Configure crawl settings for a ServiceNow product documentation external content connector

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 30, 2025
  • 1 minute to read

    • Choose the products that you want your ServiceNow product documentation external content connector to crawl documentation for.

    Before you begin

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

    Role required: sn_ext_conn.xcc_admin

    About this task

    This task is optional. By default, the ServiceNow product documentation external content connector crawls documentation for all ServiceNow products. Only perform this task if you want to exclude the documentation for some products from the connector's crawls.

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

    When a connector's indexed document 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.

    If one of your connectors reaches the indexing limit, you can update its crawl settings and file inclusion/exclusion filters to reduce the number of documents it retrieves. Alternately, if you need to index more than 1,000,000 documents, 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 ServiceNow product documentation external content connector whose settings you want to modify.
    3. In the connector editor's Settings tab, select Crawl settings.
    4. To restrict the connector's content crawl scope, select the products that you want to crawl the documentation for.
      By default, all products are selected. You can use the option in the list header to select or deselect all products.
    5. Select Save.

    Result

    The ServiceNow product documentation external content connector is updated with your chosen crawl scope.