Assembled's Email Knowledge Agent automatically evaluates incoming customer emails and, when appropriate, generates and sends a reply using your company's knowledge base — no human agent required.

### Knowledge Access

The Knowledge Agent has access to all documents in your company's knowledge base. Knowledge scope is configured per company and can be set to:

- **External only** - The agent uses only customer-facing help center articles
- **Internal + External** - The agent can use both internal documentation and external articles to inform its response (note: even when using internal sources, the agent will not expose internal-only content directly to customers)

## Configuration

The Knowledge Agent is configured under [**AI support → Email agent**](https://app.assembledhq.com/automations/email?selectedTab=automated-knowledge-answers) in the Assembled app.

### Activation Status

Control how broadly the agent is deployed:

- **Fully Active** - Enabled for all eligible incoming emails
- **Gradual Rollout** - Active for a defined percentage of eligible emails
- **Limited Rollout** - Active for a defined number of eligible emails

Start with a limited or gradual rollout to build confidence before going fully active.

### Operation Mode

Choose how the agent's responses are handled:

- **Automated** - Responses are sent automatically without human review
- **Agent Review** - Drafted responses are surfaced to agents for review before sending
- **Quality Review** - Responses are held for QA review before sending

Use Agent Review or Quality Review when first enabling the agent to validate response quality before going fully automated.

### Case Filters

Limit which emails the Knowledge Agent handles using the same filter logic available for workflows — by tag, brand, channel, ticket status, and more. Only emails matching your configured filters will be considered.

Use case filters to start narrow (e.g., a single topic or channel) and expand coverage over time.

### Custom Instructions

Custom instructions allow you to define specific criteria for when the agent should or should not respond (e.g., skip emails related to billing disputes or VIP customers).

**Note:** Custom instructions run _after_ a response is generated, not before. This means the agent will still draft a response for filtered categories — it just won't send it. You can review what the response would have looked like in QA Review, which is useful for validating your filters.

## How an Email Goes from Received to Auto-Sent

Every incoming email follows this path:

1. **Workflow check** - The email runs through workflow selection first. If a matching workflow is found, it's handled there. The Knowledge Agent only steps in if no workflow applies.
2. **Eligibility check** - The system checks whether the email should be handled by the Knowledge Agent based on your activation settings and case filters. Custom instructions are not evaluated yet.
3. **Intent assessment** - The agent evaluates the email to decide whether to generate a response or pass entirely (as if no automation was triggered). Some emails — like those that are ambiguous or highly complex — are intentionally skipped at this stage.
4. **Response generation** - If the agent proceeds, it searches your knowledge base and generates a reply grounded in relevant content.
5. **Quality checks** - The draft goes through a series of safety and quality guardrails before sending:
   - Some checks attempt to auto-fix issues and regenerate the response
   - Others immediately flag the draft as ineligible to send
   - Custom instructions are also evaluated here
   - ✅ **Passes all checks** → email is sent automatically
   - ❌ **Fails a check** → email is not sent, but the draft is available in **QA Review** so you can inspect what was generated and why it was skipped

## Relationship to Workflows

**Workflows always take priority.** The Knowledge Agent only handles emails that don't match any active workflow. Use this to your advantage — configure workflows for your highest-priority or most-structured cases, and let the Knowledge Agent handle the rest.

_Questions about enabling Knowledge Answers for your account? Reach out to your AI Deployment Strategist._