How To Use Glean? Step By Step Guide

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Glean is an AI powered workplace search and knowledge platform. It unifies all company data sources (like Slack, Google Drive, Jira, Microsoft Teams, and Salesforce) into a single, secure interface. Acting like a Google search for your internal company knowledge, Glean helps teams instantly find files, people, and answers while strictly respecting data permissions.

Glean solves a common enterprise challenge: information fragmentation across multiple workplace applications. Glean continuously crawls and indexes internal corporate systems to build a centralized Enterprise Knowledge Graph. It combines semantic search (understanding the meaning of words, not just exact keywords) with role based personalization. The platform utilizes Large Language Models (LLMs) alongside web and internal data to generate context specific answers.

Primary Capabilities & Use Cases

• Universal Search: Delivers instantaneous search results across over 100 enterprise integrations (e.g., Salesforce, SharePoint, Slack).
• Glean Assistant (Chat): Summarizes technical documentation, writes emails, drafts code, and answers complex workplace questions.
• Glean Agents & Apps: Automates repetitive tasks (e.g., generating weekly status updates, customer summaries) across multiple applications.
• People Directory: Provides interactive organizational charts and identifies internal team experts based on their document history.

You can learn how to use Glean and connect it with other applications using a detailed step by step guide.

Strengths vs. Weaknesses

How To Use Glean? Beginner’s Guide

Follow these sequential steps to set up and begin using Glean effectively in your daily workflow.

Step 1: Account Access

1. Open your web browser and navigate to your organization’s custom Glean portal (typically app.glean.com or your company specific URL).
2. Click Sign In and authenticate using your single sign-on corporate account (e.g., Google Workspace or Okta).

Step 2: Install the Browser Extension

1. Download and install the Glean Browser Extension from your browser’s extension store.
2. Grant permissions to allow the extension to run.
3. Tip: This extension allows you to toggle a Glean sidebar on any active webpage by pressing Cmd + J (Mac) or Alt + J (Windows).

Step 3: Execute Your First Search

1. Locate the primary search bar on the central dashboard.
2. Type a natural phrase (e.g., “Q4 marketing presentation” or “parental leave policy”).
3. Review the uniform results page, which organizes relevant Slack threads, Google Docs, and Jira tickets side by side.

Step 4: Refine with Filters

1. Use the left hand sidebar or top filters to narrow broad search results.
2. Filter by App (e.g., only search Slack), Author/Owner, or Date Last Modified.

Step 5: Interact with Glean Assistant

1. Click the Chat tab to open the generative AI workspace.
2. Enter a specific operational command, such as:
   “Summarize the feedback from the #client-onboarding Slack channel over the last week and format it into a bulleted table.”
3. Use the generated output to draft your internal communications.

Glean Assistant (commonly referred to as Glean Chat) is the generative AI workspace within the Glean platform. While standard search excels at finding specific documents, Glean Assistant is designed to synthesize information, answer complex questions, draft content, and execute cross application actions using your entire company knowledge base.

This guide outlines exactly how to navigate, prompt, and maximize the utility of Glean Assistant.

How to Access Glean Assistant

You can open the Assistant interface using three methods:

1. Web Dashboard: Click the Chat or Assistant tab on your main Glean web home page.
2. Browser Extension Sidebar: Press Cmd + J (Mac) or Alt + J (Windows) on any web page to slide open the Assistant instantly.
3. Desktop/Mobile Apps: Launch the dedicated Glean desktop application for a persistent chat space.

Interacting with the Assistant

Step 1: Choose Your Reasoning Mode

Depending on your enterprise tier, you can toggle the reasoning depth near the text composer:

• Fast Mode: Ideal for quick, straightforward questions and text generation.
• Thinking / Adaptive Reasoning Mode: Best for highly complex data analysis, debugging, or cross referencing multi page PDFs.

Step 2: Target Specific Files or Apps using “@” and “/”

Instead of forcing the AI to search your entire company ecosystem, you can explicitly guide its focus:

• Tag Documents: Type @ followed by the document name or paste a URL directly into the chatbox to anchor your conversation to specific files (e.g., @Q3_Product_Spec).
• Filter Apps: Include the app name or shorthand parameters (e.g., “app:jira” or “in Slack”) to restrict the data pull to a single ecosystem.
• Trigger Skills: Type / to open a menu of Custom Skills or Slash Commands configured by your organization (e.g., /translate or /debug).

Step 3: Write a Descriptive, Action Oriented Prompt

Standard generative AI best practices apply, but with an enterprise twist. Always be specific about context, data sources, and output formatting.

• Poor Prompt: “What is happening with the Acme project?”
• Excellent Prompt: “Review the last two weeks of messages in the #acme-delivery Slack channel and relevant Jira tickets. Provide a bulleted summary of current blockers and format the next steps into a table categorized by owner.”

Step 4: Refine via Multi Turn Conversation

Glean Assistant maintains full conversational context. If the initial answer is too broad or missing detail, treat it like an assistant:

• “Elaborate further on the security concerns mentioned in point 2.”
• “Rewrite this summary into a formal email draft I can send to the VP.”

Step 5: Verify the Source Citations

Every generative answer provided by Glean automatically attaches in-line hyperlinks and source citations mapping directly to the underlying company files, emails, or chat threads.

• Always click through the citations to verify highly sensitive metrics or ensure the cited document isn’t an outdated archive.

Advanced Assistant Capabilities

Once you master basic text queries, you can leverage the Assistant’s advanced multi modal and cross-app tools:

• Image Understanding & Generation: You can upload mockups, charts, or error screenshots directly into the chat for the Assistant to analyze. Conversely, you can prompt it to generate context rich images or presentation diagrams.
• Glean Actions: The Assistant features a built-in Action Library. With appropriate permissions, you can instruct it to perform live write actions inside other apps directly from the chat, such as creating a Jira ticket or generating a Google Doc.
• Answering Clarifying Questions: If your prompt is too ambiguous, the Assistant will proactively ask short, contextual clarifying questions to narrow down what you actually need before rendering an answer.