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Populating your agent’s knowledge base

The knowledge base is the primary source of truth your agent uses to answer questions, explain policies, and guide students accurately. Strong knowledge foundations are essential for consistent agent behavior and a high-quality student experience.

This article explains what to include in your knowledge base and how to approach population thoughtfully.

⚠️ Important: every asset must have a tag applied. Every single asset you upload to the knowledge base must have at least one tag applied to it. Tags are required for your agent to correctly scope and retrieve content. If you have questions about how tags work, refer to the Knowledge base tags article. If you need further assistance with tagging, reach out to the CollegeVine Success Team at [email protected].

How the knowledge base works in CollegeVine

Agents rely on the knowledge base to ground their responses in institution-approved information. When an agent needs to explain a policy, deadline, or process, it retrieves relevant content from the knowledge you've provided.

The agent's effectiveness depends directly on the clarity, coverage, and quality of your knowledge assets.

Going about populating your agent's knowledge base

Your Knowledge section is the foundation of your AI agent's contextual knowledge. In short, it's what enables your agents(s) to make informed decisions.

It provides a central place to upload assets, schedule staff interviews, share emails, and store key information about your institution. This training data helps your agent generate accurate answers, reflect your brand voice, and engage constituents in a way that aligns with your team's expertise.

Training assets can include:

  • Websites

  • Files

  • Staff interviews

  • Previously sent email communications

File upload process tips:

  1. You can upload multiple files at once.

    • You can see all uploaded files, remove them, and add more before saving.

    • You will see a spinner while your files are uploading. Once the upload is complete, a confirmation message will appear showing the number of files successfully uploaded.

Asset essentials

Once added, your assets will have a status of "Uploaded." Once processed, your assets will be flagged as "Ready."
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Only "Ready" assets can be tested.

Only when you view and publish your changes will that asset be committed to production. The extra publish step allows you to test knowledge assets in a risk-free way!

Organizing your knowledge base with tags

Tags give you a way to organize your knowledge base assets and control which information your agent draws from in different contexts.
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What tags do
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Tags act as labels you can apply to assets in your knowledge base. Once tagged, assets can be used to scope a specific Workflow — meaning you can configure an agent to only pull from content that carries a particular tag. For example, a financial aid Workflow could be bound to a "Financial Aid" tag, ensuring it only references relevant content rather than your entire knowledge base.

Managing tags
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To create or edit a tag, go to the Knowledge Base section of your platform. You can:

  • Create new tags with a name, description, and color

  • Apply tags to assets directly from the asset table

  • Use bulk actions to select multiple assets at once, making it easier to tag, delete, or refresh a batch of content

Website assets

Websites allow your agent to learn directly from public-facing content such as admissions or student affairs pages, academic program descriptions, tuition information, and policies.

Why you will upload unique URLs

Each website will be added with its own unique URL. For example, one for application requirements, one for campus visits, one for academic programs, and so forth. Adding unique URLs ensures your agent is trained on the most up-to-date information available, and not mis-trained on orphan pages or legacy content that might surface if the agent crawled the entire website. Adding these unique URLs puts you in control of the right types of data you'd like the agent to ingest.

How the agent reads website content

The agent reads from the HTML source, not the visible page layout. This means the agent will read:

  • All text present in the page's raw HTML at the time of scraping

  • Content hidden by CSS, such as collapsed accordion sections, if the text is already in the HTML

The agent may not read:

  • Content loaded only after a user interacts with the page

  • Text inserted dynamically via JavaScript that is not part of the initial HTML

If the information you need isn't in the HTML, consider adding it as a document or including it in an interview.

Website upload tips

  1. URLs must start with http:// or https://

  2. Duplicate URLs are automatically detected

  3. Invalid inputs show a red outline + error message, and Save is disabled until fixed

How to add a website

  1. Log in to your CollegeVine account.

  2. Navigate to Knowledge.

  3. Select +New at the top right of your screen, then choose Website.

  4. Enter one or more URLs (separated by a return or comma).

  5. Click Save.

  6. Your uploaded webpage will show a status of "Ready" when it has been ingested and is ready for testing.

When adding URLs, always include the full address starting with https://.

File assets

Files allow you to upload static documents and structured data that the agent can learn from. These are helpful for policy documents, program sheets, course catalogs, fee charts, and any written guidance your institution relies on.
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Why you can upload internal documents

Because your AI agent is just learning from the content of the files, you can upload both formal/marketing-approved assets or internal documents (i.e.- internal process guide, internal training guide for new employees) that aren't intended to be outward-facing.
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Accepted file types

  • .pdf

  • .csv

  • .txt

  • .md

  • .html

How to add files

  1. Log in to your CollegeVine account.

  2. Navigate to Knowledge.

  3. Select +New at the top right of your screen, then choose Files.

  4. Upload your files and click Save.

Your uploaded fille will show a status of "Ready" when it has been ingested and is ready for testing.

Interview assets

Interview assets allow you to train your agent(s) by enabling a one-on-one conversation with a staff member. Think of it like speaking to a new employee who is eager to learn everything you know. The format is casual and flexible—you can interrupt, correct yourself, circle back, or elaborate as much as you like.

After each interview, the platform will automatically generate a summary that captures the discussion. You can review this summary, make edits, and once approved, the insights become part of your agent’s knowledge base.

How to add staff interviews

  1. Log in to your CollegeVine account.

  2. Navigate to Knowledge.

  3. Select +New at the top right of your screen, then choose Interview.

  4. In the pop-up, enter the topic(s) for the interview to cover, along with the phone number for the interview agent to call. Then press Get call to initiate the phone call.

  5. Once the call concludes, you'll see a call summary available to review at the top of the Knowledge page.

  6. Click review to see a specific interview summary. At this time you can make any edits or updates before saving it to the knowledge base.

Interview best practices

  • Feel free to interrupt. If the interviewer misses a key point, feel free to interject.

  • You can ask new questions. Your AI interviewer can generate them instantly.

  • There’s no time limit. Take your time to ensure thorough and complete responses.

  • Don’t worry about being perfect. The call will be summarized and you can make edits.

Interview FAQ

Can I schedule interviews in advance?

Not at this time. The interview occurs immediately when you select Get Call.

Is it my agent that's conducting the interview?

No, this agent is a separate interview-focused agent maintained by CollegeVine. It will not sound or act like your agent, so don't be surprised if you hear a different voice!

Email Trainer

The Email Trainer is a tool that lets you send past and current marketing emails to your agent's knowledge base. The agent analyzes the tone, structure, and messaging strategies to learn how your institution communicates, helping it generate aligned and consistent content.

How to use the email trainer

  1. Log in to your CollegeVine account.

  2. Navigate to Knowledge.

  3. Click the 3-dot menu next to your changes and select Email trainer

  4. The first box shows the unique email address for your knowledge base. This is where you should send any materials you wish the agent to ingest.

  5. Next, add Allowed senders to the tool. To protect the integrity of your knowledge base, the agent will only ingest emails sent from the address(es) added here.

  6. Press Save to save the allowed senders.

  7. Once you begin forwarding emails, you can see them under the knowledge base using filters.

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