Connecting Google Drive as an external knowledge source

You can create a connection to ingest and sync content from your shared Google Drive. After you connect Google Drive, you canconfigure workflows to use this external content.


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Summary: ◀▼
You can connect shared Google Drive as an external knowledge source to sync Google Docs and Sheets content for use in your workflows. Manage multiple shared drives, set viewer permissions for user segments, manually resync content, and disconnect drives as needed. This integration helps keep your knowledge base updated with external documents accessible based on configured permissions.




You can connect Google Drive to your Zendesk account to make content from your shared
Google Drive available as a knowledge source wherever external content is used.
Note: Currently, the Google Drive connector supports Google Docs and
Sheets. In addition, the Google Drive connector syncs contents from your shared
Google Drive. Content from private Google Drives is not synced. You can enroll in the PDF Ingestion EAP to enable
syncing of your PDF documents.

This article contains the following topics:
Connecting your shared Google Drive
Adding another shared drive
Managing Google Drives connected
to your Zendesk account



Related articles:
Connecting external knowledge sources to your
Zendesk account
Knowledge product limits for your help
center




Connecting your shared Google Drive

You can create a connection to ingest and sync content from your shared Google Drive.
After you connect Google Drive, you can configure workflows to use this external
content.
You must be a Knowledge admin to set up and manage external content connections.

To set up a Google Drive connection
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles ( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Under the Available sources section, click Connect on the Google
Drive card.

Review the Google Drive connect screen, then click Continue.

Sign in to Google with a user account that has the correct permissions for
content you want to sync to Zendesk and allow Zendesk to access your Google
Drive files.
Select the drives that you want to sync, then click Sync.



When the sync is complete, the page will show a green Synced status for each synced
source.




Adding another shared drive

After you create a connection to a Google Drive, you can add more shared drives to
the connection at any time.

To add shared drives to your Google Drive connection
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles ( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Click the options menu ( ) on the Google Drive site row that contains the
shared drive you want to add, then select Add content.

Select the drives that you want to sync.

Click Sync to add the shared drives and begin syncing them to
Knowledge. When the sync is complete, the page will show a green Synced
status for each newly added drive.






Managing Google Drives connected to your Zendesk account

Once you've created a Google Drive connection, you can make changes to the connected
drive as needed.
This section contains the following topics:
Viewing Google Drive connection details
Managing viewer permissions for Google Drive content
Manually resyncing Google Drive content
Disconnecting a Google Drive connection




Viewing Google Drive connection details

You can view information about the shared Google Drives you've connected to
Knowledge, including when it was created and by whom, and when it was last
synced.

To view Google Drive connection details
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles ( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Click the options menu ( ) on the row for the drive you want to
manage, then select Manage.

View details about the connection:

Created: When the connection was created

Connected by: Name of the Knowledge admin who created the
connection

Items: Number of connected files in the drive

Status: Sync status

Last synced: When the last sync occurred. Syncs are
automatically performed every 24 hours, though can also be triggered
manually


Connection: Name of the connected drive

Viewing permissions: Who can view the connected files. To
view the file content, users must have permission in Google
Drive to access the content.



Click Save.






Managing viewer permissions for Google Drive content

You can set the viewer permissions for who can view connected Google Drive
content in your Zendesk workflows.

To manage viewer permissions for Google Drive content
In Knowledge admin, click Manage articles ( ) in the sidebar.
Click External content > Connections.

Click the options menu ( ) on the row for the source you want to manage,
then select Manage.
Under Viewing permissions select one of the following options to
determine which user segments can view content
from this source:

Only visible to selected user segments: Select up to 10 user
segments from any of the following (an Enterprise plan is required
to select multiple user segments):

Signed-in users: Includes internal and external users
who create an account and sign in to your help center.

Agents and admins: Includes team members only, so
that you can create content that is internal-only.
Note: Light agents are included in this
segment. For a list of light agent permissions, see
Understanding and
setting light agent permissions.


Custom user segment: Allows you to restrict viewing
access to specific users based on tags, organizations, or
groups by applying user segments. See Creating user segments to
restrict access.



Visible to everyone: Includes anyone who visits your help
center and does not require sign in.


Click Save.





Manually resyncing Google Drive content

When you connect Google Drive as an external content source, a sync process runs
every 24 hours to update new or changed content. You can manually force a sync.

To manually resync Google Drive content
On the Connections page, click the options menu ( ) for the connection you want to sync.

Select Sync again. The Google Drive connection syncs immediately,
and the Last synced column is updated with the most recent sync
time.






Disconnecting a Google Drive connection

You can remove connections to Google Drive if you no longer want to sync shared
drives. If you remove a Google Drive connection, all shared drive connections within
that site will be removed. To remove an individual shared drive connection but
retain others within Google Drive, remove the shared drive connection only.
When you remove a connection, the related content is no longer available wherever external content is used.

To disconnect a Google Drive
On the Connections page, click the options menu ( ) for the connection or shared drive you want to
disconnect.

Select Remove connection.
Review the message, then click Remove connection.
The shared drive is removed from the Connection list, and is no
longer available as an external content source.




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