What the documents look like
Omnichannel stock transfer work covers goods moving between stores and warehouses. The materials in scope are transfer requests, stock snapshots, store shortage lists and transfer logistics notes. Source systems named in the brief are ERP inventory, store POS, ecommerce orders and WMS, with update frequency at daily or weekly intervals. Contract and transaction material comparison asks whether the same party, the same period and the same field can support each other across documents: whether the requested quantity and the quantity actually dispatched on the logistics note agree, and whether the shortage list and the stock snapshot point to the same availability state.
These materials enter the knowledge base as scans, exported tables or system screenshots. Field names are not uniform, and the same business object may appear as "transfer-out warehouse", "dispatch warehouse" or "source store" across documents. The retrieval step aligns the material under review with material already in the library so a person can judge it. Retrieval itself does not determine authorization status.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can link one or more libraries that use the same vector model. Libraries on different vector models cannot be linked together. The handling step is to check the vector model identifier, exclude those that do not match, and record what was observed; a cross-model retrieval is not run to compare missed recalls.
Search mode is chosen per test question. Semantic retrieval relies on vector distance and suits natural-language descriptions. Full-text retrieval relies on keyword hits and suits numbers, models and proper nouns. Hybrid retrieval uses both paths and merges them through RRF. RRF is a fusion process for hybrid results, not a toggle. The citation limit is measured in tokens. The minimum relevance value takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result reranking is used. Question optimization performs coreference resolution and question expansion and adds an extra model call.
Output is an array of cited content, and its length can be zero, meaning the output path still completes when nothing is found. A similarity score does not constitute permission or entity isolation, and retrieval is not authorization. Forms collect values; business verification, approval, database writes and external synchronization each need their own downstream implementation.
Hypothetical paper exercise sample (paper material, not a real customer): a brand supply chain specialist reviews a store-to-store transfer in March 2025. Transfer request text: "Requesting party is East China Region Store A, transfer-out party is East China Region Store B, item is a certain model of insulated tumbler, requested quantity 120 units, request date 10 March 2025, purpose is to replenish a display gap." Stock snapshot text: "Store B available stock for this model is 90 units, snapshot time 10 March 2025." Draft sentence under review: "The full quantity of this transfer request is supported by available transferable stock." Handover request: "Please confirm whether this request has been approved and arrange dispatch."
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Linked knowledge bases | Link only transfer material libraries that use the same vector model | Check each library's vector model identifier first; exclude mismatches and do not link them together |
| Search mode | Test number-type questions with hybrid retrieval | Compare returned citations item by item against semantic-only and full-text-only runs |
| Citation limit | Set to 2000 tokens | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise; compare long and short transfer materials to see whether citations are truncated |
| Minimum relevance | Set to 0.3 | Hypothetical starting point for this exercise; label relevant and irrelevant samples first, then compare filtered results against 0.5 |
| Question optimization | Enable for multi-turn follow-up scenarios | Compare the original question with the optimized question and check whether the subject was altered |
| Result reranking | Enable when a rerank model is available | Compare candidate ordering before and after enabling; rerank score is 0-1 |
Three common errors
- Treating a similarity score as a permission or entity isolation mechanism. The score reflects content relatedness only and cannot be used to exclude unauthorized records. Check: enter a question that is semantically close to transfer content but unrelated to the business scope, observe whether returned citations include material that should not enter that scope, and record the actual returned content.
- Treating a retrieval result as evidence that approval or authorization is complete. Finding transfer request material does not mean the request has been approved. Check: search with the handover request from the hypothetical sample above and compare whether approval status fields appear in the returned content; if they do not appear, record it as unsupported.
- Linking libraries on different vector models directly. Check: list the vector model identifiers of the libraries to be linked, compare them one by one, exclude those with mismatched identifiers and record the exclusion, and do not run a cross-model retrieval.
How to verify the setup
- Use the transfer request text and stock snapshot text from the hypothetical sample as input, and compare the values of the same field across the two materials: requested quantity 120 units against available stock 90 units. Observe whether the returned citations contain both materials, and check whether the draft sentence "the full quantity is supported by available transferable stock" is supported by the materials. The expected phenomenon is that both materials are recalled together and the draft sentence appears alongside the quantity fields; the conclusion is left to human judgment.
- Use the handover request from the hypothetical sample as input and compare whether approval status, approval date or approver fields appear in the returned citations. Observe the result: if the cited content does not contain those fields, record the request as pending verification. Pending review does not show an absence of operating permission and does not show that approval was granted.
- Use an explicit empty-result paper input to check the downstream design: assume the retrieval returns a citation array of []. Observe whether the downstream path still completes and retains an empty-citation handoff. Do not claim that a fictional rule retrieval necessarily returns []; check only the output behavior under the empty-array condition.