Fack answers frequently asked questions using Generative AI.
Here is an example:
Use Cases
At Salesforce, we use fack for internal Q&A. We feed documents and summarized slack threads to fack.
In some channels, we see up to 40% of our support requests receive helpful answers from fack.
We are experiementing with other use cases like:
Improving incident resolution by quickly finding suggested solutions
Translating between query languages
Almost any RAG-based solution can be quickly implmented in fack.
Why is it Called Fack?
The term FAQ, or Frequently Asked Questions, is often pronounced fack.
Inspiration
Fack is built on the principles outlined by OpenAI for question/answer applications in documents like:
Reuse your documents across multiple systems.
Need a Q/A interface? Done. Need to provide answers in a chat bot? Done.
Shared AI Knowledge
Working with LLMs is deceptively complex.
Vector embeddings, token counting, effective prompting all require thought to make effective use of LLMs.
By having a shared service, you can have one service to manage retrieval-augmented search and ask queries.
Deduplication
When managing thousands of documents, managing documents is difficult. Are there duplicates? What are the groups of documents?
Document Grouping
All documents are not equal. You have different groups within your company and organization. Different teams need to manage their documents.
Visibilty may be an issue.
Principles
Open Source. This should be reusable as far as possible. Nothing in the tool should be hardcoded to Salesforce or any team in Salesforce. The tool has clear deployment and development instructions.
API first. The end user interactions will likely happen through other bots and applications. So, the service should be API first.
Multi-tenant. Different teams should be able to share the same technology, without mixing their data.
Design
Data Flow
Why Search is Better than Fine-tuning
The OpenAI doc outlines the reasons why search/retrieval is typically better than fine-tuning.
"Fine-tuning is better suited to teaching specialized tasks or styles, and is less reliable for factual recall."
Search/retrival enables more reliable source citation. We can provide specific documents with urls/names to the GPT and require references to the documents used for answering the question. In fine-tuning, the original source is most likely lost or unavailable.
Set TEST_PASSWORD to an 8+ character string with a number, uppercase letter and special character. '2Testai!' as an example.
Create a .env file in the root directory. Provide these variables.
# LLM AUTH. You need to provide an OpenAI Key or a Salesforce Einstein Org
## OpenAI key from https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys
OPENAI_API_KEY=<openai token>
## OR Salesforce Einstein credentials from your Org
SALESFORCE_CONNECT_ORG_URL=
SALESFORCE_CONNECT_CLIENT_ID=
SALESFORCE_CONNECT_CLIENT_SECRET=
SALESFORCE_CONNECT_USERNAME=
SALESFORCE_CONNECT_PASSWORD=
# i.e. https://fack.yourdomain.com or http://localhost:3000 Used to generate URLs in the answers.
ROOT_URL=
## SAML/SSO Metadata URL (OPTIONAL)
SSO_METADATA_URL=
## Max number of document tokens to send to the GPT prompt. (OPTIONAL)
MAX_PROMPT_DOC_TOKENS=
## Max tokens to send in the prompt (OPTIONAL, DEFAULT 10,000)
EGPT_MAX_TOKENS=
## Which OpenAI model to use. (OPTIONAL)
EGPT_GEN_MODEL=
## Disable Password Login if you have SSO enabled. (OPTIONAL)
DISABLE_PASSWORD_LOGIN=<true/false>
Open a new terminal and start the Background job for AI Calls
rake jobs:work
You should see:
[Worker(host:host.something.com pid:89737)] Starting job worker
POST/api/v1/questionsCreate a new Question (Ask AI for answer)
Parameters
name
type
data type
description
question
required
text
The question to ask of the documentation
library_ids_included
optional
comma separated ids (reference to library)
The libraries to limit the answers
Responses
http code
content-type
response
201
text/plain;charset=UTF-8
JSON Object
400
application/json
{"code":"400","message":"Bad Request"}
Example cURL
curl-XPOST-H"Authorization: Bearer <token>"-H"Content-Type: application/json"-d'{"question": { "question" : "how do i setup falcon?", library_ids_included: ["1"] }}' http://localhost:3000/api/v1/questions
{"id": 226,"question": "how do i setup falcon?","status":"generating","answer": "# ANSWER\nTo set up Falcon, you need to install the Falcon CLI. Here are the steps to install the Falcon CLI:\n\n1. For macOS users, install the Falcon CLI with brew:\n ```\n brew tap sfdc-falcon/cli git[@git.soma.salesforce.com:sfdc-falcon/>homebrew-cli.git](https://git.soma.salesforce.com/git.soma.salesforce.com:sfdc-falcon/homebrew-cli.git)\n brew install falcon-cli\n ```\n\n2. For Linux users, install the Falcon CLI with `curl`:\n ```\n curl -sSL https://sfdc.co/get-falcon-cli | bash\n ```\n\n3. Verify that you've successfully installed the CLI by logging in:\n ```\n falcon login\n ```\n\nYou can find more information about setting up the Falcon CLI in the [Install the Falcon Command Line Interface (CLI)](https://git.soma.salesforce.com/tech-enablement/falcon-paved-path/blob/main/install-falcon-cli.md) document.\n\n# SOURCES\n- [Install the Falcon Command Line Interface (CLI)](https://git.soma.salesforce.com/tech-enablement/falcon-paved-path/blob/main/install-falcon-cli.md)","created_at": "2023-11-03T17:28:43.625Z","updated_at": "2023-11-03T17:28:43.625Z","library_ids_included": ["1"],"url": "http://localhost:3000/questions/226.json"}
GET/api/v1/questions/_id_Retrieve Question
Parameters
name
type
data type
description
Responses
name
type
data type
description
question
text
The question to ask of the documentation
status
pending, generating, generated, failed
The status of the generated answer. Poll every 5 seconds until the status is generated or failed.
able_to_answer
boolean
Was the GPT able to generate an answer? (true/false)
{"id": 226,"question": "how do i setup falcon?","status":"generated","answer": "# ANSWER\nTo set up Falcon, you need to install the Falcon CLI. Here are the steps to install the Falcon CLI:\n\n1. For macOS users, install the Falcon CLI with brew:\n ```\n brew tap sfdc-falcon/cli git[@git.soma.salesforce.com:sfdc-falcon/>homebrew-cli.git](https://git.soma.salesforce.com/git.soma.salesforce.com:sfdc-falcon/homebrew-cli.git)\n brew install falcon-cli\n ```\n\n2. For Linux users, install the Falcon CLI with `curl`:\n ```\n curl -sSL https://sfdc.co/get-falcon-cli | bash\n ```\n\n3. Verify that you've successfully installed the CLI by logging in:\n ```\n falcon login\n ```\n\nYou can find more information about setting up the Falcon CLI in the [Install the Falcon Command Line Interface (CLI)](https://git.soma.salesforce.com/tech-enablement/falcon-paved-path/blob/main/install-falcon-cli.md) document.\n\n# SOURCES\n- [Install the Falcon Command Line Interface (CLI)](https://git.soma.salesforce.com/tech-enablement/falcon-paved-path/blob/main/install-falcon-cli.md)","created_at": "2023-11-03T17:28:43.625Z","updated_at": "2023-11-03T17:28:43.625Z","url": "http://localhost:3000/questions/226.json"}
GET/api/v1/questionsList Questions
Parameters
name
type
data type
description
page
optional
integer
The page number to retrieve. Defaults to 1.
Responses
name
type
data type
description
questions
array
An array of question objects, each containing question details
Each object in the questions array includes:
name
type
data type
description
id
integer
The ID of the question
question
text
The content of the question
status
text
The status of the question (e.g., generated)
answer
text
The answer to the question
url
text
URL to access the question
created_at
datetime
The creation date and time of the question
updated_at
datetime
The last update date and time of the question
http code
content-type
response
200
application/json
JSON array of questions
400
application/json
{"code":"400","message":"Bad Request"}
Example cURL
curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" "http://localhost:3000/api/v1/questions"
{"questions": [{"id": 226,"question": "how do i setup a new service?","status": "generated","answer": "# ANSWER\nTo set up ...","created_at": "2023-11-03T17:28:43.625Z","updated_at": "2023-11-03T17:28:43.625Z","url": "http://localhost:3000/questions/226.json"},{"id": 227,"question": "how do i use gen ai?","status": "generated","answer": "# ANSWER\n...","url": "http://localhost:3000/questions/227.json","created_at": "2023-11-14T01:55:11.731Z","updated_at": "2024-03-01T22:58:55.865Z"}]}
Documents
POST/api/v1/documentsCreate a new Document
Parameters
name
type
data type
description
document
required
text
The content of the document. 10,000 token limit.
title
required
text
The title of the document
library_id
required
text
The ID of the library to which this document will be added
external_id
optional
text
A unique ID provided by the client. If a POST request includes the same external_id as an existing record, the record will be updated instead of created.
Example POST Data
Make sure you have the top level "document" attribute.
"document": {"document": "Restart your computer to fix it.","title": "How to fix a computer","library_id": 23,}
curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" http://localhost:3000/api/v1/documents/<id>
{
"id": 1,
"document": "# QUESTION\nHow do I use gen ai?\n\n# ANSWER\n...",
"title": "How do I use GenAI?",
"url": "http://localhost:3000/documents/1",
"length": 97,
"created_at": "2023-11-14T01:55:11.731Z",
"updated_at": "2024-03-01T22:58:55.865Z"
}
GET/api/v1/documentsList Documents
Parameters
name
type
data type
description
page
optional
integer
The page number to retrieve. Defaults to 1.
Responses
name
type
data type
description
documents
array
An array of document objects, each containing document details
Each object in the documents array includes:
name
type
data type
description
id
integer
The ID of the document
document
text
The content of the document
title
text
The title of the document
url
text
URL to access the document
created_at
datetime
The creation date and time of the document
updated_at
datetime
The last update date and time of the document
http code
content-type
response
200
application/json
JSON array of documents
400
application/json
{"code":"400","message":"Bad Request"}
Example cURL
curl -X GET -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" "http://localhost:3000/api/v1/documents?page=1"
{"documents": [{"id": 1,"document": "# QUESTION\nHow do I use gen ai?\n\n# ANSWER\nThere is no direct answer provided in the conversation.","url": "http://localhost:3000/documents/1","created_at": "2023-11-14T01:55:11.731Z","updated_at": "2024-03-01T22:58:55.865Z"},{"id": 2,"document": "# QUESTION\nHow do I integrate API?\n\n# ANSWER\nTo integrate an API, first identify the API you need to integrate with...","url": "http://localhost:3000/documents/2","created_at": "2023-12-14T02:55:11.731Z","updated_at": "2024-01-02T23:58:55.865Z"}...]}