# 1. Kognitos Navigation Introduction

> A 7-minute Kognitos UI tour: Departments, Dashboard, Playground, Processes, Exceptions, Learnings, Books, History, and the AI Help Agent — all in one walkthrough.

**Page**: https://www.kognitos.com/videos/kognitos-navigation-introduction/
**Watch on YouTube**: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS1TkADQ26M
**Length**: 7m 14s

## What you'll learn

The first video in the Kognitos Operations training series — a 7-minute tour of the Kognitos platform UI from Departments down to the AI Help Agent.

## The UI, top to bottom

- **Departments** (top right): processes are scoped by department (Finance, Customer Service, etc.). Users can be limited to one department or traverse several.
- **Dashboard**: the per-department home — shows what's running, what's recent, and which processes have exceptions needing attention.
- **Playground**: where you prototype. Start from a template or a blank playground; type plain English like *1 + 1* or *ask GPT-4o mini who won the World Series in 2016* and run it inline.
- **Processes**: published, audit-ready programs. Each one has a visual process flow, an exceptions counter, and can be kicked off by email, schedule, or API.
- **Exceptions**: where business users resolve runs that need help — highlight a field on the document, or teach a technique that becomes reusable.
- **Learnings**: every taught technique, grouped by process. Kognitos applies them automatically through context-based embeddings whenever it sees a similar document — straight-through processing without manual lookups.
- **Books**: the integration layer. Examples: Document Processing (a call out to AWS Textract), Email (native SMTP), Excel (file-level integration, no credentials), Oracle Cloud Fusion (a true API integration that needs auth).
- **History**: a per-department change log so publishes can be rolled back if needed.
- **AI Help Agent**: an LLM front-end backed by real Kognitos support, which searches the platform documentation and answers with examples and citations.

## FAQs

**Q: What's the role of Departments in Kognitos?**

Departments are top-level scopes for processes — Finance, Customer Service, etc. Users can be limited to a single department or given access across several, but processes, exceptions, and learnings stay isolated per department.


**Q: Where do I start building a new automation?**

In the Playground. You can begin from a template or a blank playground and type plain English to prototype — anything from 1 + 1 to ask GPT-4o mini who won the World Series in 2016. When the logic is right, you publish it as a Process.


**Q: How do Learnings work in Kognitos?**

When you resolve an exception (e.g. highlighting a field or teaching a technique), Kognitos stores it as a Learning grouped by process. The platform uses context-based embeddings to apply matching learnings automatically the next time it sees a similar document — that's how straight-through processing improves over time.


**Q: What are Books?**

Books are integrations. Examples shown in the tour include Document Processing (a call out to AWS Textract), Email (native SMTP), Excel (file-level), and Oracle Cloud Fusion (an API integration that requires credentials). You add only the Books a department needs.


**Q: What does the AI Help Agent do?**

It's an LLM front-end backed by the Kognitos support team. You can ask it things like “how can I create a table?” and it returns an example plus a link to the relevant Kognitos documentation — so you get the answer and the source.