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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
-
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):
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.