Glean Apps empower everyone at a company to create no-code custom generative AI assistants tailored to specific business needs. Apps are published in the app library for easy discovery by other teammates in the organization. Additionally, apps can integrate into communication tools like Slack or published as a Chat API endpoint.

Apps leverage all of Glean's core competencies including enterprise search, conversational AI assistant, enterprise data connectors, user permissions, and data governance.

Admins, setup admins, and members with the app creator role can create apps. Refer to How to enable your organization to create apps to learn how an admin can assign the app creator role to teammates.

Go to Chat on the left navigation and then click on Apps.

​Click the Create app button at the top of the page.

On the left side of the screen, you can specify basic info, knowledge source, instruction, and publish settings. Under advanced settings, you will find options to add editors, actions, and triggering instructions. On the right side of the screen, you can preview your app.

To start, choose an icon and provide a name and description to help others understand the purpose of your app.

Choose the knowledge sources the app should reference, whether company or world knowledge.

For company knowledge, you can paste a URL or search for and add the names of files, folders, entire data sources, and more. Learn more about company knowledge

To add a URL, paste the link into the input field and press Enter. If the link has been indexed by Glean, a chip with the name of the source will display.

To search for a source, click the input field and start entering the names of the knowledge source you'd like to add.

If you don’t see what you’re looking for in the dropdown, click on “See all results for [text]” at the bottom. This will open a search modal where you can conduct a more comprehensive search.
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A container is a group of documents (e.g. folder, Slack channel). There are two ways to add a container as a knowledge source.

If you choose company knowledge and leave the input field blank, the app will reference all available information at your company.

All of an app’s results are secure and permissions-enforced, so only the teammates who have access to the source knowledge will get access to it.

Choose world knowledge if you want the app to use publicly available LLM-trained information.

Add instructions if you want to specify how the app should respond in terms of tone of voice, length, and format.
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For more examples, see Instruction best practices.

Specify where to publish your app. By default, an app is not visible to anyone. Click Edit to change the publish settings.

You can currently publish to Chat or to Slack. All apps are enabled to be published as a Chat API endpoint.

Select Visible to all or Visible to some teammates to publish your app to the app library.

To find a channel's channel ID, go to the channel in Slack and click on the channel name in the top bar. In the modal that appears, scroll down to the bottom of the "About" tab. Copy the channel ID shown and paste it into Glean.

You can test your app response by entering a question in the live preview on the right screen.

Click Advanced settings to manage editors, actions, and triggering conditions.

Add teammates who can also edit this app. Only those with the app creator role can be editors.

Enable additional functionalities for your app by specifying actions. Each app can have up to 5 actions.

Specify triggering instructions to allow Assistant to intelligently invoke your app to answer questions.

Triggering instructions should be detailed and include example phrases. For example, for an HR Assistant, you might include the following:

Automatically trigger this app when a user asks about HR and administrative questions including company culture, benefits, professional development, work-life balance, 401(k), PTO, vacation policy, and company holidays. Example phrases:

Only an admin can enable triggering for all or some teammates.

Triggering occurs in all surfaces where the app is published, e.g. Chat, Slack, or API. Test to verify that Assistant correctly triggers your app and maintains chat quality. Assistant may not trigger this app in rare instances even if the instructions are met.

When done, click the Save button.

If you publish to the app library, your teammates will be able to access your app from Chat.

You can also use the "Copy link" button to copy and paste the app link in your web browser to open the app.

If triggering is enabled for your app, Assistant will intelligently invoke your app if it determines that the app is best qualified to answer a question.

If you published to Slack, add the Glean app to each channel listed above. The scope will be confined to what you specified when setting up the app.

Start asking your app some questions! Your app will generate answers based on the knowledge sources and instructions you've provided.

FAQ

Insights for Glean Apps