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

Prerequisites

• A protected production change approval, named incident and rollback owners, and an artifact/configuration revision that has passed sandbox and staging.
• Baselines for health, freshness, error budget, and synthetic allow/deny access tests.
• A canary datasource and an explicit stop condition for unexpected destination, access expansion, or unredacted evidence.

Instructions

1. Confirm environment, secret reference, destination allowlist, artifact digest, and approval before enabling any production action.
2. Run the documented health and authorization probes against the canary with only synthetic terms and opaque identifiers.
3. Monitor error rate, freshness, queue depth, and access probes through the stated observation window; halt on any regression.
4. Promote in bounded stages or restore the previous revision, recording the decision and verified rollback result.
5. Close the change only when the owner accepts the redacted receipt and temporary credentials are revoked.

Output

Create a production readiness receipt with revision, canary source, health/freshness/error results, allow/deny evidence, owner approvals, outcome, and rollback reference. It must not include secrets, queries, or indexed content.

Examples

revision=r44; canary=sandbox-guides; health=pass; freshness=pass; errors=within-budget; allow=pass; deny=pass; outcome=promote is a complete canary decision.

Resources

• Glean Developer Portal
• Indexing API
• Search API

Next Steps

See glean-security-basics for document permission mapping and access control.