Keep AI answers current with time-based knowledge articles

Your Cyber Monday offer is ready. The campaign has a launch date, a closing date, and clear terms. Your support team has all the details. Don’t forget your AI — it needs that same context, including when the offer applies.

A promotion can be accurate when someone writes it and out of date by the time a customer is interested. During the holidays, that challenge multiplies across sales, shipping deadlines, special hours, and temporary policies. So it’s crucial for teams to be able to both prep information early and keep the answers customers receive up-to-date.

Crescendo’s time-based knowledge articles give teams a validity window for that content. You can define when an article becomes eligible for use in AI answers and when that eligibility ends.

Prepare the offer before the rush

Imagine a retailer preparing a Cyber Monday promotion. The team creates a dedicated knowledge article with the offer, eligibility rules, exclusions, and answers to common questions. It sets the article’s effective dates, reviews the content, and publishes it ahead of the campaign.

With effective-date filtering enabled, supported AI searches check that window when selecting knowledge. Before the start date, the promotion article is outside its window. During the campaign, it can inform answers to questions such as “What offers do you have?” After the end date, it falls outside the window again.

The team can write the article as part of campaign planning, with its validity already defined. If the approved promotion changes or runs longer, the team can update the content and its window together. Crescendo’s Knowledge Agent can help on campaign content and propose effective-date updates, with a person reviewing and approving changes before publishing through the normal workflow.

Make timing explicit

An offer’s timing is part of what makes it useful. A correct discount code paired with the wrong campaign period can still create confusion for a customer.

Effective From and Effective To make that timing explicit. Teams can set a start date, an end date, or both, depending on the information they are managing. Dates follow the timezone set for the knowledge base, with the end date included. A Cyber Monday offer can therefore stay eligible for just that calendar day.

The article remains in the knowledge base after its eligibility window ends — expiration doesn’t trigger an automatic archive or deletion. This way, teams can retain the content for review and make decisions on cleanup after the campaign.

That distinction gives knowledge managers separate controls for two decisions: when content can inform AI answers, and how long the organization wants to keep it.

Learn year-round from holiday sales

The same approach applies whenever information is valid for a defined period. Holiday opening hours can have a window around a seasonal closure. Shipping cutoff guidance can stay tied to the period when it applies. A temporary returns policy can carry its own dates, while a planned maintenance notice can cover a known period.

In each case, the team should review the permanent guidance alongside the temporary article. An expired notice does not automatically choose its replacement; a date window cannot correct conflicting information copied elsewhere.

Fold up-to-date knowledge into campaigns 

Start with one temporary offer or notice. Review the wording, confirm its validity window and timezone, enable effective-date filtering, and test the customer questions it should answer. Check what customers receive before, during, and after the window.

For a busy holiday season, this adds a practical control to knowledge preparation. The offer, its terms, and the period when AI can use it become part of the same plan, helping teams keep customer answers aligned with the campaign.