One of the most common uses for chatbots and smart assistants is answering questions posed by end-users. “Where is the hospital located?” “How much is my co-pay?” “What are the early signs of breast cancer?”

To answer questions like these, a bot must do a few things:

• Understand the question being asked

• Access content with information related to the question

• Find the right information in the content to answer the question

While Orbita supports several different approaches for implementing a question-answering bot, in almost all cases the recommended approach is to use Orbita Answers.

Orbita Answers uses a fact-based approach to question-answering, which means that answers to questions are drawn from a structured knowledge base of information managed within Orbita. The knowledge base organizes information by facts. A fact is simply a structured content item containing information about a specific topic. A fact also has a set of questions associated with it.

To take an example, imagine a knowledge base of first aid information. The facts within this knowledge base might cover topics such as “influenza” and “sunburn.” Within the topic of influenza, there might be multiple facts regarding treatment, symptoms, risk factors, etc.

A single fact about influenza treatment would have questions associated with it like:

• How do you treat influenza?

• How can you treat the flu?

• treatment options for the flu?