The Questions and Answers capability

Questions and Answers (Q&A) is a Sitecore Stream capability that enables your customers to ask natural language questions and receive AI-generated answers sourced from your content collection and Sitecore Search domain.

Note

This AI capability isn't fully released. The full release will:

  • Enable you to provide answers to customers on your website.

  • Harness the power of AI to provide instant, on-demand customer support.

  • Engage customers by encouraging self-service.

  • Analyze indexed questions and answers to gain valuable insights into customer preferences, needs, and emerging trends.

In preparation, you can start configuring and generating questions and answers now.

Questions and answers can be: 

  • Automatically generated from your existing content catalog.

  • Generated based on customer input, then indexed in your questions and answers collection.

  • Added or edited manually by you.

Note

This initial release supports English language only.

Enable Questions and Answers

Question and answer items are generated using your existing content catalog. When you enable Questions and Answers, you select up to five attributes from entities in your domain, and Search generates Q&A items related to these attributes when you run your first batch generation.

To enable Questions and Answers:

  1. On the menu bar, click Administration > Domain Settings > Feature Configuration and select Questions and Answers.

  2. Select an Entity from the Entity drop-down list.

  3. Click Add Attribute to select up to five attributes that Search will use to create questions and answers.

    Important

    Before generating questions and answers, ensure that textual relevance is enabled for each of these attributes.

  4. Click Save.

  5. On the Feature Configuration tab, click Publish.

Note

After enabling Questions and Answers for at least one entity, you can further configure your chosen attributes at any time. However, for your changes to take effect, you must click Publish on the Feature Configuration tab.

Generate questions and answers

After enabling Questions and Answers, you can trigger the generation of Q&A items in the Q&A Browser.

To generate questions and answers:

  1. In the Q&A Browser, click Run batch generation Circular, rotating arrows to denote the Run Batch Generation function in Search. to open the batch generation pane.

  2. Click Run Batch Generation.

After clicking Run Batch Generation, this pane will show the progress of the generation job. When there is no job actively running, the pane will show information related to the most recent generation job.

Access the Q&A Browser

After you have enabled Questions and Answers, the Q&A Browser tab provides access to various information and tools related to your questions and answers.

A screenshot of the Q&A browser.

To access it, in the menu bar, click Content Collection > Questions and Answers. The tab displays a list of Q&A items, as well as the following information:

  • KEYWORDS - AI-generated keywords related to the Q&A. They can be used to show other commonly searched keywords to your customers.

  • MANAGED BY - the source of the Q&A, either Sitecore (generated by Stream) or Manually Updated.

  • ID - the ID of the Q&A.

  • INDEXED AT - the time the Q&A was indexed.

Note

If a generated Q&A item has been edited or hidden, it will no longer show the Questions and Answers Generated From section on the edit page.

Create questions and answers manually

As well as those generated by AI, you can also manually create your own questions and answers to ensure that content displayed on your websites is comprehensive and relevant.

To create questions and answers manually:

  1. In the Q&A Browser, click Add Question and Answer.

  2. On the edit page, fill in the following fields:

    Field

    Description

    QUESTION

    Question text.

    ANSWER

    Answer text.

    KEYWORDS

    Any keywords associated with the Q&A.

  3. Click Save.

Edit questions and answers

You can edit AI generated questions, answers, and keywords at any time. This enables you to refine your customer’s experience, and deliver the results they expect.

To edit questions and answers:

  1. In the Q&A Browser, hover the mouse over a Q&A item and click Edit on the right-hand side of the page.

  2. On the edit page, make changes to the corresponding QUESTION, ANSWER, or KEYWORDS in their respective fields and click Save.

Note

Keywords in user input are not processed for textual relevance or stemming when being matched against indexed keywords. They are suited to creating related keywords experiences.

Hide questions and answers

You can hide Q&A items to ensure they are not returned in search results. Q&A items cannot be deleted, but hiding one prevents the answer from being regenerated when prompted by a customer.

To hide questions and answers:

  • in the Q&A Browser, hover the mouse over the item and click Hide on the right-hand side of the page.

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