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. A user 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.

If file permissions are altered, these changes will be reflected in the index following the frequency crawl. Additionally, any modifications to shared drive and folder permissions will also be updated in the SearchUnify index. NOTEA person creates a folder with multiple files and shares it with a teammate. If the teammate removes a file from the folder, then the file data is not deleted from the SearchUnify index. However, if the creator themselves remove a file, then an event is triggered and the data is removed from the SearchUnify index.

With Google OAuth 2.0-based authentication in new SearchUnify instances, an API rate limit of 10,000 grants per day is applicable. It might impact the crawling in SearchUnify.

Establish a Connection

  1. Navigate to Content Sources.

  2. Click Add New Content Source.

  1. Find Google Drive and click Add.

  2. Under the Authentication tab, enter details. If you are on the first quarterly release of 2024 or a later release, then enter the name of the content source, pick a content language, and enter the Cliend ID and Client Secret of the OAuth 2.0 app.
  3. If you are on a release older than v24.Q1, the enter the name of the content source, pick a content language, and click Connect. A permissions window pops up asking for required permissions. Click Allow.

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

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

Google hasn't verified this app

If you encounter an error where Google indicates that the app has not been verified, please disregard the warning and continue with the authentication process. This issue is slated for resolution in future updates.

Set Up Crawl Frequency

The first crawl is always manual and is performed after configuring the content source. In Choose A Date, select a date to start crawling; the data created after the selected date will be crawled. 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 to see the list of preconfigured fields.

  2. Select the fields and save.

  3. Switch to By Folders.

  4. From My Folders, Shared Folders, and Shared Drive select the directories and move then to Select Files and Folders section for indexing.

  5. After selecting the repositories and click Save.

You have successfully added Google Drive as a content source in SearchUnify. Perform a manual crawl to start indexing the Drive data in SearchUnify.

Related

Difference between Manual and Frequency Crawls

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.

OAuth 2.0 Setup

If you use v24.Q1 or a newer version of SearchUnify, then your YouTube and Google Drive content sources will stop working if you haven't set up OAuth 2.0 and you'll see an error: 

Copy

Error

You need to set up your Google OAuth to continue using this content source. Click here to know more.

You will see the following errors on your YouTube and Google Drive content sources in case you haven't authenticated them with OAuth 2.0.

Set up OAuth 2.0 on your google account and re-authenticate your content sources using the client ID and client secret.

Help Article: Setting up OAuth 2.0

Last updatedFriday, March 29, 2024

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