Gmail - Amazon Kendra
Supported featuresPrerequisitesConnection instructionsLearn moreNotes

Gmail

Gmail is email client developed by Google through which you can send email messages with file attachments. Gmail messages can be sorted and stored inside your email inbox using folders and labels. You can use Amazon Kendra to index your email messages and message attachments. You can also configure Amazon Kendra to include or exclude specific email messages, message attachments, and labels for indexing.

You can connect Amazon Kendra to your Gmail data source using the Amazon Kendra console and the TemplateConfiguration API.

For troubleshooting your Amazon Kendra Gmail data source connector, see Troubleshooting data sources.

Supported features

  • Field mappings

  • User access control

  • Inclusion/exclusion filters

  • Full and incremental content syncs

  • Virtual private cloud (VPC)

Prerequisites

Before you can use Amazon Kendra to index your Gmail data source, make these changes in your Gmail and AWS accounts.

In Gmail, make sure you have:

  • Created a Google Cloud Platform admin account and have created a Google Cloud project.

  • Activated Gmail API and Admin SDK API in your admin account.

  • Created a service account and downloaded a JSON private key for your Gmail. For information on how to create and access your private key, see Google Cloud documentation on how to Create a service account key and Service account credentials.

  • Copied your admin account email, your service account email, and your private key to use as your authentication credentials.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

  • Added the following Oauth scopes (using an admin role) for your user and the shared directories you want to index:

    • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly

    • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly

  • Checked each document is unique in Gmail and across other data sources you plan to use for the same index. Each data source that you want to use for an index must not contain the same document across the data sources. Document IDs are global to an index and must be unique per index.

In your AWS account, make sure you have:

  • Created an Amazon Kendra index and, if using the API, noted the index ID.

  • Created an IAM role for your data source and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the IAM role.

    Note

    If you change your authentication type and credentials, you must update your IAM role to access the correct AWS Secrets Manager secret ID.

  • Stored your Gmail authentication credentials in an AWS Secrets Manager secret and, if using the API, noted the ARN of the secret.

    Note

    We recommend that you regularly refresh or rotate your credentials and secret. Provide only the necessary access level for your own security. We do not recommend that you re-use credentials and secrets across data sources, and connector versions 1.0 and 2.0 (where applicable).

If you don’t have an existing IAM role or secret, you can use the console to create a new IAM role and Secrets Manager secret when you connect your Gmail data source to Amazon Kendra. If you are using the API, you must provide the ARN of an existing IAM role and Secrets Manager secret, and an index ID.

Connection instructions

To connect Amazon Kendra to your Gmail data source you must provide details of your Gmail credentials so that Amazon Kendra can access your data. If you have not yet configured Gmail for Amazon Kendra, see Prerequisites.

Console

To connect Amazon Kendra to Gmail

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon Kendra console.

  2. From the left navigation pane, choose Indexes and then choose the index you want to use from the list of indexes.

    Note

    You can choose to configure or edit your User access control settings under Index settings.

  3. On the Getting started page, choose Add data source.

  4. On the Add data source page, choose Gmail connector, and then choose Add connector. If using version 2 (if applicable), choose Gmail connector with the "V2.0" tag.

  5. On the Specify data source details page, enter the following information:

    1. In Name and description, for Data source name—Enter a name for your data source. You can include hyphens but not spaces.

    2. (Optional) Description—Enter an optional description for your data source.

    3. In Default language—Choose a language to filter your documents for the index. Unless you specify otherwise, the language defaults to English. Language specified in the document metadata overrides the selected language.

    4. In Tags, for Add new tag—Include optional tags to search and filter your resources or track your AWS costs.

    5. Choose Next.

  6. On the Define access and security page, enter the following information:

    1. Authorization—Turn on or off access control list (ACL) information for your documents, if you have an ACL and want to use it for access control. The ACL specifies which documents that users and groups can access. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

    2. In Authentication for AWS Secrets Manager secret—Choose an existing secret or create a new Secrets Manager secret to store your Gmail authentication credentials. If you choose to create a new secret an AWS Secrets Manager secret window opens.

      1. Enter following information in the Create an AWS Secrets Manager secret window:

        1. Secret Name—A name for your secret.

        2. Client email—The client email that you copied from your Google service account.

        3. Admin account email—The admin account email that you would like to use.

        4. Private key—The private key you copied from your Google service account.

        5. Save and add your secret.

    3. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—You can choose to use a VPC. If so, you must add Subnets and VPC security groups.

    4. IAM role—Choose an existing IAM role or create a new IAM role to access your repository credentials and index content.

      Note

      IAM roles used for indexes cannot be used for data sources. If you are unsure if an existing role is used for an index or FAQ, choose Create a new role to avoid errors.

    5. Choose Next.

  7. On the Configure sync settings page, enter the following information:

    1. ForEntity types—Choose to sync message attachments.

    2. (Optional) For Additional configuration, enter the following information:

      1. Date range—Enter a date range to specify the start and end date of emails you want to crawl.

      2. Email domains—Include or exclude certain emails based on "to", "from", "cc" and "bcc" email domains.

      3. Keywords in subjects—Include or exclude emails based on keywords in their email subjects.

        Note

        You can also choose to include any documents that match all the subject keywords you have entered.

      4. Labels—Add regular expression patterns to include or exclude certain email labels.

      5. Attachments—Add regular expression patterns to include or exclude certain email attachments.

    3. Sync mode—Choose how you want to update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option.

      • Full sync: Freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

      • New, modified, deleted sync: Index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source's mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

      Important

      Because there is no API to update permanently deleted Gmail messages, new, modified, or deleted content sync:

      • Won't remove messages that were permanently deleted from Gmail from your Amazon Kendra index

      • Won't sync changes in Gmail email labels

      To sync your Gmail data source label changes and permanently deleted email messages to your Amazon Kendra index, you must run full crawls periodically.

    4. In Sync run schedule, for Frequency—Choose how often to sync your data source content and update your index.

    5. Choose Next.

  8. On the Set field mappings page, enter the following information:

    1. Default data source fields—Select from the Amazon Kendra generated default data source fields you want to map to your index.

      Note

      Amazon Kendra Gmail data source connector does not support creating custom index fields due to API limitations.

    2. Choose Next.

  9. On the Review and create page, check that the information you have entered is correct and then select Add data source. You can also choose to edit your information from this page. Your data source will appear on the Data sources page after the data source has been added successfully.

API

To connect Amazon Kendra to Gmail

You must specify a JSON of the data source schema using the TemplateConfiguration API. You must provide the following information:

  • Data source—Specify the data source type as GMAIL when you use the TemplateConfiguration JSON schema. Also specify the data source as TEMPLATE when you call the CreateDataSource API.

  • Sync mode—Specify how Amazon Kendra should update your index when your data source content changes. When you sync your data source with Amazon Kendra for the first time, all content is crawled and indexed by default. You must run a full sync of your data if your initial sync failed, even if you don't choose full sync as your sync mode option. You can choose between:

    • FORCED_FULL_CRAWL to freshly index all content, replacing existing content each time your data source syncs with your index.

    • FULL_CRAWL to index only new, modified, and deleted content each time your data source syncs with your index. Amazon Kendra can use your data source’s mechanism for tracking content changes and index content that changed since the last sync.

    Important

    Because there is no API to update permanently deleted Gmail messages, new, modified, or deleted content sync:

    • Won't remove messages that were permanently deleted from Gmail from your Amazon Kendra index

    • Won't sync changes in Gmail email labels

    To sync your Gmail data source label changes and permanently deleted email messages to your Amazon Kendra index, you must run full crawls periodically.

  • Secret Amazon Resource Name (ARN)—Provide the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of an Secrets Manager secret that contains the authentication credentials for your Gmail account. The secret is stored in a JSON structure with the following keys:

    {
    "adminAccountEmailId": "service account email",
    "clientEmailId": "user account email",
    "privateKey": "private key"
}

  • IAM role—Specify RoleArn when you call CreateDataSource to provide an IAM role with permissions to access your Secrets Manager secret and to call the required public APIs for the Gmail connector and Amazon Kendra. For more information, see IAM roles for Gmail data sources.

You can also add the following optional features:

  • Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)—Specify VpcConfiguration when you call CreateDataSource. For more information, see Configuring Amazon Kendra to use an Amazon VPC.

  • Inclusion and exclusion filters—Specify whether to include or exclude certain "to", "from", "cc", "bcc" emails.

    Note

    Most data sources use regular expression patterns, which are inclusion or exclusion patterns referred to as filters. If you specify an inclusion filter, only content that matches the inclusion filter is indexed. Any document that doesn’t match the inclusion filter isn’t indexed. If you specify an inclusion and exclusion filter, documents that match the exclusion filter are not indexed, even if they match the inclusion filter.

  • User context filtering and access control—Amazon Kendra crawls the access control list (ACL) for your documents, if you have an ACL for your documents. The ACL information is used to filter search results based on the user or their group access to documents. For more information, see User context filtering.

  • Field mappings—Choose to map your Gmail data source fields to your Amazon Kendra index fields. For more information, see Mapping data source fields.

    Note

    The document body field or the document body equivalent for your documents is required in order for Amazon Kendra to search your documents. You must map your document body field name in your data source to the index field name _document_body. All other fields are optional.

    Note

    Amazon Kendra Gmail data source connector does not support creating custom index fields due to API limitations.

For a list of other important JSON keys to configure, see Gmail template schema.

Learn more

To learn more about integrating Amazon Kendra with your Gmail data source, see:

Notes

  • Because there is no API to update permanently deleted Gmail messages, a FULL_CRAWL/New, modified, or deleted content sync:

    • Won’t remove messages that were permanently deleted from Gmail from your Amazon Kendra index

    • Won’t sync changes in Gmail email labels

    To sync your Gmail data source label changes and permanently deleted email messages to your Amazon Kendra index, you must run full crawls periodically.

  • Amazon Kendra Gmail data source connector does not support creating custom index fields due to API limitations.