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Tutorial: Add PDFs and Q&A Pairs to Your Bot

Not all your knowledge lives on a website. Product manuals, policy documents, and FAQs might be in PDF files or simply in your team’s heads. This tutorial shows you how to add PDFs and manual Q&A entries to your bot’s knowledge base.

Time needed: About 10 minutes.

What you’ll learn:

  • How to upload PDF documents as a knowledge source
  • How to create manual Q&A entries
  • How to combine multiple source types in a single bot

Add a PDF source

Section titled “Add a PDF source”
  1. Go to Knowledge Base in the sidebar.
  2. Click ”+ Add Source”.
  3. Choose PDF.
  4. Upload one or more PDF files. You can drag and drop or use the file picker.
  5. Give the source a name (e.g., “Product Manual” or “Policy Documents”).
  6. Click Upload.

ChatbotIQ extracts text from each page and indexes it. Each PDF page counts as one indexed page toward your plan’s limit.

Tip: If your PDF is a scanned document (basically an image of text), the text extraction may be limited. PDFs with actual text content work best.

Manage PDF pages

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After uploading, you can:

  • View the indexed pages for each PDF.
  • Delete individual pages you don’t want indexed.
  • Add more PDFs to the same source at any time.

Add Q&A entries

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Q&A entries are manually created question-and-answer pairs. They’re perfect for:

  • Frequently asked questions that aren’t on your website
  • Specific answers you want the bot to give
  • Filling knowledge gaps that Analytics identifies
  • Company policies or information that lives in people’s heads

Create Q&A entries one by one

Section titled “Create Q&A entries one by one”
  1. Go to Knowledge Base → ”+ Add Source” → Q&A.
  2. Give the source a name (e.g., “FAQs” or “Common Questions”).
  3. For each entry, type:
    • Question: The question a user might ask (e.g., “What are your business hours?”).
    • Answer: The answer you want the bot to give (e.g., “We’re open Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm CET. Weekend support is available via email.”).
  4. Click Add to save each entry.

Bulk import from CSV

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Have a lot of Q&A pairs? Import them in bulk:

  1. Prepare a CSV file with two columns: question and answer.
  2. In the Q&A source, click Import.
  3. Upload your CSV file.

Assign sources to your bot

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Now make sure your bot knows about these new sources:

  1. Go to Bots and click Edit on your bot.
  2. In the Knowledge Sources section, make sure your new PDF and Q&A sources are selected.
  3. If your bot is set to “All sources,” it will automatically include them.

Test it

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  1. Open the Playground for your bot.
  2. Ask questions that should be answered from your PDF or Q&A content.
  3. Check the Debug panel — you should see citations pointing to your PDF pages or Q&A entries.

Q&A entries have high retrieval priority because the question directly matches what users ask. They’re a great way to ensure specific questions get specific answers.

Combining sources effectively

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Here’s a common multi-source setup:

SourceTypeContent
Help CenterWebsiteGeneral product documentation
Product ManualPDFDetailed technical specifications
FAQsQ&ATop 20 most-asked questions
Release NotesPDFWhat’s new in each version

When a user asks a question, the bot searches across all sources and uses the most relevant content, regardless of source type.

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