Pega Knowledge and Knowledge Buddy - Special Characters in Knowledge Articles
I am working on a Pega Knowledge Buddy and Pega Knowledge version 24.2 implementation. We have recently held a focus group with users and the two questions below were raised and I'm looking for support to answer them. These are:
Question 1: Special Characters in Article Titles and Queries
Historically, Pega advised against using special characters (e.g., ?, (), -) in knowledge article titles or in queries made to Search and Knowledge Buddy, due to potential impacts on search accuracy and relevance.
- Is that still the official recommendation as of the current platform capabilities (e.g., Pega 8.8+ with Buddy enabled)?
- Has anything changed in how Search and Buddy interpret and process queries with special characters?
- Can anyone explain how common characters like question marks, brackets, dashes, etc., are treated by the search engine and/or LLM-powered interactions.
Question 2: Advanced Search Syntax and Capabilities
I would also like to get access to a summary of supported advanced search syntax or features in Pega Knowledge Management and Knowledge Buddy.
I am working on a Pega Knowledge Buddy and Pega Knowledge version 24.2 implementation. We have recently held a focus group with users and the two questions below were raised and I'm looking for support to answer them. These are:
Question 1: Special Characters in Article Titles and Queries
Historically, Pega advised against using special characters (e.g., ?, (), -) in knowledge article titles or in queries made to Search and Knowledge Buddy, due to potential impacts on search accuracy and relevance.
- Is that still the official recommendation as of the current platform capabilities (e.g., Pega 8.8+ with Buddy enabled)?
- Has anything changed in how Search and Buddy interpret and process queries with special characters?
- Can anyone explain how common characters like question marks, brackets, dashes, etc., are treated by the search engine and/or LLM-powered interactions.
Question 2: Advanced Search Syntax and Capabilities
I would also like to get access to a summary of supported advanced search syntax or features in Pega Knowledge Management and Knowledge Buddy.
- For example, is prefixing a term with a minus sign (e.g., -partner) still a valid way to exclude it from results?
- What other Boolean operators, wildcards, or field-specific search syntax are officially supported?
- Can anyone provide a link to any documentation or reference guide suitable for sharing with agents and knowledge authors.
Can anyone provide some advice and guidance to answer these questions.
HCA Healthcare
US
@mckat
In Pega Knowledge 24.2 with Knowledge Buddy, it’s still best to avoid using special characters like question marks, brackets, or dashes in article titles because they can confuse the search engine and lower result accuracy. Even though the newer LLM-powered Buddy handles natural language better, the backend search still depends on clean indexing. So simple titles work best. For search, you can still use things like
-keywordto exclude terms, quotes for exact phrases, andANDorORfor combining terms. Wildcards like*or?also work, but advanced field-based search (like title-specific queries) isn’t fully supported. Buddy understands regular questions well, but it still helps to write clear, keyword-friendly content and avoid special characters in titles when possible