FAQ

What is Enterprise Search and how is it different to normal search?

Enterprise Search is a tool that enables users to access information they need to perform their jobs quickly and effectively. It surfaces information and data within an organization's internal systems, databases, and repositories. Unlike normal search, which typically scans the internet, Enterprise Search sifts through a company's internal documents, emails, reports, customer records, and product data to retrieve what's needed.

More information: What is enterprise search?.

Can Glean search the internet?

Glean is designed to search through your organization's internal systems, databases, and repositories. It is not designed to provide internet search.

Can users see content they don't have permission to access?

No, users cannot see content they don't have permission to access. Glean respects all permissions and access controls set within your organization's systems.

How does Glean ensure users can't see content they shouldn't?

If a user cannot access the content in the source system, it will not show up for them as a search result in Glean.Glean employs robust security measures to protect your organization's data. This includes respecting permissions and access controls set within your organization's systems. When Glean crawls a connected datasource, it fetches 3 key pieces of information:

  1. The content itself
  2. Activity information for the content
    • Creation date
    • Edit/View/Comment/Share history (etc)
  3. Identity Information for the content
    • Which user in the org created the content?
    • Which user(s) contributed to the edit history?
    • Which users viewed the document? What department/team are they a member of?
    • Which users/groups have access to the content?

The identity information fetched as part of #3 is how Glean knows which users have access to the document.

These three pillars form a mapping known as the Glean Knowledge Graph which is used to fetch search results.

More information: Knowledge Graph.

What apps does Glean support?

Glean supports connections to 80+ different datasources out of the box. Our most common connectors are listed here.

What if Glean does not support an app I use?

First, chat with your Glean account team or Glean support. We may have it on our roadmap to support your app.

Alternatively, Glean provides an Indexing API and SDK to allow our customers to create their own connectors / sync custom content to Glean. This has the advantage of pushing data to Glean from within your environment, instead of Glean connecting into your systems to fetch data.

More information: Glean Indexing API.

Can I connect a database (eg: MySQL) to Glean?

Yes, although Glean does not have a native connector to allow this. You will need to use our Indexing API. We recommend caution: Databases can be quite noisy and may impact the quality of your search results.

Glean works best when connected to the apps/front-ends that query your databases (instead of connecting to the databases directly).

Can Glean connect to my on-premise Jira/Confluence server?

Yes this is supported. Glean needs connectivity towards your server to achieve this; either via a Shared VPC or Site-to-Site VPN. Please contact Glean support for additional information.

Can Glean connect to my emails?

Yes this is supported. Glean supports Exchange Online (Outlook) and Google Workplace (Gmail) out-of-the-box. For other systems, you will need to leverage our Indexing API.

Can Glean connect to on-premise SharePoint?

Technically yes, although this is not supported directly out-of-the-box. Please contact Glean support for further information.