Chat History

By default, all conversations between your users and Glean as well as agent runs are saved so that they can be referred back to by the user later.

This includes interactions with both Company Knowledge and Public Knowledge modes.

When enabled, Chat History is maintained according to an organization‑level retention policy that your admin configures. Admins can choose from:

• Off – chats or agent runs are not stored after the session.
• 30 days
• 90 days (3 months)
• 6 months (180 days)
• 1 year (365 days)

For security and compliance purposes, Glean automatically and permanently deletes chats that go longer than the selected retention period without an update. Each update restarts the retention period. Opening or reading a chat doesn't. Changing the retention period:

• Increasing it (for example, from 30 days to 6 months or 1 year) extends access to existing and new chats up to the new window.
• Decreasing it permanently removes any chats that have gone longer than the new limit without an update.

When Chat History is enabled, end users can search, manage, and delete their own chats from the chat history panel. For more information, see Search chat history.

Chat History also determines whether Glean can reuse earlier conversations. When it's on, a user can ask Glean to find one of their own past chats or agent runs from a new conversation, scoped to that user and to your retention window. When it's off, Glean has nothing stored to search. See Ask Glean to search your past chats.

Enable or disable chat history

To configure Chat History for your organization:

1. Navigate to Admin console → Platform → Assistant → Settings, then expand the Chat History section.
2. In the Retention dropdown, choose one of: Off, 30 days, 90 days (3 months), 6 months (180 days), or 1 year (365 days)
3. Click Save.

This setting applies to all Glean Assistant and Glean Agents conversations in your organization. When Chat History is enabled, users will see a message in chat such as “Chats are saved up to 3 months / 6 months / one year”, depending on your selection.

Individual users can also opt out of chat history for their own account, even when it's enabled for the organization. See Search chat history for the end-user controls.

Effect on Glean Customer Event logs

Turning off chat history — whether at the organization level or the individual user level — controls only whether past chats are stored and visible in the chat history panel. It doesn't affect Glean Customer Event logs.

Glean Customer Event logging is a separate system that records events for analytics and auditing purposes. Glean records chat activity as WORKFLOW_RUN and WORKFLOW_CONVERSATION events, and the chat history setting doesn't turn those events off. The exception is messages that people send each other in a team chat. Glean records those as HUMAN_ONLY_CHAT_MESSAGE events only while chat history is on. See WorkflowRun event log.