Exploring External Content Connectors

Using External Content Connectors, AI Search applications can search content and metadata from external content repositories such as Atlassian Confluence Cloud and Microsoft SharePoint Online. Expanding search recall to include external content helps search users locate the information they need.

External Content Connectors overview

The External Content Connectors application adds support for indexing content and metadata from external source systems to make those systems searchable in AI Search applications. Indexing preserves the content's original user access permissions from the source system using AI Search's content security model.

This release includes the following external content connectors:

Adobe Acrobat Sign external content connector
Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service external content connector
Aha! Roadmaps external content connector
Amazon S3 external content connector
Asana external content connector
Atlassian Confluence Cloud external content connector
Atlassian Jira Cloud external content connector
Box external content connector
Cornerstone external content connector
Docusign external content connector
Fluid Topics external content connector
Dropbox external content connector
GitHub Enterprise Cloud external content connector
GitLab external content connector
Google Drive external content connector
HubSpot external content connector
Lucidchart external content connector
ManageEngine external content connector
Microsoft OneDrive external content connector
Microsoft SharePoint Online external content connector
Microsoft Teams external content connector
Microsoft Viva Engage external content connector
Miro external content connector
monday.com external content connector
Notion external content connector
SAP DMS external content connector
SAP SuccessFactors external content connector
ServiceNow documentation external content connector
ServiceNow instance external content connector
Slack external content connector
Smartsheet external content connector
Trello external content connector
Webcrawler external content connector
WordPress external content connector
Workday external content connector
Workvivo external content connector
Zendesk Guide external content connector
Zoom external content connector

Connector administrators can schedule content and user permission crawls to suit your indexing requirements. If the need arises, connector administrators can also run either type of crawl on demand.

Important: The External Content Connectors application consumes Integration Hub transactions when feeding crawled content to AI Search. You can monitor available and used transactions for your Integration Hub subscription packages in the Integration Hub Usage Dashboard. For details on transaction monitoring, see Transaction reports in Integration Hub Usage Dashboard.

All external content connectors support semantic vector indexing of content retrieved from crawled source systems. Only features which use semantic vector search with the Now LLM Service can take advantage of this support. For details on semantic vector indexing and search, see Semantic vector search in AI Search.

External Content Connectors indexed sources and search sources

Each external content connector has its own indexed source for crawled content. It also has a default search source that specifies no filter conditions and so includes all items from its indexed source. To apply filter conditions to an external content connector's indexed content, create your own search sources for that connector's indexed source.

To make a connector's content searchable in an AI Search application, include one of its search sources in the search profile used for that application. For more information about creating and using indexed sources and search sources, see Indexed sources in AI Search and Search sources in AI Search.

External Content Connectors availability

The External Content Connectors application is only supported on cloud-hosted ServiceNow AI Platform® instances. It's not supported on on-premise (self-hosted) instances.

External Content Connectors workflow

The following illustration shows a sample workflow of how users in an organization interact with External Content Connectors to enable indexing and search of content and metadata from supported external sources.

[Omitted image "exploring-external-content-connectors.svg"] Alt text: Infographic showing how connector admins, AI Search users, and AI Search high security administrators work with the External Content Connectors to enable search for content from source systems. For details, refer to the following description.

In this External Content Connectors workflow:

Connector administrators configure connection settings for external content connectors. They configure crawl start points and inclusion/exclusion filters to define the scope of connector crawls. They define schedules that specify when crawls run.
The system runs connectors at their scheduled times or when connector administrators start one-time crawls. When crawling, connectors retrieve searchable content and security principals from their source systems and feed them to AI Search for indexing.
Search users are presented with content and metadata from external content source systems when interacting with AI Search applications. AI Search's content security model retains user and group access permissions set in the source system, so users can only view content that they have permission to access.
Connector administrators review and analyze crawl metrics, crawl histories, and user permission data. They use this information to understand how external data is crawled and indexed, allowing for more effective tuning of crawl settings for their external content connectors.

Important:

By default, each external content connector can index up to one million (1,000,000) content items from its source system. When a connector exceeds this limit, it continues to crawl the source system, but only sends content item deletions and updates to AI Search for indexing, ignoring new content items. The connector logs an error message for every 10,000 content items it crawls beyond the indexing limit.

When a connector's indexed content item count exceeds 800,000, a warning message appears in the connector's UI to indicate that it's approaching the indexing limit. If the connector reaches the indexing limit, an error message appears in its UI.

External content connectors that support user permissions crawls can handle permissions for up to five hundred thousand (500,000) users and their groups. If a connector retrieves users in excess of this limit, user and group permissions may not be correctly applied to the connector's retrieved content. As a result, the content may not be searchable.

If one of your connectors reaches the content indexing limit, you can update its crawl settings and file inclusion/exclusion filters to reduce the number of content items it retrieves. If you need to index more content items than the limit allows, you can create a Customer Service and Support case at https://support.servicenow.com/now to request a limit increase for the connector.

External Content Connectors benefits

Benefit	Feature	Users
Configure source systems for external content indexing	Configuring source systems for external content indexing	Source system administrators
Create connectors to retrieve searchable content and metadata and user permissions from supported external data source systems	Creating external content connectors	Connector administrators
Control the scope of external content connector crawls by specifying source system locations to crawl and content types to feed to AI Search for indexing	Configuring crawl settings for external content connectors	Connector administrators
Update searchable content and metadata from source systems on demand or on a scheduled recurring basis	Create a content crawl for an external content connector	Connector administrators
Update user and group access permissions from source systems on demand or on a scheduled recurring basis	Create a user permission crawl for an external content connector	Connector administrators
Review metrics for source system items retrieved by content crawls	Review crawl history for an external content connector	Connector administrators
Review user and group access permissions retrieved by user permission crawls	Review user permissions for an external content connector	Search high security administrators
Search content and metadata indexed from external data source systems	Searching in AI Search	AI Search users

Interaction with ServiceNow Otto® Genius Results

If you have the ServiceNow Otto for AI Search and ServiceNow Otto for Virtual Agent ServiceNow Store applications installed, external content search results are eligible for inclusion in Summary Genius Result answers. This includes answers generated in ServiceNow Otto for Virtual Agent chats.

External content search results are ignored when generating answers for Knowledge base articles Genius Results and Actions Genius Results.

Estimating document volume for source systems
Source system tools enable you to estimate the number of documents available for retrieval by external content connectors. By estimating the available document count for a source system, you can determine whether you need to apply crawl scope restrictions when configuring an external content connector for that source system.
Configuring source systems for external content indexing
Source system administrators configure settings to allow external content connectors to index your documents and security settings for search. These settings must be configured for a source system before you create an external content connector to crawl that source system.
Creating external content connectors
Connector administrators can create external content connectors to retrieve searchable content and metadata and security permissions from supported source systems.
Configuring crawl settings for external content connectors
Connector administrators can configure crawl settings for each external content connector, such as which source system locations it crawls and which types of content it sends to AI Search for indexing.
Delta content crawls for external content connectors
Delta content crawls improve content crawl performance by only retrieving newly added, changed, or deleted items from an external content connector's source system.
Domain separation and External Content Connectors
Domain separation is unsupported for External Content Connectors. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.

Parent Topic:External Content Connectors

title	Exploring External Content Connectors
description	Using External Content Connectors, AI Search applications can search content and metadata from external content repositories such as Atlassian Confluence Cloud and Microsoft SharePoint Online. Expanding search recall to include external content helps search users locate the information they need.
locale	en-US
canonical_url	https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/australia/platform-administration/search-administration/exploring-ext-cont-connectors.html
release	australia
product	Search Administration
classification	search-administration
topic_type	concept
last_updated	2026-09-10
reading_time_minutes	10
keywords	ServiceNow OttoAI Agentsgenerative AIagentic AI
breadcrumb	External Content ConnectorsSearch administrationConfigure core featuresAdminister the ServiceNow AI Platform