What the documents look like
Brand outlet discount operations aim to clear seasonal inventory rather than maintain a full-price new-arrival image. The main data sources are ERP inventory age, POS sales, outlet mall campaign records and historical discount rates. The documents handled day to day are discount approvals, slow-moving lists, price tags and gross-margin worksheets. These materials update weekly or monthly, so the same SKU can carry different approval states across different weeks, and a handover must establish which authorization state applies to a given slow-moving list or discount approval at the time of transfer.
Selecting clearance SKUs, approving discounts and checking gross margin are the three most time-consuming steps. A knowledge base search returns citation content, while permission to execute a discount must be verified against the approval document itself. This page covers only the implementation conditions, document differences and reconciliation steps for citation sourcing and tracing within operations permission and handover management.
Constraints at the citation tracing step
The knowledge base search node outputs citation content as an array, and the length may be zero; even when nothing is found, the downstream output path still runs. The node can select one or more knowledge bases that share the same vector model for vector search. Once retrieval results reach the answering step, each answer must be checked against the cited source text; fluency of the answer does not replace source evidence.
Hypothetical drill sample
Source text for reconciliation (discount approval excerpt): "Approval number H-2405-017; subject: a brand outlet channel clearance group; object: summer clearance discount for SKU A-113 and SKU A-117; requested discount rate 55%; approval status is pending review; validity range: 20 May 2024 to 2 June 2024."
Source text for reconciliation (slow-moving list excerpt): "List batch L-2405-03; prepared by: a brand outlet channel clearance group; SKU A-113 inventory age 210 days, SKU A-117 inventory age 195 days; recommended for clearance; no approval result marked."
Draft sentence to be judged: "The 55% discount for SKU A-113 and SKU A-117 has been approved and clearance may proceed at this rate."
Judgment point: the approval document explicitly marks "pending review," and the slow-moving list marks no approval result, so the draft sentence's claim of "has been approved" lacks supporting evidence. A pending-review state does not constitute approval and does not constitute authorization to execute. The draft sentence should be changed to state that the discount application is pending review and that execution depends on obtaining an approval result.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration or check item | Purpose on this page | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Select knowledge bases with the same vector model as the search scope | Compare the selected knowledge base identifiers with the vector model identifiers; exclude any that do not match |
| Citation content output | Carry retrieval results into the answering step | Check that the output is an array and that a zero length is allowed; an empty array does not mean the workflow terminated with an error |
| Search mode | Semantic search, full-text search or hybrid search | Choose by question type; identifier and document-number queries can use full-text search or hybrid search |
| Citation limit | Control the maximum tokens cited per search | For this hypothetical trial the starting value is set low, because handover reconciliation needs only a few source fragments; compare with the default and adjust by observed effect |
| Minimum relevance | Filter low-relevance results; effective only under semantic search or result reranking | This value is a filter threshold and does not perform permission or entity isolation |
| Result reranking | Reorder candidate results a second time | Requires a ReRank model enabled by configuration; when not enabled, this step does not run |
Three common errors
- Treating pending review as approved. The input is the approval source text and the draft sentence; the comparison is the approval status field; the observable result is that the two values differ, so the draft sentence is unsupported.
- Treating retrieval output as authorization evidence. The input is the citation content and the handover request; the comparison is whether the citation content states an approval result; the observable result is that the citation content states no approval, so the request lacks an authorization basis.
- Associating knowledge bases with different vector models. The input is the vector model identifiers of two knowledge bases; the comparison is whether the identifiers match; the observable result is that they differ, so the combination does not meet the association condition and the non-matching item should be excluded and the observed identifiers recorded.
How to verify the setup
- Input the approval source text and the draft sentence from the hypothetical drill sample; compare the approval status field "pending review" with the draft sentence's "has been approved"; the observable result is that they differ, so the draft sentence is judged unsupported and the evidence gap is retained.
- Input the slow-moving list source text and the handover request from the hypothetical drill sample; compare whether the list marks an approval result; the observable result is that the list marks none, so the handover request lacks an authorization basis and the pending-verification state is retained.
- Input the vector model identifiers of two knowledge bases; compare whether the identifiers match; the observable result is that when they differ the combination is excluded, cross-model retrieval is not performed, and the observed identifier information is recorded.