Comprehensive Guide to Setting Up a Katara Q&A Agent
Introduction to Katara AI
Katara AI is a powerful platform that enhances team productivity, manages communities, and streamlines content production through customizable AI agents and workflows. The Q&A agent is one of the core features that allows you to automate community support by answering questions based on your organization's knowledge base.
Understanding Katara Q&A Agent
The Q&A agent in Katara leverages Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to provide accurate, context-aware responses to user queries. Here's how it works:
Corpus Building: The agent draws information from your data collections (corpus), which can include technical documentation, website content, blogs, code repositories, and more.
Confidence Scoring: When a question is asked, the agent generates a confidence score based on how well it can answer the question using your available data.
Automated Response: Based on your configured threshold, the agent will either:
Provide an immediate response if confidence is high
Route the question to a designated channel for manual review if confidence is low
Citations: Responses include sources, allowing users to verify information or explore topics in greater depth.
Prerequisites
Before setting up your Q&A agent, you'll need:
An invitation code to create your Katara organization
Admin access to your Discord server
Documentation, content, or data for your knowledge base
Step-by-Step Setup Guide
1. Create Your Organization
Navigate to the Katara platform and enter your invitation code
Name your organization and assign seats for team members
Complete the initial setup process
2. Build Your Knowledge Corpus
Before your Q&A agent can provide helpful responses, you need to load data into your corpus:
From your dashboard, navigate to the "Data Loader" section
Select the appropriate loader for your content source:
GitBook Loader: For GitBook documentation
GitHub Loader: For markdown and text files in repositories
Website Loader: For content from your website
Discord Loader: For historical conversations from Discord
Configure each loader with the appropriate URLs or credentials
Set your refresh rate to keep information current
Wait for the initial data load to complete
Note: The quality of your Q&A agent's responses depends directly on the quality and comprehensiveness of your corpus. Make sure to include all relevant documentation.
3. Create Your Q&A Agent
Once your corpus is built, you can set up the Q&A agent:
Navigate to "AI Workflows" in your dashboard
Select "Community Support" or "Questions and Answers (Q&A)" workflow
Click "Create New" to start the configuration process
Follow the configuration wizard to set up your agent:
Name your agent
Select the corpus/collections to use as knowledge sources
Configure the tone and response style
Set confidence thresholds for automated responses
Add any excluded topics or blocklisted terms
4. Connect to Discord
Continue through the setup process until you reach the Discord integration section
Click the provided link to authorize the Katara bot in your Discord server
Select the Discord server where you want to deploy the agent
Grant the necessary permissions for the bot to function
5. Register Your Bot
Once the bot is added to your server, you'll receive a one-time registration key
In your Discord server, send the command :katara.register <your_registration_key> in the channel where you want to register the bot
Return to the Katara setup wizard and click "Verify Agent Registration"
You should see an "Ok" confirmation if registration was successful
6. Configure Channel Settings
After successful registration, you can configure which channels the agent will monitor and respond in:
Navigate to your agent's settings in the "AI Workflows" tab
Under the Discord integration section, you'll see a list of channels
For each channel, you can:
Enable/disable monitoring (by default, all channels except the registration channel are disabled)
Enable/disable responses
Select which Q&A agent to use for responses
Configure whether to send messages when confidence thresholds aren't met
Add channel-specific tags
7. Advanced Configuration
For more precise control over your agent's behavior, you can adjust:
Confidence Threshold: Set the minimum confidence score required for automated responses
Tone of Voice: Configure how formal or casual your agent's responses should be
Exclude/Block List: Add topics or terms that the agent should not respond to
Tags: Apply tags to organize and filter your agent's data collection
8. Using Discord Commands
Once your agent is active, users can interact with it using the following commands:
Command
Function
:katara.register <one_time_password>
Register an agent in your server
:katara.config
Print configuration information
:katara.load
Load the last 100 messages in a channel
:katara.ask <question>
Ask the agent a question directly
9. Monitoring and Improvement
To ensure your Q&A agent provides the best possible support:
Regularly review the agent's logs in the Katara dashboard
Monitor questions that fall below the confidence threshold
Update your documentation to address common questions or gaps in knowledge
Refresh your corpus periodically to ensure information remains current
Troubleshooting
Agent Not Responding: Ensure the bot has proper permissions in Discord and the channel is enabled for responses
Low Quality Answers: Check your corpus quality and consider adding more comprehensive documentation
Registration Issues: Verify you're using the correct one-time password and have admin permissions in the Discord server
Related Workflows
To enhance your Q&A capabilities, consider these complementary Katara workflows:
Content Improvement with Gap Analysis: Identify and fill gaps in your documentation
Community Analytics: Understand what topics your community discusses most frequently
Topic Classifier: Organize questions and content into meaningful categories
Resources
For more information about Katara and its capabilities:
