# Manage the Needs Answer List

Needs Answer refers to questions that are answerable but do not match any existing question/answer pairs. The Needs Answer page allows you to view these questions and add answers.

To open the Needs Answer page, click Needs Answer at the top of any Answer Bank page, or use the side bar to navigate to Answer Bank > Questions > Needs Answer.

The Needs Answer page lists all the questions that have been marked as needing an answer, for example because they are answerable but the answer was not available. For each question, the page specifies the Likelihood of an existing answer. Answer Bank calculates the likelihood (high, medium, or low) according to the number of question/answer pairs that contain similar questions. The table also includes the Age of the question (that is, how long it has been in Answer Bank).

You can use the Needs Answer list of questions to find sets of equivalent questions, and create question/answer pairs.

## Filter the List of Questions

To filter the list of questions, type a word or phrase in the Search box, and then press Enter. The page refreshes to show only the questions that match your search terms.

TIP: You can use Boolean, proximity, and wildcard operators to construct a more precise search.

## Answer a Question

Use the following procedure to answer a question.

To answer a question

1. In the list of questions, click the question that you want to answer.

   The Edit Question/Answer Pair page opens. The reference question section is prepopulated with the question text.

2. Type or paste your answer in the Answer box.

   TIP: You can click Search Corpus to search your index of documents for possible answers, or click Search Web to search the Web (this option is available only if your administrator has enabled it).

   You can also optionally use the Answer source box to add some additional metadata, such as an expert's name or the title of the document that the answer came from.

3. In the Rule Configuration section, add your rule. You can select Learn from equivalent questions to automatically generate a rule, or you can select Curated rule to create your own rule.

   NOTE: If you select both options, the question/answer pair matches questions that match either rule (that is, they do not have to match both).

   The rule can use Boolean and proximity operators, and bracketed expressions to specify precedence. The most common operators are `AND`, `OR`, `NOT`, and `NEAR`. You can add a number to the `NEAR` operator, to specify a required distance. For example, `A NEAR5 B` means that A must be within five words of B.

   When you add a rule, IDOL Data Admin automatically checks for other questions in your Answer Bank that match the rule. It lists matching questions in the False Positives box.

4. If any of the matching false positives are equivalent to your question, click to move the question into the equivalent questions list.

   If the false positive has the icon, it is already part of a different question/answer pair. In this case, you might want to modify your rules so that it does not match non-equivalent questions.

5. In the Conceptually Similar Questions section, click Show.

   This section lists questions that match an IDOL conceptual search with the reference question as query text, and which are not currently assigned to a question/answer pair.

   If any of the conceptually similar questions are equivalent to your question, click to move the question into the equivalent questions list.

6. If you have additional equivalent questions that do not currently exist in Answer Bank, click the New question text box. Type your new question and then click to add it to the list.

   In the equivalent questions list, questions that match your rule have a green background. Any questions that do not match the rule have a red background. The text at the top of the box specifies how many questions match, out of the total number.

7. Modify the rule until all your equivalent questions match.

   TIP: If you decide that a question is not equivalent, you can click to disassociate it from the question/answer pair.

8. When you have finished modifying the question/answer pair, click Save. To cancel your changes without saving, you can click Go Back.

## Delete a Question

In the Needs Answer list, you can delete a question by clicking the icon next to the question.

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