Glean: The Complete Guide to AI-Powered Enterprise Search

Every organization has the same frustrating problem: critical information is scattered across dozens of applications. An employee needs to find a document, pricing details, a past decision, or technical specs—but they don't know where it lives. They spend 30 minutes clicking through Slack threads, Google Drive folders, Notion pages, and email chains, often coming up empty or finding outdated information.

This isn't just frustrating—it's expensive. The average knowledge worker spends 1-2 hours per day searching for information. For a 50-person company, that's 50-100 hours of wasted productivity every single day. New employees struggle for months to find information that seasoned team members know exists but can't quite remember where.

Glean solves this problem by providing AI-powered search across your entire company's knowledge base. Think of it as Google search, but for all your company's apps. One search query surfaces relevant results from Slack, Google Drive, Notion, email, Jira, Confluence, GitHub, and 100+ other applications—with AI that understands context, learns from your organization's usage patterns, and surfaces the most relevant information regardless of where it lives.

Before implementing Glean, it's important to understand what makes it dramatically more powerful than traditional enterprise search tools:

AI-Powered Contextual Understanding

Unlike keyword-based search tools that simply match text, Glean's AI understands the meaning and context behind your queries. When you search for "Q4 pricing strategy," Glean doesn't just find documents with those exact words—it understands you're looking for strategic planning documents, pricing discussions, and related financial projections. It can surface a Slack thread where the pricing was debated, a Google Doc where the strategy was finalized, and a Notion page where it was documented for the sales team.

The AI learns from your organization's behavior. It sees which documents people actually click on, which sources are most authoritative, and which information is most current. Over time, Glean gets smarter about what your specific organization means by certain terms and which results are most helpful.

Universal Search Across All Your Apps

Glean integrates with 100+ business applications including Slack, Google Drive, Microsoft 365, Notion, Confluence, Jira, GitHub, Salesforce, Asana, Dropbox, and more. Instead of searching each app separately, you search once and get results from everywhere:

• Slack messages and threads where topics were discussed
• Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides with relevant information
• Notion pages documenting processes and decisions
• Email threads with important context
• Jira tickets tracking related work
• GitHub repositories, issues, and pull requests
• Salesforce records and customer data
• Confluence pages with documentation

All of this happens in a single search interface, with results ranked by relevance using AI that understands which sources are most trustworthy and current.

Personalized Results Based on Your Role

Glean personalizes search results based on who you are, what team you're on, and what you typically work on. When a sales rep searches for "pricing," they see customer-facing pricing sheets. When a finance person searches the same term, they see internal margin analysis. The AI learns what information is most relevant to each person and team.

Automatic Knowledge Graph Creation

As Glean indexes your company's information, it builds a knowledge graph that understands relationships between people, projects, documents, and concepts. It knows which people work on which projects, which documents are related to each other, and which information is most current. This knowledge graph powers incredibly relevant search results that traditional tools simply cannot match.

Real-Time Answers with AI Assistant

Beyond just finding documents, Glean's AI Assistant can answer questions directly by synthesizing information from multiple sources. Ask "What's our return policy?" and instead of getting 10 documents to read through, you get a direct answer with citations showing where the information came from. The AI can summarize long documents, extract key points from threads, and provide context-aware answers to complex questions.

Step 1: Identify and Connect Your Core Knowledge Sources

Start by identifying where your company's most important information lives. For most organizations, this includes:

• Communication: Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Documents: Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive/SharePoint
• Documentation: Notion, Confluence, or internal wikis
• Project management: Jira, Asana, Linear, or Monday.com
• Code: GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket
• Customer data: Salesforce, HubSpot, or other CRM

Connect these sources to Glean first. Each integration requires admin permissions to authorize Glean's access. Glean respects all existing permissions—users will only see search results from content they already have access to.

The initial indexing takes time (hours to days depending on data volume), so start with your most critical sources and add others progressively.

Step 2: Configure Permissions and Security Settings

Glean's security model is critical to its value. Configure these settings carefully:

• Permission inheritance: Verify that Glean correctly syncs permissions from source systems. Users should only see results they have access to in the original application.
• Sensitive data handling: Identify repositories or folders containing highly sensitive data (HR files, legal documents, financial records) and configure appropriate access controls.
• External sharing rules: Define policies for externally shared content. Should contractors see all search results or only specific sources?
• Retention policies: Set how long deleted content remains searchable in Glean to match your compliance requirements.

Get this right from the start. Security concerns are the fastest way to derail a Glean implementation.

Step 3: Train Your Team on Effective Search Techniques

Glean works differently than traditional search engines. Train your team on best practices:

• Natural language queries: Encourage people to search how they naturally think. "What's our parental leave policy?" works better than "parental leave."
• Use filters: Show teams how to filter by source (only Slack), time period (last 30 days), or person (documents from Sarah).
• Leverage keyboard shortcuts: Glean has quick access shortcuts (Command+K in browser) that make searching instant.
• Trust the AI ranking: The most relevant results appear first. Don't default to searching each app separately out of habit.
• Ask questions: Use the AI Assistant feature to ask direct questions, not just search for documents.

Create a 10-minute training video showing common use cases. The faster people adopt Glean, the faster you'll see productivity gains.

Step 4: Build a Culture of Searchable Knowledge

Glean is only as good as the information you feed it. Encourage practices that make knowledge more searchable:

• Document decisions: After important discussions, create a brief document summarizing the decision and reasoning.
• Use descriptive titles: "Q4-2024-Pricing-Strategy" is more searchable than "final-final-v3."
• Reduce private channels: Information locked in private Slack channels can't help the broader team. Default to public unless there's a specific reason for privacy.
• Update documentation: Outdated information creates confusion. Schedule regular reviews of key documentation.
• Thread conversations: In Slack, use threads to keep discussions organized and easier for Glean to understand context.

Step 5: Monitor Adoption and Iterate

Glean provides detailed analytics on usage. Monitor these metrics:

• Percentage of employees actively using Glean weekly
• Most common search queries (helps identify knowledge gaps)
• Searches with no good results (indicates missing content or integration opportunities)
• Which data sources get clicked most often (shows where valuable information lives)
• Time spent per search session (should decrease as AI improves)

Use this data to add missing integrations, improve documentation in areas with many searches, and identify power users who can help train others.

Accelerate New Hire Onboarding

New employees face the steepest learning curve because they don't know what exists or where to find it. Glean dramatically shortens this ramp-up time:

• Create an onboarding collection in Glean with essential documents, common questions, and key contacts
• New hires can search for questions like "How do I submit expenses?" and get instant answers
• They can find past project examples by searching "similar to [project type]"
• The AI Assistant can summarize company policies, product information, or technical documentation

Companies report new hires reach productivity 50% faster with Glean because they can self-serve answers instead of constantly interrupting colleagues.

Build Subject Matter Expert Collections

Identify your company's experts in key areas (technical architecture, sales methodology, product strategy) and have them curate collections of essential resources:

• The head of sales creates a "Sales Best Practices" collection
• Your technical architect maintains an "Engineering Standards" collection
• The customer success leader curates "Customer Onboarding Resources"

These collections serve as curated starting points while the broader search capability handles everything else.

Integrate Glean into Daily Workflows

The more embedded Glean becomes in daily work, the more value it provides:

• Use Glean's browser extension so search is available on any webpage
• Install Glean's Slack integration to search without leaving Slack
• Set Glean as the default search in your browser for work-related queries
• Create keyboard shortcuts to open Glean instantly from any application
• Encourage teams to share Glean search links instead of re-explaining where information lives

Use Search Analytics to Improve Documentation

Glean's search analytics reveal knowledge gaps in your organization:

• If many people search for "benefits enrollment" but get poor results, you need better HR documentation
• Repeated searches for specific product features suggest documentation gaps
• Questions with no good answers show opportunities to create new content
• Popular searches with inconsistent results indicate conflicting information that needs consolidation

Schedule monthly reviews of search analytics to continuously improve your knowledge base.

Track these metrics to demonstrate Glean's ROI and identify optimization opportunities:

• Weekly Active Users: Percentage of employees using Glean weekly. Target: 70-90% for most organizations within 3 months of launch.
• Time Saved Per Search: Compare time spent searching before and after Glean. Most companies see 60-80% reduction in time spent finding information.
• Search Success Rate: Percentage of searches where users click on results vs. abandon the search. Target: 85%+ success rate.
• New Hire Time to Productivity: Track how long new employees take to complete initial tasks. Should decrease by 40-60% with Glean.
• Support Ticket Reduction: Questions to IT help desk or HR about "where can I find X" should drop significantly.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Track whether teams discover and leverage work from other departments more frequently.

ROI Calculation: For a 100-person company where employees save 1 hour daily at an average fully-loaded cost of $75/hour, annual savings equal: 100 employees × 1 hour × 250 work days × $75 = $1.875 million in recovered productivity. Even conservative estimates (30 minutes saved per person) deliver massive ROI.

• Insufficient integrations: Connecting only 2-3 apps limits value. Integrate all major knowledge sources to make Glean truly comprehensive.
• Poor permission configuration: Security concerns will kill adoption. Verify permissions work correctly before broad rollout.
• No training or launch communication: Simply turning on Glean without explaining its value leads to low adoption. Create excitement and educate users.
• Ignoring search analytics: The data Glean provides shows exactly what your organization needs. Use it to improve documentation and add missing integrations.
• Not addressing knowledge gaps: Glean surfaces what you have, but if information doesn't exist or is outdated, search can't help. Use Glean to identify and fill documentation gaps.
• Siloed implementation: If only one department uses Glean, the network effects and knowledge sharing benefits don't materialize. Push for company-wide adoption.
• Overlooking mobile access: Many employees need search on mobile devices. Deploy Glean's mobile apps to ensure access anywhere.

Information scattered across dozens of applications isn't just inconvenient—it's costing your organization millions in lost productivity, slower onboarding, and missed opportunities. Glean transforms this chaos into an organized, searchable knowledge base that gives every employee instant access to the information they need.

The key to success is thoughtful implementation: connecting all your knowledge sources, configuring security properly, training your team effectively, and building a culture that values searchable knowledge. When done right, Glean becomes as essential as email—a tool people use dozens of times daily without thinking about it.

Whether you implement Glean independently or work with specialists like Aiden to maximize the platform, the important thing is to start. Every day without effective enterprise search is another day of wasted hours, frustrated employees, and institutional knowledge that remains locked away instead of driving your business forward.