In addition to using Glean’s Chrome extension to enable Go Links, customers can also use our DNS-based Go Links solution. This enables the use of Go Links on any browser or mobile device (via a fully qualified domain name) without the installation of the Chrome Extension.

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Glean Sign In

Glean is protected by SSO authentication. If a user has not already signed in to Glean in a given browser, they will be required to do so before accessing the first Go Link they navigate to.

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Options Overview

Glean customers can use either go.glean.com directly or a custom domain for hosting their Go Links. Here is a task list to enable each solution.

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Use go.glean.com

Glean customers can access their Go Links from any device using our fully qualified domain name (FQDN) go.glean.com without any further configuration. When a user types a URL following the format go.glean.com/[link] in any browser that they have used to log in to Glean, they will be redirected to the desired target.

Further on, Glean customers can configure search domain on their users’ devices to “glean.com”, which allows their users to use the short URLs “go/[link]”. In an enterprise environment, search domain can be configured in multiple ways:

• Configured by the DHCP Domain Search Option (consult your vendors’ documentation for how to set this up in your environment)

• Configured by a desktop management framework like JAMF

Taking JAMF as an example, a JAMF administrator will create or add the below to /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist on Mac:

<key>DNS</key>
  <dict>
    <key>SearchDomains</key>
    <array>
      <string>glean.com</string>
    </array>
  </dict>

Alternatively, a JAMF administrator can use a script that executes /usr/sbin/networksetup to set up search domains.

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Use Custom Domain

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HTTP-only Solution

When preferred, Glean customers can also configure their own domain name for accessing Glean Go Links. You can follow the below simple steps for setting it up:

• Create your custom domain (e.g. go.<company>.com) and add a DNS CNAME record pointing to go.glean.com.
• Add your custom domain to the search domains list as mentioned in the above section.

This setup allows Glean customers to use the short URL “go/[link]” via HTTP protocol to access Glean Go Links.

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HTTPS Solution

When using HTTPS protocol is required, you will need to follow the below steps:

• Set up a load balancer that redirects both HTTP and HTTPS requests from http(s)://<custom domain>/links to https://app.glean.com/go/links.
• Create <custom domain> DNS name and add a DNS A record with the load balancer IP address.
• Provision an SSL certificate with <custom domain>.
• Add your custom domain to the search domains list as mentioned in the above section.

You can use either a Cloud-based load balancer or any other redirection server to set up the redirection as mentioned above. As a quick example, here is a Terraform configuration snippet on how such redirection can be set up by using a GCP Load Balancer. The full example Terraform configuration will be provided when asked.

resource "google_compute_url_map" "go-links" {
  name    = "go-links"
  project = var.project
  default_url_redirect {
    host_redirect          = "app.glean.com"
    https_redirect         = true
    prefix_redirect        = "/go"
    redirect_response_code = "FOUND"
    strip_query            = false
  }
}

We can deploy the load balancer inside the same GCP project used by the Glean application, if you would like.

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Browser Support

After the search domain is configured correctly, a short domain name “go” will be expanded to an FQDN (app.glean.com/go/[link]) and resolved to an IP address. However, different browsers vary in their support for short links in their address bars.

Here is a brief overview of which URLs are supported by the below browsers:

• FQDN URLs are supported by all browsers.

• Explicit HTTP URLs (http://go/[link]) are supported by all browsers.

• To use short links without the http(s) prefix on Chrome or Edge, users must enter an explicit HTTP URL (http://go/[link]) the first time they access a Go Link, and then can omit the preceding http:// thereafter.

• On Safari, a user needs to hold the ctrl key after entering a short URL so that the browser parses “go” as a domain name and does not use the Go Link as a web search.

• Short links without the http(s) prefix are not supported properly by the Firefox browser.