# Business AI assistant and published knowledge

**Availability:** this guide describes the Business Assistant pilot. It requires an enabled workspace and a deployed release. Production activation is separate from code publication. The workspace web dashboard supports English, Turkish, German, Spanish and French; native management currently uses English.

A company can answer questions on its existing website without adding products or publishing an Incele website. Retailers can retain product tools, and mixed businesses can combine approved business information with current catalogue facts.

## Find your next step in Business setup

The web workspace’s **Business setup** page brings together your public profile, knowledge library, customer channels and workspace preferences. Its checklist shows saved publication, assistant availability and observed channel connection status. These milestones are independent: turning the assistant on does not publish content or verify an installation.

**Business setup** is the normal first page when you enter a workspace. Existing detail links, notifications and connection approvals still open their destination. The page separates required, recommended and optional steps, shows real publication/channel status and links directly to the work that is missing. Optional steps do not reduce required-step progress. A connection that later fails can need attention again.

The workspace navigation is organized by task:

| Group | Pages |
| --- | --- |
| Business Assistant | Business Setup; Business Information; AI Knowledge Hub |
| Commerce, when enabled | Control Panel; Inventory; Collections; Tags; Orders; Customer Questions; Actions; Automations |
| Integrations | Connections; AI Chatbot |

Account, billing and workspace settings remain independently accessible. **Business Information** manages company identity and contacts. **AI Knowledge Hub** manages articles, FAQs and private-document sources. Each keeps its own Save and Publish actions. Existing profile and knowledge links open the corresponding page. **Connections** lists Messaging first, Stores and marketplaces second, and API/MCP connections third. **AI Chatbot** keeps website installation and appearance settings.

**Assistant settings** is always visible in Business setup. Experience and assistant features use separate selectable cards: an assistant without a hosted website does not require an address or template. The website-preview widget has been removed; hosted website editing/publication remains in the existing website tools. Optional company links, locations/hours and facts can be expanded. Source search and publication/type/language filters apply only to the current workspace; publication and deletion require deliberate actions.

### Commerce control panel and metric scope

The **E-Commerce Setup** retains the four catalogue cards: **Products**, **Active products**, **Inactive** and **Out of stock**. They open the corresponding Inventory view. These are workspace catalogue totals, independent of the operational store and period filters.

Operational cards show locally observed orders and customer questions per supported connected store. Use the Period and Store filters to inspect observations; the stored reporting time zone is shown and defaults to UTC until configured. New-order/question counts use the selected calendar period, while pending orders and unanswered questions describe the current observed backlog. Calendar boundaries account for daylight saving changes.

These are **partial cached observations, not complete marketplace sales totals**. The control panel does not fetch providers, start synchronization, generate reports or spend AI credits. It shows observation timestamps and separates missing permission, unsupported metrics, no synchronization, connection problems and genuine observed zero. One store's missing data is not silently added as zero to another store's total. Provider creation or synchronization time does not prove when a question was answered; unavailable native answer-period totals are displayed as unsupported.

Customer questions opens supported product/post-order question views. Actions opens return workflows, and Orders remains read-only. Only documented provider features and explicitly granted permissions are available; an Incele permission cannot create an unsupported provider endpoint. See [marketplace connections](/marketplaces/).

### Automations

Commerce **Automations** opens a single card with **Answer Customer Questions with AI** and **Daily AI Insights** tabs. Each feature has its own store tabs. Customer-question permissions and saved revisions remain specific to the selected store. In Daily AI Insights, store inclusion and topics are independent; the schedule, report language, daily credit limit and report history apply to the whole workspace. Save applies your current choices across stores. Switching tabs preserves unsaved choices and never enables an automation. Daily report notification links still open their report. AI drafting, sending mode, selected stores/topics, language, credit caps and explicit Save remain separate choices. Merely opening this page does not enable anything or send a reply. General knowledge answers over WhatsApp/Telegram remain independent of Commerce.

## Choose an experience and capabilities

During workspace creation choose **AI assistant — no website required** or **Hosted website and assistant**. Assistant-only creation asks for the workspace name and capabilities, with an optional business category. It does not ask for a public subdomain, existing website URL, hosted template, billing phone or DNS configuration. Messaging-only businesses do not need a website. An internal routing key is managed by the platform; the workspace ID is the stable identity.

Review two independent capabilities. If omitted in API creation, Assistant-only defaults to Knowledge on / Commerce off, while Hosted defaults to Commerce on / Knowledge off. Explicit choices always take precedence:

| Capability | Visitor experience |
| --- | --- |
| Commerce | Product discovery, product questions and specialized shopping tools. An empty catalogue does not disable Commerce. |
| Knowledge | General questions grounded in the published Business Profile, articles, FAQs and reviewed document text. |

Category is optional descriptive information. It does not grant permissions, enable capabilities or publish anything. Disabling a capability retains content for inspection and re-enabling. Pure Knowledge workspaces hide retail navigation; an empty Commerce workspace retains **Add first product**. Existing marketplace connections retain their management/recovery path even when visitor Commerce is off. Disabling Commerce requires confirmation and pauses automatic marketplace AI replies and daily store insights. It does not disconnect stores, delete content or change granted marketplace permissions; existing read synchronization can continue. Re-enabling Commerce does not restart those automations: review and explicitly enable them separately. Connection recovery remains accessible in Connections.

**Assistant available** and hosted-site publication are separate settings. An existing website can use the assistant while the hosted website is unpublished.

## Publish a public Business Profile

Open **Business Information**. Enter your public business name, a short factual description, approved support contacts, HTTPS links, locations, hours and public facts. Detailed service and project descriptions belong in **AI Knowledge Hub**.

1. Choose **Save draft**.
2. Review the saved version.
3. Choose **Publish saved draft** and confirm.

Draft edits do not change live answers. The editor shows unsaved edits separately from saved changes that have not been published. Save before publishing; a conflict requires reviewing the newer saved version. The current publication can be inspected independently of the draft. Account-owner identity, billing email, receipt details and private account information are not copied into this profile. Never enter credentials, private customer data or confidential internal policies in content intended for publication.

Website contacts and assistant channels use the same published profile. SEO remains independently editable. A website may explicitly select **WEBSITE_OVERRIDE** for its contact presentation; that override does not change the assistant’s approved business facts.

## Add articles and FAQs

In **AI Knowledge Hub**, choose **New article or FAQ**. Give each source a clear public title and source language. FAQs include a question and its answer. Optional search keywords can include synonyms, alternate spellings and technical names.

Save, review, then explicitly publish. A source can have a private edited draft while its last published revision remains live. Publishing selects the new validated revision atomically. Unpublishing or deleting immediately prevents new answers and citation links from using that publication; already delivered information cannot be recalled.

## Upload private documents

Choose **Upload document**, a public source title and a source language. Supported originals are valid UTF-8 TXT/Markdown and text-based PDFs. Uploads are not sent to an AI model for extraction.

| Initial allowance | Limit |
| --- | --- |
| Sources | 50 per workspace |
| Source text | 20,000 Unicode characters, including the FAQ question and separator when present |
| Current published source text | 250,000 characters per workspace |
| Original file | 2 MB |
| PDF | 25 pages; every page must contain extractable text |
| Private originals | 30 MB per workspace |
| Concurrent uploads / processing jobs | 2 of each per workspace |
| Accepted uploads | 40 per UTC day; at most 100 retained originals |
| Processing attempts | 40 per UTC day, including retries |

Scanned, encrypted, corrupt, unsupported or oversized files are rejected. OCR, website crawling and automatic website ingestion are not available.

The original remains private. Extraction produces a draft for owner review, not a publication. Review the extracted text, correct it if necessary, save and explicitly publish. Published text may be quoted publicly even though the original file is private. A failed replacement leaves the previous published text available.

The source library offers local search and type/publication filters. Document states distinguish queued work, extraction, review, failed processing and pending cleanup. **File activity** groups uploads that are processing or need attention, with retry and cleanup controls. **Storage and limits** holds the detailed allowances. Diagnostic codes are secondary; a failed extraction never publishes text. Retry only after addressing the problem. Interrupted uploads require cleanup attention; they are not described as deleted until cleanup finishes. Replacing or deleting content does not reset processing or search usage.

## Test, install and verify

For a **website channel**, open **Business setup**:

1. Publish a profile or knowledge source.
2. Test a supported answer.
3. Configure an exact allowed website origin in **AI Chatbot**.
4. Select **Business Assistant** and install the existing HTML, Shopify or ikas loader.
5. Ask a question from the installed assistant. An eligible, verified embed request updates the observed installation milestone.

Copying the script alone does not verify installation. Readiness is tied to current published content and channel configuration: changing a source or replacing an origin requires a new applicable test. These website checks are not prerequisites for Telegram or WhatsApp. Assistant-only readiness does not depend on collections, tags, extra images, a skin questionnaire or hosted-site publication. See [chatbot installation](/chatbot/), [Shopify](/shopify/) and [ikas](/ikas/).

## How answers and citations work

The general assistant searches only current published content in the selected workspace. When Commerce is enabled it can also use eligible current product facts. It has no browsing, administration, checkout or write tools.

Answers are buffered while the application checks citations and claim support. A citation links to a current publication-checked excerpt, never a private original. Unpublished or changed evidence causes an in-progress answer or delayed native reply to be withheld. Past assistant replies are not reused as authoritative evidence.

Missing, insufficient or conflicting facts produce an honest unsupported answer and, when available, approved support routes. AI verification reduces unsupported claims but cannot guarantee correctness. Confirm important business, legal, medical or purchasing decisions with the business.

Retrieval uses keyword search plus bounded rewriting into English, Turkish, German, Spanish and French. The answer language and the source language can differ. This improves cross-language coverage without guaranteeing every paraphrase or technical term will be found. Add clear wording and relevant keywords; no semantic knowledge index is used in this pilot.

## Credits and usage

A successful general answer costs **2 Fast credits** or **4 Comprehensive credits**. Failed, unsupported or revoked web answers release their hold and create no successful-answer charge. A supported Telegram/WhatsApp answer settles once after accepted native delivery, under the existing uncertain-delivery rules.

SHARED credits are reserved first, then the trusted experience’s INCELE, SHOPIFY or IKAS paid pool. Telegram and WhatsApp use SHARED then INCELE. A request body cannot select another paid pool. Document extraction has no prepaid AI charge; its independent processing/storage allowances still apply.

Knowledge search allows 30 lookup admissions per minute and 200 per UTC day per workspace. A general request can perform an initial and a rewritten lookup. Context is bounded to 10,000 characters with at most nine evidence records and four citations. Query rewriting, answer generation and verification are separately measured.

Business setup focuses on configuration and next steps. It does not show an assistant-activity report. Credit accounting and applicable customer analytics remain separate. See [credits](/credits/) and [privacy and security](/security/).

## Telegram, WhatsApp, native and external access

[Messaging channels](/messaging/) use the same publication and retrieval services with plain-text, platform-specific responses and safe citation/contact links. Verified contacts never become owners or kiosk sessions. Existing ordering, reset/forget, reply-window and uncertain-send protections remain.

The native app provides native profile, capability, source editing, publication, document selection and processing controls. It uses workspace IDs to isolate selected-workspace requests, labels modes in plain language and hides website settings in Assistant-only mode. It does not wrap the web dashboard.

Initial knowledge management requires the current workspace owner. External clients additionally need independent `knowledge:read`, `knowledge:write` or `knowledge:publish` scopes. Product and website scopes do not grant knowledge access. Write-only clients receive minimal mutation receipts, not private source lists. Original downloads remain owner-session-only. See the generated [API reference](/developers/) for current REST/MCP schemas and revision requirements.

## Change between assistant-only and a hosted website

In **Business setup**, switching to Hosted asks for a public address and an available website template. This saves an unpublished website configuration; publishing it is a separate deliberate action. Switching a published site back to Assistant-only requires confirmation and deactivates its hosted entry points. Business content, credits and independent store/messaging connections remain available. Disabling both assistant capabilities pauses assistant availability.

## Choose a conversation mode for each messaging channel

Each connected Telegram or WhatsApp channel has its own conversation mode:

| Mode | Behavior |
| --- | --- |
| Follow workspace template | Uses the selected Business Assistant, or preserves the existing shopping journey for a Commerce workspace. Enabling Knowledge alone does not replace a shopping journey. |
| Business answers | Uses current published business information and, when Commerce is enabled, eligible product facts. Requires Knowledge availability. |
| Shopping assistant | Uses conversational product discovery and specialized shopping tools. Requires Commerce. |
| Business and shopping | Uses published business answers for general questions and the shopping flow for routine requests. Requires both capabilities. |

Changing a channel mode does not send a message, grant marketplace permissions or reconnect a store. In-progress/saved replies from a superseded channel revision are withheld rather than replayed. Language precedence remains customer language, then the actual platform language when available, then the owner’s selection for that channel, then English (US). WhatsApp does not reliably provide an app-interface locale.

## Understand usage and analytics

The assistant activity report separates owner preview tests from customer answers and distinguishes processing failures from owner cancellations. Its customer credit total excludes preview spending; previews still use the stated credits and remain in normal credit activity. Search allowances count lookup admissions, not answers: one answer may use two lookups. Model invocation counts are not token counts. Unsupported, failed, revoked and undelivered outcomes are different from supported delivered replies.

## Upload progress and recovery

Choose a private TXT, Markdown or text-based PDF using **Choose file**, then explicitly choose **Upload and extract**. You can remove the selected file before uploading. Originals remain private; extraction does not publish an answer.

**File activity** shows queued, processing, ready and failed jobs. A failed job includes recovery advice and an optional diagnostic code. **Retry processing** shows progress beside the file. The affected source’s **Review / edit** stays unavailable while extraction is queued or running; other sources remain usable. Progress updates preserve your scroll, search, filters and open sections. Retry counts toward processing allowances and never publishes the result. Review the extracted text before publishing, especially PDFs with unusual fonts or missing glyphs. Scanned PDFs still require OCR elsewhere.

## AI instructions and publishing several sources

Use [AI Instructions](../ai-instructions/) for communication preferences. Its setup review is recommended and never blocks access. In Knowledge library, use the visible publish action for one saved source, select several sources, or choose Publish all eligible sources. Review the listed saved revisions before confirming. Private originals and drafts stay private; failed items remain visible for targeted correction/retry.