Configuration and Knowledge Management: CCAO-F domain 5 study guide

CCAO-F · Configuration and Knowledge Management (12% of the exam)

Configuration and Knowledge Management is domain 5 of the Claude Certified Associate Foundations exam, 12% of the scored items. It tests whether you can set Claude up so a team gets consistent results: the right instructions in the right place, current knowledge files, connectors that reach the right data, and a habit of keeping all of it up to date.

What the official guide covers

The Claude Certified Associate Foundations exam guide (version 1.0, effective July 2026) lists four tasks under domain 5, Configuration and Knowledge Management:

What the guide lists	What it means in practice
Configure Claude Projects with instructions and knowledge sources	Create a Project, write its instructions and upload the files it should use
Manage uploaded knowledge and connectors (for example Google Drive, Gmail)	Decide what to upload, what to connect, and remove what is out of date
Create effective system-level instructions	Write standing instructions that shape every chat, at the right level
Inform, maintain and update configurations, knowledge and instructions	Give each setup an owner, review it, and test it after every change

Where instructions can live

Claude in the Claude apps takes standing instructions at several levels. Putting a rule at the wrong level is the most common configuration mistake.

Level	Set by	Applies to	Use it for
Organisation instructions	Owners on Team and Enterprise plans	Every conversation in the organisation	Company-wide standards. They take precedence over a user's own instructions when both are set
Your account instructions	You	All your own chats	Your role, preferred style and terms
Project instructions	Anyone who can edit the Project	Every chat inside that Project	The task, audience, format and rules for that work
Skills	You, or provisioned by your organisation	Loaded only when a task needs them	Repeatable procedures, such as a report format
Memory	Claude, from your chats	Future chats; each Project has its own separate memory	Context about you and your work, which you can view and edit in Settings > Memory

How to set up a Project

Go to claude.ai/projects and click "+ New Project". Give it a name and description. Claude cannot see the name or description, so do not put instructions there.
Select "Set project instructions", write them and save. They apply to every chat in the Project.
Add knowledge with the "+" button on the Project page: documents, text or other files. Google Docs added from Google Drive stay in sync with Drive, so the Project uses the latest version.
On Team and Enterprise plans, click "Share project" and give each person "Can view" or "Can edit". Only give edit rights to people who maintain the setup.

On paid plans, when project knowledge approaches the context limit, Claude switches to retrieval, finding the relevant parts of the files instead of loading them all.

Before and after: project instructions

Before:

You are a helpful assistant. Be professional. Use the documents.

After:

Purpose: answer staff questions about travel and expenses.
Readers: employees in all regions. Many are not native English speakers,
so use short sentences and UK English.

Sources: answer only from the Travel Policy and the Expense Policy in
project knowledge. They are the current approved versions.
If the answer is not in them, say so and direct the person to
finance-help@example.com. Do not guess limits or amounts.

Format: a direct answer in one or two sentences, then the policy section
it comes from.

Escalate: questions about exceptions, disputes or a named person's claim
go to the finance team, not answered here.

The second version states purpose, reader, sources, gap rule, format and hand-off. Keep instructions this short: everything in them counts against the same context as the conversation.

What to put in project knowledge

Do	Do not
Upload the current approved version of each document	Keep old and new versions side by side
Use clear file names that say what and which version	Upload "final_v3_FINAL.docx"
Add Google Docs from Drive where the source changes often	Paste a copy that goes stale
Include examples of good output the team has approved	Include drafts nobody signed off
Keep only what the Project's task needs	Upload everything "just in case"

Connectors

Connectors let Claude reach data and take actions in other tools. You turn them on per chat from the "+" button, under Connectors, after signing in to the service. Key behaviours to know:

Permissions carry over. Claude sees only what your own account can see in Google Workspace or the connected tool.
Actions ask first. Gmail send, reply and forward ask for your approval by default. On Team and Enterprise plans, owners decide whether members can let these actions run without asking.
Admins enable first. On Team and Enterprise plans, an Owner must enable a connector for the organisation before members can connect it.
Trust and tidy. Connect only approved tools; disconnect unused ones.
Know each connector's edges. The Gmail connector can search, read and draft, and can send, reply or forward with your approval. The Drive connector searches and retrieves Google Docs and, with approval, can share, move or trash files. Learn what a connector can and cannot do before you build a workflow on it: a request beyond its limits can look like a bug and get reported to the wrong team.

Where should this go?

You want	Put it in	Why
A rule every chat in this workstream must follow	Project instructions	Applies to every chat in the Project
Reference documents the answers must come from	Project knowledge	Loaded or retrieved for every chat
Live data that changes daily in Drive or Gmail	A connector, or a synced Google Doc	Always reads the current version
A procedure people run in many places	A Skill	Loads only when the task needs it
A standard for the whole company	Organisation instructions (owners only)	Takes precedence across the organisation
Decisions this workstream has settled, such as stakeholder names and preferences	The Project's memory	It evolves with the work and stays inside that Project

A quick sort: a rule about behaviour goes in instructions, a fact goes in knowledge, a multi-step procedure goes in a Skill, and an evolving record of decisions goes in project memory. Putting a procedure into instructions, or a behaviour rule into a knowledge file, is the most common setup mistake. Many needs use two slots wired together. "Cite the source document for every claim" is an instruction, yet the documents behind those citations sit in knowledge; a report-format Skill carries the steps while the brand guide it follows sits in knowledge. Skills are not stored inside one Project: a Skill you upload belongs to your account and loads in any chat or Project where it is relevant, and owners on Team and Enterprise plans can provision Skills for the whole organisation.

Write instructions two people would read the same way

Vague instructions do not fail loudly; they just change nothing. "Be professional" and "make reports accurate" give Claude nothing to act on. Compare:

Vague	Precise
Be professional	Use a formal register, define each acronym on first use, keep paragraphs under four sentences
Make the reports accurate	Give the source of every figure. Mark any figure missing from the provided data as "unverified" instead of including it
Keep it short	Lead with a one-sentence headline, then no more than five bullets

The test: would two colleagues read the instruction the same way? Write the verification habits you would otherwise retype in every chat, such as citing sources and saying "I don't know" when the files do not cover a question, once in the instructions.

Keep it current

Give each Project a named owner and a review date. When anything changes, update it, then test it:

PROJECT CHANGE LOG
Project: Travel and expenses help    Owner: ________   Review every: quarter
Date | Change made                      | Test questions run | Result
____ | Replaced Expense Policy v4 with v5 | 5 standard questions | 5/5 correct
____ | Removed old per diem table          | 5 standard questions | ____

Run five standard questions with known answers after every change; an unexpected change in an answer points to the edit.

Each slot ages in its own way, and stale setup degrades output with no error message:

Instructions still name last quarter's process or a renamed metric.
Knowledge holds a superseded file next to the current one.
Skills: Anthropic maintains its own Skills; a custom Skill changes only when you upload a new version.
Memory holds a stakeholder who has left. View, edit or delete entries in Settings; pausing stops new memories, while resetting permanently deletes all of them, including project memories. On Enterprise plans, owners can turn memory off for the whole organisation; Team plan members manage their own.

Worked example: a monthly report Project starts giving slightly wrong output. The review finds an instruction that names a renamed metric, two versions of the template in knowledge, and a memory entry for a manager who has moved on. The fix is maintenance, not a better prompt: revise the instruction, take out the old template, clear the stale entry. Output returns to standard without anyone changing how they ask.

Rules that decide exam answers

Instructions go in project instructions, not the name or description. Claude cannot see a Project's name or description.
One current version of each source. When answers quote an old policy, remove the old file; telling Claude to "use the latest" is the weaker option.
Use the narrowest level that covers everyone who needs the rule. A team rule goes in the shared Project, not in one person's account instructions.
Connectors respect existing permissions. They never give Claude more access than the person using them has.
Current files, stale answers: check what points backwards. An instruction or memory entry naming last year's template overrides a correct knowledge base; update it, not the files.
Test after every change. A fixed set of questions with known answers shows whether an update helped or broke something.

Where it appears in the exam

Domain 5 carries 12% of the exam, around 7 of the 60 items. Questions describe a team Project or a connector setup that is giving inconsistent or outdated answers, or a new process that needs setting up, and ask where an instruction or file belongs, what to change, or how to keep the setup current.

Two sample questions

These are original Timo practice questions. They are not official exam questions.

Question 1

A bid team uses a shared Project to draft answers to security questionnaires. Last month they uploaded the new information security policy, but some answers still quote last year's policy. Both files are in project knowledge. What should they do?

A. Add "always use the newest policy" to the start of every chat in the Project.B. Switch the Project's chats to a more capable model so it can tell the versions apart.C. Remove last year's policy and name the current one as the source in the project instructions.D. Paste the new policy into each chat as well, so that it appears twice in the context.

Answer: C. Removing the superseded file takes away the cause, and naming the current source in the instructions makes the rule standing. A relies on people remembering each time, B does not remove the conflicting file, and D adds more content while the old policy is still there.

Question 2

A team wants every chat in its customer insights Project to answer in UK English, start with a three-line summary and never include customer names. One member wrote these rules in the Project's description. Claude does not follow them. What is the cause and fix?

A. Claude cannot see the Project description, so the rules should move into project instructions.B. The description is too long, so it should be cut to one sentence that Claude can read.C. The rules belong in the member's own account instructions, so they should be moved there.D. The rules should be uploaded as a knowledge file called "rules" so they are retrieved.

Answer: A. The help centre says Claude does not have access to a Project's name and description, while project instructions apply to every chat. B keeps the rules where Claude cannot see them, C would apply only to that one member's chats, and D makes the rules depend on retrieval instead of standing instructions.

Build exercise

Create a Project for a task your team repeats. Write instructions with purpose, readers, sources, gap rule, format and escalation.
Upload two or three current reference files. If you use Google Workspace, add one Google Doc from Drive and edit it to confirm the change is picked up.
Write five test questions with known answers. Run them, record the results, then change one instruction and run them again.
Start a change log for the Project with an owner and a review date.

Practise this topic

Claude Certified Associate practice exam: free, 20 questions, no sign-up
CCAO-F study guide: all topics
Previous topic: Workflow Integration and Solution Design
Next topic: Governance, Risk and Responsible Use

Sources

Claude Certified Associate Foundations Exam Guide, version 1.0, effective July 2026 (Anthropic), domain 5: Configuration and Knowledge Management
Claude Help Center: How can I create and manage projects?
Claude Help Center: Understanding Claude's personalization features
Claude Help Center: Set organization instructions
Claude Help Center: Use Google Workspace connectors