Glean Production Checklist

Overview

Glean provides enterprise search across all company data sources with AI-powered ranking and document understanding. A production integration requires all connectors indexed, document permissions correctly mapped, and search quality validated. Failures mean employees find stale documents, see content they lack permission for, or get zero results when data exists.

Authentication & Secrets

• GLEAN_API_KEY

  stored in secrets manager (not config files)
• Indexing API token separated from Search API token
• Key rotation schedule documented (quarterly cycle)
• Separate credentials for staging/prod environments
• Service account permissions scoped per data source connector

API Integration

• Production base URL configured (

  https://api.glean.com/v1

  )
• Rate limit handling with exponential backoff
• All data source connectors configured and initial crawl complete
• Document permission mapping tested with different user roles
• Connector sync scheduled (daily cron or event-driven webhooks)
• Bulk indexing supports incremental updates (not full re-index)
• Search query tested across all indexed data sources

Error Handling & Resilience

• Circuit breaker configured for Glean API outages
• Retry with backoff for 429/5xx responses
• Connector sync failure detection within 1 hour
• Stale index detection (alert if last update > 24 hours)
• Document permission errors logged (access denied on indexed docs)
• Fallback search plan if Glean is unavailable

Monitoring & Alerting

• API latency tracked per endpoint (search, indexing)
• Error rate alerts set (threshold: >3% over 5 minutes)
• Connector health dashboard showing sync status per source
• Search quality metrics tracked (click-through rate, zero-result rate)
• Index document count monitored for unexpected drops

Validation Script

async function checkGleanReadiness(): Promise<void> {
  const checks: { name: string; pass: boolean; detail: string }[] = [];
  // Search API connectivity
  try {
    const res = await fetch('https://api.glean.com/v1/search', {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.GLEAN_API_KEY}`, 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
      body: JSON.stringify({ query: 'test', pageSize: 1 }),
    });
    checks.push({ name: 'Search API', pass: res.ok, detail: res.ok ? 'Connected' : `HTTP ${res.status}` });
  } catch (e: any) { checks.push({ name: 'Search API', pass: false, detail: e.message }); }
  // Credentials present
  checks.push({ name: 'API Key Set', pass: !!process.env.GLEAN_API_KEY, detail: process.env.GLEAN_API_KEY ? 'Present' : 'MISSING' });
  // Indexing API connectivity
  try {
    const res = await fetch('https://api.glean.com/v1/index/status', {
      headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.GLEAN_API_KEY}` },
    });
    checks.push({ name: 'Indexing API', pass: res.ok, detail: res.ok ? 'Accessible' : `HTTP ${res.status}` });
  } catch (e: any) { checks.push({ name: 'Indexing API', pass: false, detail: e.message }); }
  for (const c of checks) console.log(`[${c.pass ? 'PASS' : 'FAIL'}] ${c.name}: ${c.detail}`);
}
checkGleanReadiness();

Error Handling

Check	Risk if Skipped	Priority
Permission mapping	Users see unauthorized documents	P1
Connector sync monitoring	Stale search results across org	P1
API key rotation	Expired key halts indexing pipeline	P2
Zero-result tracking	Employees lose trust in search	P2
Index count monitoring	Silent data source disconnection	P3

Resources

• Glean Developer Portal
• Indexing API
• Search API

Next Steps

See

glean-security-basics

for document permission mapping and access control.