Use Google Drive As a Content Source

SearchUnify can crawl, index, and search the data in your Google Drive instance. This article explains how to start using Google Drive as a content repository for your search clients.

PERMISSIONS.

The person authenticating Google Drive can index only those files to which they have view-access.

SearchUnify respects user permissions during searches. If Kyle has access to a file named "Accounts", then they can find "Accounts" through search.

SearchUnify needs read-only access to Google Drive. In the Google's parlance, it means view and download access.

Files on which export is disabled aren't crawled.

Establish a Connection

1. Navigate to Content Sources.

   

2. Click Add New Content Source.

   

3. Find Google Drive and click Add.

   

4. Give your content source a Name.

   

5. Click Connect

   

6. A pop-up window asking view and download permissions will appear. Click Allow to let SearchUnify index the files on your Google Drive.

   

7. A connection successful message will appear. Click Next.

   

Set Up Crawl Frequency

The first crawl is always manual and is performed after configuring the content source. For now, keep the frequency to its default value Never and click Set and move to the next section.

Select Types and Fields for Indexing

Google Drive supports only one content type file. By Content Field lets you pick the files for indexing.

1. Click .

   

2. Select the fields and save.

   

3. Open By Folders.

   

4. From My Folders, Shared Folders, and Shared Drive select the directories for indexing.

   

5. Click Save.

After the First Crawl

Return to the Content Sources screen and click in Actions. The number of indexed documents is updated after the crawl is complete. You can view crawl progress in in Actions. Documentation on crawl progress is in View Crawl Logs.

NOTE 1

Review the settings in Rules if there is no progress in Crawl Logs.

NOTE 2

For Mamba '22 and newer instances, search isn't impacted during a crawl. However, in older instances, some documents remain inaccessible while a crawl is going on.

Once the first crawl is complete, click in Actions open the content source for editing, and set a crawl frequency.

1. In Choose a Date, click to fire up a calendar and select a date. Only the data after the selected date is indexed.

   

2. Use the Frequency dropdown to select how often SearchUnify should index the data. For illustration, the frequency has been set to Weekly and Tuesday has been chosen as the crawling day. Whenever the Frequency is other than Never, a third dropdown appears where you can specify the interval. Also, whenever Frequency is set to Hourly, then manual crawls are disabled.

   

3. Click Set to save crawl frequency settings. On clicking Set, you are taken to the Rules tab.

   

Data Deletion and SU Index

All the data deleted from Google Drive is removed from the SearchUnify index within 12 hours.