Supporting Google Drive external data sources

Overview

Contact support@responsive.io to access this feature or request enablement.

Responsive AI has expanded its response generation capabilities to include public-facing external websites, SharePoint, and Google Drive as external data sources. This allows AI Assistant, AI Draft, and Ask to provide more complete, helpful responses even when relevant content isn't available in your Content Library.
Note: See the Connecting your knowledge sources section of Using Agent Studio (EAP) to use Google Drive as an external source for Agent Studio.

Based on the similarity of your request to available content, Responsive AI decides whether to use your internal content, content from external resources, or a blend of both.

Responsive AI can:

• Access information stored in specific Google Drive folders.

• Blend content from internal and external sources to generate more informative responses.

• Indicate when a response is based on an external site, including a clickable source URL.

Important: When applying all filters except Business Units (BUs), Responsive AI ONLY uses the filtered internal content, not the external sources. When applying BUs as a filter, Responsive AI uses ALL the data that users have access to, including external sources associated with that BU or the default collection since the default collection is not associated with any specific BU.

Permissions

Only Google Workspace admins can grant access to domain users and group memberships.

Only users who have direct read permissions granted in Google Drive folders can access the folder via Responsive. Access is restricted for users without read permissions; they can’t see the folder and the information in those folders can’t be used by them to generate responses in Responsive AI.

• The Responsive user identity must match the Google Drive user identity.

• Identity validation occurs before permission checks; access is denied if identity verification fails.

• Responsive does not store or manage permissions internally.

Enabling Google Drive external data sources

1. Go to Organization Settings > Responsive AI > External Data Source and turn the External Data Sources toggle on.

2. Click Add New Source, click Google Drive, then click Add folders.

3. Enter your credentials if necessary to connect your Google account, log in to your account, then select the folder you want to add.

   1. There is no limit to how many folders you can add but, by default, only individual folders 1 GB or smaller can be crawled. If your folders are larger, contact the support team for assistance.

   2. Crawling supports the following document formats: .pdf, .docx, .doc, .xlsx, .xls, .xlsm, .pptx, .ppt.

   3. (Optional) to restrict access to a folder you can add it to a collection:

      1. Hover over the folder and click the three-dot menu, then click Edit Source.

      2. Select the collection from the drop-down menu and click Save.

4. Do the following as needed:

   • Click Add more folders to add additional folders.

   • Specify the collection you want the folder added to.
     Note: You can add folders to collections in Responsive , adding more control over who can see and use the information. See the Managing access to collections section below for more information.

   • Click the Remove icon to remove any unwanted folders.

5. Click Save.

Source information

Source indicators

Source visibility

The source information is displayed when a response is generated.

• If an external site was used, the URL of the site is displayed. Click the URL to open it in a new browser tab.

• The platform doesn't preview or render external sites in-app.

This transparency helps you understand whether the information came from your internal content or trusted external sources.

Access control for Google Drive folders

Folder-level read permissions are enforced based on Google Drive access controls which enables secure, read-only folder access. This ensures access is restricted at the individual user level to prevent unauthorized folder visibility. Users can only view folders they are authorized to read, without duplicating permission management..

Managing access to Google Drive

Only users who have direct read permissions granted in Google Drive folders can access the folder via Responsive.

1. Go to Organization Settings > Integrations > Cloud Storage and click Configure next to Google Drive.

2. Click Grant Permissions, log on, and complete the process.

Managing access to collections

If you added your SharePoint folder to a collection during the enablement process, and your users don’t have access to the collection, they won’t have access to the folder content in Responsive AI and Agent Studio even if they have folder access in SharePoint.

• If a collection is assigned to the folder during setup, users must have access to both the SharePoint folder and the assigned collection in order to access the information in Responsive AI.

• If no Collection is assigned, they can access the folder contents in Responsive AI and Agent Studio as long as they have access to the SharePoint folder.

To add or edit collections for external data sources:

1. Go to Organization Settings > Responsive AI > External Data Source.

2. Click the three-dot menu next to the source you want to manage and click Edit Source.
   

3. Select a collection from the drop-down list and click Save.

See Creating and adding content to collections for more information on collections.