What the documents look like
Trade returns and claims work concerns reverse logistics and liability determination after export. Materials come from customer email, quality inspection reports, customs systems, and insurer claim systems. The documents handled day to day include return agreements, claim letters, quality reports, and return customs declarations. Updates are irregular and occur once per case.
Within a single shipment, several documents can exist at different stages at the same time. A return agreement may be in draft, a claim letter may await signature, a quality report may carry a completed conclusion, and a customs declaration may have a receipt. The signature and acceptance states of these documents do not move together. After-sales staff, customs staff, and insurance claims staff share these materials, and during handover a current state of one document can easily be read as the authorization state of the whole case.
Constraints at the retrieval step
The knowledge base search node can associate one or more knowledge bases that use the same vector model. Knowledge bases with different vector models cannot be associated together. Retrieval recalls candidate content through semantic, full-text, or hybrid mode. Hybrid retrieval merges multiple result paths through RRF. Re-ranking requires a model and must be enabled according to settings. Image retrieval requires image input and the corresponding model capability.
The reference limit is measured in tokens. The minimum relevance score takes effect only under semantic retrieval or when result re-ranking is used. Retrieval output provides reference content only. It does not determine permissions, does not execute approvals, and does not write to business systems. An empty reference is output as an array and its length can be 0.
Hypothetical drill sample: the source text reads "Return agreement HYP-2024-0715 was drafted by the customs position and its status is pending review; the corresponding claim letter has not been signed; the quality report conclusion is appearance nonconformity, issued on 10 July 2024." The handover request to be assessed reads "Transfer the return declaration permission for this shipment to the after-sales position, on the basis that the quality report has been issued." This request lacks the approval of the return agreement and the authorization record for the permission transfer, so it remains in a pending-verification state.
Configuration and implementation checks
| Configuration item | Hypothetical trial starting point | Reason for the choice and comparison method |
|---|---|---|
| Associated knowledge bases | Associate only the knowledge base holding the return agreement and the claim letter | First check the vector model identifier of each knowledge base and exclude any whose model does not match |
| Search mode | Semantic retrieval | Compare the recalled content for the same question against full-text retrieval |
| Reference limit | Hypothetical starting point of 2000 tokens | Compare content completeness using return agreement fragments of different lengths |
| Minimum relevance | Hypothetical starting point of 0.5 | Label related and unrelated samples first, then compare the filtered result |
| Question optimization | Not enabled for now | Compare the original question with the optimized question and check whether the subject has been altered |
| Result re-ranking | Not enabled for now | Once a model is available, compare the ordering before and after enabling |
These values are hypothetical trial starting points used for comparison against other values. They are not official default values.
Three common errors
- Treating a retrieval hit as an authorization basis. The input is the handover request above. Compare the status field of the return agreement returned by retrieval against the permission transfer record. If a pending-review agreement alone is taken as sufficient for transfer, that is an error.
- Associating knowledge bases that use different vector models. The input is two knowledge bases with different vector model identifiers. Compare whether the identifiers match. If they are associated anyway and retrieval quality is judged on that basis, that is an error.
- Treating a pending-review agreement as already effective. The input is the status field "pending review". Compare whether an approval and a signature record exist. If the agreement is treated as effective, that is an error.
How to verify the setup
- Input the source text and the handover request above. Compare whether the retrieved content contains the agreement status and signature fields. The expected observation is that the pending-review status is returned and no signature record appears, at which point the request should be marked pending verification.
- Input two knowledge base identifiers with different vector model identifiers. Compare whether the identifiers match. The expected observation is that a mismatch excludes association; record the actual observation and do not run a cross-model retrieval comparison.
- Input a return declaration question with no corresponding material. Compare the length of the reference output. The expected observation is an array length of 0, and the downstream design should handle the empty reference without drawing a business conclusion from it.