Google Drive & AlphaSense – Help Center

Connect your Google Drive to automatically sync your documents and search for insights

With AlphaSense, you can set up a live one-way connection with your Google Drive account and apply AI-powered search to your notes.

Enterprise Intelligence Integrations Experience

Syncing Your Account
Upload Actions
Items to Note
Monitoring Added Documents
Managing Configuration
Searching Across Content
Google Drive Connection FAQ's
- Google Drive Individual Connection
- Google Drive WorkSpace Connection

Syncing Your Account

To Get Started:

Select Integrations on the top right-hand corner of the platform
Select Google Drive
Connecting Your Account
Click the "Connect App" button. Then follow the prompt to enter your Google Drive credentials and Grant Access to sync between Google Drive and AlphaSense.
The Setup Wizard will walk you through the connection.

You'll choose between three connection types:

- Workspace Connections: Best for organizational setups where centralized and consistent access control are essential. Workspace Connections are managed by your IT Admins.
- Shared Connections: Best if you want to manage and sync personal files across your team. You can personally set up and manage Shared Connections.
- Individual Connections: Best for personal use, providing flexibility and independent management of your integration. All content uploaded will be private to you by default, but you can manually share documents with groups saved in AlphaSense.

Note: Both Workspace Connections and Shared Connections feature Permission Mirroring, which mirror whatever permissions are set within your organization's Google Drive instance to ensure that that every search result or generative AI answer is returned only to the users allowed to access it. At this time, Shared Drives are not supported.

Selecting Content:

Select the Folders you want to sync.
You also have the ability to select files that are not contained within folders.
Select "Manage Tickers & Tags" to easily bulk select and tag your content prior to syncing. This helps streamline the process of sharing materials for individual connections.
Select the sharing permissions for each folder

Reviewing Content:

Review your choices and click "Sync."

Disconnecting Your Account

Go to "Manage > Disconnect."
If you want to keep the content that was synced to AlphaSense, ensure the "Yes, make a copy of my account's current folders to keep on AlphaSense" checkbox is ticked.
To finalize the disconnection, click "Ok Disconnect.

Upload Actions

Metadata Customization:

Users can add or remove Tags & Tickers as metadata at the folder level during the ingestion process, offering flexibility in how content is categorized and retrieved.

Folder Synchronization:

Users can synchronize entire folders, including all contained documents. Synchronization is exclusively folder-based, with direct file selection not available.

Items to Note

Automated Sync for Existing Folders

Folders and sites that have been synced will automatically undergo periodic synchronization to ensure the content remains current.

Manual Addition for New Folders

To synchronize new folders and sites from Google Drive, users must manually add them, initiating the synchronization process.

Synchronization Frequency

Automatic synchronization occurs every 15 minutes, facilitating timely updates to your content.

Synchronization Limitations

With Shared Connections, incremental sync does not reflect permission changes on source documents if the user lacks owner access to those documents.

File Size Limitation

There is a maximum size limit of 100 MB for individual files, ensuring efficient data management and transfer.

Supported File Types

Google Drive integration supports specific document extensions, including .pdf, .html, .htm, .txt, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .msg, .eml, .csv, .xlsb, .xlsm, .one, .tsv, and .ods, catering to a broad range of content types.
Shared Drives are currently not supported

Account Sync Exclusivity

To ensure data integrity, each Google Drive account can be synchronized with only one AlphaSense account at a time, prohibiting simultaneous user connections.
These requirements are designed to optimize the integration process between Google Drive and AlphaSense, enhancing document management, content accessibility, and collaboration capabilities within the platform.

Monitoring Added Documents

AlphaSense integration monitoring tracks the progress and details of integrations in real time to ensure everything is on course for optimal ingestion. Click into Monitoring to get a central view of documents details and status.

Managing Configuration

To reconcile your added documents:

AlphaSense integration reporting equips you with the tools for better understanding, management and optimization of your uploads. Click into Reports to get an audit of all content added with the ability to download a report.

To manage your added documents:

AlphaSense integration configuration page allows for management of user permissions, folder hierarchies and labeling. Click into Manage Configuration to make any necessary changes.

Searching Across Content

The documents you add are processed through our AI algorithms and are made available almost immediately in platform. AlphaSense’s AI will automatically tag your documents and you will be able to search across internal content and apply AlphaSense’s AI search & discovery tools to a discrete set of documents for project-based work.

To quickly search across all of your internal content:

Click the Company Integrations dropdown in the vertical filters

To search across uploaded documents only:

Hover over Google Drive, then click Only

Click here to review our data security, data architecture, software, and more.

Google Drive Connection FAQ's

What is a Google Drive Individual Connection?

A Google Drive – Individual Connection lets you connect your Google Drive account and sync all the files you can access into AlphaSense. This includes files from your My Drive and Shared Drives. All files synced through this connection are private to you, giving you complete control over what you choose to share. This is for personal use.

What is a Google Drive Shared Connection?

A Google Drive – Shared Connection allows you to connect your Google Drive account and sync all the files you can access into AlphaSense. It also makes sure that these files are automatically available to other users who have access to them on Google Drive. This includes files from both your My Drive and Shared Drives. Access permissions for the files are regularly updated from Google Drive to ensure security

What is a Google Drive Workspace Connection?

A Workspace Connection gives customers a central way to manage and sync files across the organization. This connection needs a Google Workspace Admin to set it up and choose which drives to sync with AlphaSense. All files synced through this connection are available to users who have access to them on Google Drive, ensuring that access permissions match the original system.

NOTE: While the Workspace Connection is active, individual users cannot create their own individual or shared connections.

How is Google Drive Synced Content sharing managed in AlphaSense?

AlphaSense offers flexible content sharing options based on the type of connection you use—Individual Connection or Workspace Connection.

Google Drive Individual Connection

With an Individual Connection, you have full control over how your synced content is shared within AlphaSense. Once the connection is established, you can choose to keep your content private or share it with others, based on the sharing settings you configure during folder sync setup.

AlphaSense offers four sharing preferences:

Private: Content is only accessible to you and remains hidden from other team members.
Select Individuals: You can explicitly choose which team members have access to your synced content.
Select Group: You can create groups in AlphaSense, add relevant team members, and configure content to be shared with those groups.
Default Setting: You can set any of the above options as your default, ensuring that all incoming content is automatically shared according to your preferred configuration.

Google Drive WorkSpace Connection

With a Workspace Connection, permissions mirroring is enforced. This means AlphaSense automatically mirrors the access permissions from your Google Drive instance. Users will only files they are authorized to access in Google Drive, ensuring secure and controlled content visibility.

Sharing permissions cannot be changed within AlphaSense for Workspace Connections, as they are entirely managed through Google Drive by your IT administrators.

What file types are supported by Google Drive Connector?

Google Drive integration supports G suite Native Files – Google doc, Google Sheets, Google Slides as well as specific document extensions, including .pdf, .html, .htm, .txt, .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .msg, .eml, .csv, .xlsb, .xlsm, .one, .tsv, and .ods, catering to a broad range of content types.