Glean Reference Architecture

Overview

Enterprise search integration architecture for connecting internal knowledge systems to Glean's indexing and search platform. Designed for organizations needing unified search across Confluence, Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Jira, and custom internal tools. Key design drivers: connector reliability for continuous indexing, permission synchronization to enforce source-system ACLs, incremental vs bulk indexing tradeoffs, and low-latency search aggregation across heterogeneous document types.

Architecture Diagram

Source Systems ──→ Connector Framework ──→ Queue (SQS) ──→ Glean Indexing API
(Confluence, Drive,    (Cloud Run)              ↓            /indexing/documents
 Notion, Slack, Jira)       ↓              Permission Sync  /indexing/permissions
                      Schedule (cron) ──→  Bulk Reindexer   /indexing/datasources
                            ↓
                      Glean Search Index ──→ Client API ──→ Your Apps
                                              /search       (Slack bot, portal)
                                              /chat         (internal tools)

Service Layer