
Answer. No. If you load the KB again, and it has the same categories as the one already in your Siebel File System, the solutions and response templates associated with the old KB categories remain associated with the new imported KB categories. However, if you add a new category to your KB, then you need to associate new templates and solutions to this new category.
- Question. How does the KB handle a message with multiple intents?
Answer. When an agent replies to an email, the agent can choose more than one category, template, or solution. Smart Answer suggests categories and the agent can choose one or more categories, and one or more templates and solutions that are associated with each category. When the agent clicks Send, feedback is generated and then stored in the KB file for each category associated with the templates and solutions selected by the agent.
- Question. How many emails do you need to train a category?
Answer. At least five for each category. To fully train a KB file, use between 15 and 20 emails for each category.
