Tools overview
Tools enable Glean Assistant and agents to perform operations such as creating tickets, posting comments, searching records, and updating fields directly within your connected connectors on behalf of users.
After configured, tools are available across two primary surfaces:
- Assistant: Users invoke tools conversationally, for example, typing Create a Jira ticket for this.
- Agents: Tools serve as functional steps within multi-step agent workflows.
Prerequisites
To configure and manage tools, ensure you have the following:
- Admin console access: You must have access to the Glean Admin console. For an overview, see About the Admin console.
- Required administrator role: You must be assigned either the Admin or Setup Admin role. For detailed role capabilities, see Administrator roles.
- Connected connectors: For connector-specific tools, for example, Jira, Salesforce, Snowflake, the underlying connector must already be connected and verified within Glean.
Tools console overview
To manage your configurations, navigate to Admin console → Platform → Tools. The dashboard is divided into three primary areas:
- Enabled tools: Displays live tools available to your users, including their connection status and enabled surfaces (Assistant or Agents).
- Add tool: A catalog of pre-built, native tools for supported external connectors.
- Import from MCP server: A utility to connect a custom Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and import custom tools not covered by native tools.
Understand tools
Tools are grouped by connector. For example, the Jira Extension Tools bundle search, create, edit, comment, and Jira Service Management (JSM) operations under a single connection framework.
Each tool grouping provides granular administrative control, including:
- An independent OAuth connection to the target connector.
- Dedicated activation toggles for Assistant and Agents availability.
- Per-tool controls to enable or disable specific operational endpoints.
- Visibility scoping to restrict which users or groups can invoke the tools.
After you add tools, authenticate them, choose whether they are available in Assistant, Agents, or both, then configure per-tool controls and visibility.
Tools vs. connectors
Tools and connectors serve different purposes. Connectors bring content into Glean for indexing, while tools let users and agents perform live operations in external applications.
A single application can be configured as a connector, a tool, or both.
| Feature | Connector | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Primary function | Indexes content in Glean | Executes live operations in the application. |
| Data direction | Read-only | Read and write |
| Console location | Admin console → Connectors | Admin console → Platform → Tools |
| Authentication | Crawl credentials. | User or system OAuth tokens. |
Setup guides by tool
Select a tool below to view its specific connection and configuration guide:
Jira
Confluence
Salesforce
GitHub
Zendesk
Google Workspace
Microsoft 365
Snowflake
Databricks
Calendar Search
Code Writer
For custom or proprietary integrations, see Importing tools from an MCP server.
Advanced configuration topics
After adding tools, optimize their deployment using these detailed configuration guides:
Enabling tools for Chat vs Agents
Control which interface surface can access specific tools.
Per-tool enable/disable
Turn off specific risk-heavy operations, such as delete or archive.
Tool visibility scoping
Restrict tool availability to specific users, teams, or departments.
Run tools without user confirmation
Allow background agents to execute write tools autonomously.
Managing tool access
Restrict which agent builders can provision specific tools.
Allowing in-line execution of write tools
Remove confirmation steps for a seamless user experience in interactive agents.