Google Drive Search Connector is currently available in beta.


As organizations transition towards a self-service experience for employees, it is difficult to scale this effort effectively due to knowledge sources and information spread across various platforms. Employees find it challenging to manually search the necessary information from multiple data sources, as this process can be highly time-consuming and inefficient.


Freshservice's unified search through the Google Drive Search Connector allows you to integrate the Google Drive knowledge sources, enabling effective self-service at scale. It helps retrieve information from Google Drive with comprehensive and efficient Freddy AI Agent search capabilities, allowing employees to find accurate information quickly.

This article contains the following topics:

Prerequisites for the integration

Ensure you have the following as part of the prerequisites for integration:

  • An active Google administrator account to access Google Drive.

  • An Enterprise account on Freshservice, and administrator privileges within Freshservice to initiate the integration.

  • Freddy AI Agent with the new Generative AI (Gen AI) capabilities enabled.

How to integrate the Google Drive Search Connector

  1. Go to Admin > Automation & Productivity > Extensibility > Apps.

  1. A, click the Marketplace Apps icon on the top-right corner, and select Marketplace Apps.

  2. Search and select the Google Drive Search Connector app using the Search apps option.

  1. Click Install on the installation page.

  1. After the installation finishes, a new screen appears. Click Connect now to sign into your Google account using a third-party tool called Merge. Freshservice partners with Merge, ensuring a secure and trusted connection to your Google account.

  2. On the new screen, click Next to authorise access to Google Drive.

  3. Use Single Sign On (SSO) to select the Google account required for the connection, as shown below.

  4. After successfully signing in, a confirmation message will appear, as shown below. Click Next to proceed to Google Drive configuration.

  5. On the new screen, all the shared drives from your Google account will be listed. Choose the drives you want to sync, up to a maximum of 100 shared drives. Then, click Save and sync. You can monitor the sync status on the Settings tab of the Configuration page.

  6. Once the sync is complete, a Sync successful tag appears next to your Google account, as shown. To refresh the sync or disconnect the account, click the three-dot menu and choose the desired option.

    1. The maximum file size that can be indexed from Google Drive is 50 MB. Files above the maximum file size cannot be synced.

    2. The following data entity formats are supported for data sync:

    3. Native Google file types: Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

    4. Portable Document Format (PDF)

    5. HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

    6. Comma-Separated Values (CSV)

    7. Microsoft Excel (XLS and XLSX)

    8. Rich Text Format (RTF)

    9. Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT)

    10. Microsoft Word

    11. Plain text (TXT)

  7. Click Sync log next to the last synced timestamp to view logs for the artefacts synced from your Google Drive account.

    • Log details, such as sync time, sync status, and the number of documents or shared drives added, deleted, or modified, are updated with each data sync.

    • Each data sync can have a Successful or Failed status.

    • If data sync is successful, the sync status is marked as Success. If any file fails or the overall sync fails, the sync status is marked as Failed, which could be due to system errors.

    • Individual document errors may occur, even after a successful sync, due to unsupported file formats, large file sizes, empty documents, and so on. Contact the support team to obtain the reason for the document-level failure.

  8. If you want to update the shared drives for sync, use the edit option on the Settings tab of the Configuration page.

It is recommended to select the shared drives with the most relevant and recent data. After the sync is complete, information from the selected shared drives is integrated with Freddy AI Agent’s search capabilities.


A one-time initial data sync is performed from the selected drives, including user access permissions.


Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

  1. What happens when part of my data is in Google Drive and the rest is in Freshservice knowledge base?
    Our Freddy-powered Freddy AI Agent has the intelligence to provide you with the most relevant response by unifying the content from various sources.

  2. How does Freddy AI Agent ensure that users only see documents they have access to?

When a user asks a query, Freddy AI Agent checks to see if the user has access to the content that’s retrieved from Google Drive to answer the query. The user’s email address is used to uphold the access privileges between Google Drive and Freshservice. Admins should ensure that the email address field is populated on Google Drive and there is parity between Google Drive and Freshservice.


  1. What to do if I face data sync issues?

If you encounter persistent data sync errors, reach out to your CSM or support@freshservice.com for further assistance.


  1. What search methods are used for retrieving results from Google Drive?

To retrieve results from Google Drive, a hybrid search method that combines context-based and keyword search is used.

  1. In what scenarios will data not sync?

The data will not sync when there is an empty document, an incorrect file format, or a file size exceeding 50 MB.

  1. Are texts from tables and images included in the indexed content?

No, currently the text within tables and images is not extracted or indexed. At this time, only plain text content is parsed during the sync. However, support for table and image content is being actively explored based on customer feedback.

  1. How long will the initial/full sync take?

The duration of the initial sync depends on the number of files and the total size. On average, syncing 1,000 files totalling 250 MB takes around 3 hours to complete.