Configure crawl settings for a Notion external content connector

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated May 15, 2026
  • 3 minutes to read

    • Specify the pages you want your Notion external content connector to crawl and feed to AI Search for indexing.

    Before you begin

    A connector administrator must have already created the Notion external content connector that you want to configure crawl settings for. To learn about this procedure, see Create a Notion external content connector.

    Role required: sn_ext_conn.xcc_admin

    About this task

    The Notion external content connector crawls pages in your Notion workspace. To make a page eligible for crawling, you must add a connection from that page to the internal integration registered for the Notion external content connector.

    Content is only retrieved from the source system if it passes all of your configured crawl setting filters. If any crawl setting filter excludes a content item, the external content connector doesn't retrieve it.

    Important:

    By default, each external content connector can index up to one million (1,000,000) content items from its source system. When a connector exceeds this limit, it continues to crawl the source system, but only sends content item deletions and updates to AI Search for indexing, ignoring new content items. The connector logs an error message for every 10,000 content items it crawls beyond the indexing limit.

    When a connector's indexed content item count exceeds 800,000, a warning message appears in the connector's UI to indicate that it's approaching the indexing limit. If the connector reaches the indexing limit, an error message appears in its UI.

    External content connectors that support user permissions crawls can handle permissions for up to five hundred thousand (500,000) users and their groups. If a connector retrieves users in excess of this limit, user and group permissions may not be correctly applied to the connector's retrieved content. As a result, the content may not be searchable.

    If one of your connectors reaches the content indexing limit, you can update its crawl settings and file inclusion/exclusion filters to reduce the number of content items it retrieves. Alternatively, if you need a connector to index more than 1,000,000 content items, you can create a Customer Service and Support case at https://support.servicenow.com/now to request a limit increase for the connector.

    Procedure

    1. Navigate to All > External Content Connectors > External Content Admin Home.
    2. In the Connectors list, select the record for the Notion external content connector whose settings you want to modify.
    3. In the connector editor's Settings tab, select Crawl settings.
    4. Select Go to Notion to share content, then perform the following steps in your Notion workspace for each page you want the connector to be able to retrieve searchable content, metadata, and files from:
      1. Navigate to the selected Notion page.
      2. In the menu at the upper right of the page, navigate to . . . > Connections > Add connection.
      3. Select the internal integration registered for the Notion external content connector from the list of available connections.
      4. Select Confirm.
      A Configured status indicator appears once you've added the internal integration as a connection for one or more pages in your Notion workspace.
    5. Optional: If you want AI Search to automatically generate captions for content in attachments and files retrieved by the connector, select the Multimodal captions option.
      When you select this option, the Platform Multimodal Service automatically generates descriptive captions for images, tables, charts, and other visual elements found in retrieved attachments and files. You can discover these retrieved attachments and files by searching for terms from their generated captions.
      This option is only available when the Platform Multimodal Service plugin is activated on your instance.
    6. Select Save and validate.

    Result

    The Notion external content connector is updated with your modified crawl settings.
    Important:
    The Notion external content connector doesn't retrieve per-user permissions when running content crawls. All content indexed by the connector is searchable by all mapped users who have access to your configured AI Search experience.

    What to do next

    To retrieve content from your Notion source system using your modified crawl settings, create and run a one-time content crawl for your Notion external content connector. To learn about creating and running one-time content crawls, see Create a content crawl for an external content connector.