Configure crawl settings for the Google Drive external content connector

Specify the shared drives you want your Google Drive external content connector to crawl. Define inclusion or exclusion filters for file extensions to dictate the types of documents the crawl retrieves and feeds to AI Search for indexing.

Before you begin

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

Role required: sn_ext_conn.xcc_admin

About this task

This task is optional. By default, the Google Drive external content connector crawls all eligible shared drives from its specified source system and sends documents with all supported file extensions to AI Search for indexing. Only perform this task if you want the connector to use any of the following non-default settings:

• Inclusion or exclusion filters for the eligible shared drives to crawl when running content crawls
  Note:

  To be eligible for crawling, a shared drive must be accessible by at least one member who is a user in the Directory and who has the Manager role (or is a member of a group with the Manager role). To learn more about the Directory, see https://support.google.com/a/answer/1628009. For details on the Manager role, see https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/12380484.
• Inclusion or exclusion filters for the attachment file extensions to retrieve when running content crawls

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 Google Drive external content connector whose settings you want to modify.
3. In the connector editor's Settings tab, select Crawl settings.
4. Select one of the following Content filtering options:
   • To crawl all eligible shared drives from the source system, select Crawl all content.

   • To crawl only a specified set of eligible shared drives from the source system, select Include only these drives, then use the Add URL field and Add button to enter URLs for shared drives that you want to include in the crawl.

     For example, you might enter https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YKEQjtCzxiS7Uf9PVA to include only searchable content from the specified shared drive.

   • To crawl all except a specified set of eligible shared drives from the source system, select Exclude only these drives, then use the Add URL field and Add button to enter URLs for shared drives that you want to exclude from the crawl.

     For example, you might enter https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/X5pOsb29NYITGMZMGEq to exclude searchable content from the specified shared drive.

   Shared drive URLs have the format https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/<shared-drive-ID>, where <shared-drive-ID> is the identifier for the shared drive.

   Note:

   The Google Drive external content connector only crawls eligible shared drives from your source system. It doesn't crawl user drives from your source system.
5. Optional: To apply inclusion or exclusion filters to a crawl based on file extensions, perform the following steps:
   1. Select Filter by file extension.
   2. To specify the type of filter, select Include or Exclude.
      Select Include if you want the crawl to only retrieve documents that have one of the specified file extensions. Select Exclude if you want the crawl to retrieve all documents except those that have one of the specified file extensions.
   3. In the File extension field, select the file extensions that you want to include or exclude.
      For details on the supported file extensions, see Binary file extensions supported in External Content Connectors.
6. Select Save.

Result

The Google Drive external content connector is updated with your crawl scope and file extension filter settings.

What to do next

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