The outcome
Create a RAG system that retrieves authorized material and returns answers whose supporting sources can be inspected.
Step by step
A workflow you can repeat.
- 01
Define source ownership, document permissions, deletion and refresh rules, expected queries, citation requirements, and an access-aware benchmark.
- 02
Choose managed or customer-managed storage deliberately, configure a least-privilege service role and encryption, and connect only approved data sources.
- 03
Test parsing and chunking on representative text, tables, scans, and conflicting documents, then ingest a small versioned corpus first.
- 04
Use Retrieve before RetrieveAndGenerate to measure recall, tune filters and reranking, and verify citations, permissions, and unanswerable behavior.
- 05
Add guardrails where appropriate, monitor ingestion and retrieval traces, test updates and deletions, and promote changes through a reviewed staging path.
Working standard
What good use looks like.
- Test retrieval separately from generation.
- Enforce document access at retrieval.
- Verify update and deletion behavior.
Official references