Knowledge Hub and Ask Paddy

Build a searchable knowledge base, and use Ask Paddy to answer questions from it and to set work up for you.

4 min readUpdated Today
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The Knowledge Hub

The Knowledge Hub is your own searchable library: how to use a piece of equipment, prep guides, SOPs, supplier info, and the answers to questions staff ask all the time. It is for everyday lookup, and you can also set a page as required reading when your team needs to read and sign it.

Creating knowledge pages

  1. Go to Knowledge Hub and click Add Page

  2. Write the content, adding images or video where it helps

  3. Organise pages into folders

  4. Publish it so staff can see it

Make a page required reading

Open a page, turn on Requires sign-off, choose who needs to read it by location, group, or named people, with an optional due date, and publish it. Staff are then asked to read and sign, anyone added later is asked too, and you can see who has signed. A page only reaches staff once it is published, so do not leave it as a draft.

When you upload an SOP or handbook with the smart uploader and turn it into a knowledge article, Paddl offers to assign it as required reading straight after, so the document and the sign-off happen in one go. See Smart Document Uploads & AI Setup.

Ask Paddy

Ask Paddy is the assistant built into the app, and it does two jobs. It answers questions from your own content, so "how do I clean the grinder?" or "what allergens are in the chocolate cake?" come back with your answer rather than generic web advice. It also sets things up for you: tell it what you need and it does the work, once you have confirmed it.

Answering questions

Anyone on your team can ask. Paddy draws on:

  • Knowledge pages, documents, and SOPs

  • Your allergen matrix and menu

  • Live compliance signals such as training status and overdue checks

  • Published help articles, so it can explain how Paddl itself works

The more you add, the better Paddy gets. If staff ask something Paddy cannot answer well, add a knowledge page covering it, written in the words your team actually use, and Paddy will use it next time.

Getting things done

Owners and managers can also ask Paddy to do the job rather than explain it. "Book a pest control visit next Tuesday", "add Jo to the kitchen team", "what needs my attention today?", "get me an audit pack for the last three months". Paddy shows you exactly what it is about to do and waits for you to confirm. See What Ask Paddy can do for you for the full picture, and Confirming and cancelling Paddy actions for how the confirmation works.

On the mobile app, Paddy answers any of these questions and can carry out the shift-floor actions: logging a visitor and checking one out, a quick task, snoozing a task, acknowledging or resolving an alert, raising a maintenance job, and writing a handover. Setting things up, and anything recurring, needs the admin panel in a browser, and Paddy will say so rather than pretend.

What Paddy will not do

These limits are deliberate, and they are the reason Paddy can be trusted with the rest.

  • It never fills in your records. Paddy will not log a temperature, tick off a check, or approve a record somebody else submitted. An inspector asks who did the check, and the honest answer has to be a person.

  • It never signs anything. Risk assessments, SFBB packs, HACCP plans and document sign-offs are personal attestations, so they stay with the person making them.

  • It never removes an allergen. It can add a menu item or add an allergen to one, never take one away.

  • It will not guess. If your content does not cover something, it says so rather than inventing an answer.

  • It is guidance, not a substitute for professional or legal advice, so always verify safety-critical decisions

  • If it cannot help, there is a Talk to a human option under its answers that opens a live chat with the Paddl team

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