Perplexity AI collections explained with examples

Perplexity’s collections feature lets you group related threads and apply a prompt to all threads in the collection. This feature excels in organizing threads and providing instructions for perplexity search engine to follow on all conversations within the collection. This post will address your questions about collections and provide a practical guide on using them effectively.

See Also: How To Use Perplexity AI-Powered Search For Beginners

What are Perplexity Collections?

Perplexity collections are folders for organizing threads and customizing Perplexity AI’s behavior. Use them to group related searches and answers in one place. This is especially handy when doing in-depth research on a specific topic and finding all your answers in one place.

What Are the Benefits of Perplexity Collections?

collections in perplexity offer a lot of benefits depending on your use case. Here are some of the top benefits:

1. Organized Answers: Store answers to related questions in one spot, making it easy to find all your topic-specific answers. Traditional search engines like Google don’t offer this convenience.
2. Customized Responses: Customize how Perplexity AI responds to you and specify the rules it follows in your conversations within the collection, ensuring personalized answers.
3. In-Depth Analysis: Groups related threads, allowing you to easily access and analyze large amounts of information from Perplexity responses, making it easier to identify patterns and connections.
4. Collaboration: allows collaboration within a particular collection by sharing a link with other users, who can view your threads and add their own to your collections. This feature is perfect for teamwork.
5. Consistent Prompts: Set collection AI prompts that will be applied to all threads. This helps avoid repetitive prompts for things like providing context, response formatting, and negative prompts in conversations.

Common Use Cases for Perplexity Collections

Perplexity collections can be incredibly useful in various scenarios. Here are some common use cases:

1. Research and Analysis: Collections are ideal for researchers who need to conduct in-depth research on specific topics and group information in one place.
2. Education and Learning: Collections can be used to create customized learning materials, such as study guides or reading lists.
3. Professional Development: Helps professionals stay current with the latest developments in their field, analyze complex industry trends, and group important information for quick reference and review.

How to Create and Edit Perplexity Collections

Creating a collection is simple. Simply Log into Perplexity, open the library tab, and click the “Add” button in the collections section. A popup will appear with fields for naming, describing, and providing instructions to the AI, which will influence every conversation in the collection. Here’s a breakdown of each collection field:

• Title: Name your collection. It could be a topic, purpose, project name, or anything that helps you identify its purpose later.
• Emoji: Add an emoji to personalize your collection.
• Description: Provide a description of the collection’s purpose to give the AI context in your threads. where necessary Include the prompts users need to input to get answers in a specific format.
• AI Prompt – The prompt that will be applied to all threads in the collection.
• Privacy – Choose whether your collection is shareable or private.

By writing a detailed description to provide context about the collection and a collection AI prompt, you can make the collection answer questions, provide summaries, or engage in discussions the way you want.

To edit a collection, simply go to the library, then collections, select the collection you want to edit, and click the three dots on the top right. Then select “Edit Collection” on the popup that appears.

Examples of Perplexity Collections

Here are some collection examples you can modify to suit your specific use case or project. To test these collections, copy the prompt and descriptions, as they provide context to Perplexity AI.

Example 1 – Discover top stories in your niche

• Collection Name – Digital Marketing News
• Prompt – Use sources from the web that are less than 7 days old, and include sources
• Description – This collection allows users to get at least 10 informative news articles on digital marketing from the web. By entering a simple prompt like “Update me,” users receive 10 trending news headlines useful for digital marketers.

Example 2 – Answer in specific writing style

• Name – AI Shakespeare bot
• Prompt – strictly respond to every query in Shakespearean English
• Description – This collection allows users to get responses in Shakespearean English for every query

Example 3 – Perplexity Doc simplifier

• Name – Perplexity Document explainer and summarizer
• Prompt – explain the key concepts in the uploaded file like you are explaining to a 9th-grade student. strictly keep your answers to two paragraphs
• Description – This collection allows users to upload files and get the key concepts being discussed in the document explained in simple language by just using the prompt “enlighten me”.

Feel free to modify these collections and create your own custom collections.

Tips for Using Perplexity Collections Effectively

Collections are useful tools that can improve your productivity when used properly. Here are some simple tips to get the most out of them:

1. Set Clear collection Prompts: To get the most out of collections, it is essential to always set clear system prompts that specify the context and scope of the collection.
2. Provide clear descriptions: provide clear descriptions that specify clearly what the collection is for and include keywords that users can use in the collection to get answers in a specific format.
3. Stay focused: Keep each collection focused on a single task, for example researching a specific topic, finding information for a specific project, or summarizing documents. This ensures your collections won’t get messy.

Limitations of Perplexity Collections

While collections are a powerful tool, they do have some limitations:

• AI Adherence: The AI may not always follow the custom prompt defined in the collection.
• Answer Consistency: Rewriting answers using different models or pro search may not retain the previous answers like ChatGPT does, making it difficult to compare the current answer with the previously generated one.
• Accuracy: The AI may not always provide accurate answers, especially when dealing with lesser-known research papers.
• Pro Search Behavior: When using pro search in a thread within a collection, the AI sometimes doesn’t follow the AI prompt of the collection and may not consider the description for context.

Conclusion

Perplexity collections are a powerful feature that can greatly enhance your user experience in perplexity. By understanding how to use collections effectively, you can improve your productivity when using Perplexity and get more accurate and relevant answers to their questions.