# Asking questions

**Ask a question** sits at the top left of the home page. Use it for questions
that arrive outside a questionnaire — a customer emailing to ask how you handle
encryption, a salesperson checking what they can commit to, or anything you would
otherwise go digging through policies for.

## Ask a question

1. Type your question — for example, "What is our MDM policy?"

2. Set **Answer detail** with the slider if you want a shorter or longer answer.

   Normal gives two to three sentences covering the key points.

3. Add **Custom instructions** to steer the answer, if you need to.

4. Select **Ask**.

## The answer

The answer is drawn from your knowledge base and your sources, and comes back
with the same supporting detail as any other answer in ResponseHub:

- **References** — the passages behind the answer, each with a relevance rating,
  so you can check the answer against the source material
- **Confidence** — how sure ResponseHub is, with the reasoning behind the rating

If nothing in your material covers the question, the answer says so rather than
guessing. That is usually a sign the topic is missing from your knowledge base
and worth [adding](/knowledge-base/writing-and-updating/).

## Previous questions

**Previous Questions**, to the right, lists recent questions with their answers,
newest first.

<Aside type="note" title="Everyone's questions, not just yours">
The list covers questions asked by anyone in your account, not only your own. If
a colleague has already asked something, you will see it and their answer here.
</Aside>

**Answering questions in a portal:** If you are working through questions in a customer's portal rather than answering
one-offs, the [Chrome extension](/chrome-extension/getting-started/) brings
ResponseHub into the portal itself.

## Next steps

- [Open questions, questionnaires and RFPs](/home-page/open-questions/)
- [How questions are answered](/how-questions-are-answered/kb-vs-sources/)