Overview
Operations teams (IT, HR, and general ops) use Glean's MCP server to answer employee questions, troubleshoot issues, prepare for meetings, and respond to incidents efficiently.
Prerequisites
Recommended connectors:
- Confluence (or Notion for internal wikis)
- Slack
- Jira or ServiceNow (for IT ticketing)
- Google Drive and Gmail (or SharePoint and Outlook)
- Workday or BambooHR (for HR data)
- Google Calendar or Outlook (for scheduling)
Supported MCP hosts:
- Claude Desktop
- ChatGPT
- Any MCP-compatible interface
Use Cases
1. IT Troubleshooting Assistant
Help employees resolve technical issues by searching knowledge bases and past solutions.
An employee is reporting: "I can't access the VPN." Use Glean to:
1. Search our IT knowledge base for VPN troubleshooting guides
2. Find similar past IT tickets and their resolutions
3. Check for recent Slack mentions of VPN issues
4. Look for known incidents or outages
Provide step-by-step troubleshooting instructions. If this doesn't resolve it, suggest who to escalate to.
Search Glean's IT documentation for how to reset a user's laptop. Provide the
complete procedure with any security considerations.
Use Glean to help troubleshoot this error: [error message]. Check runbooks,
past tickets, and engineering discussions for solutions.
What it does:
- Searches internal IT documentation
- Finds similar past issues and resolutions
- Checks for ongoing incidents
- Provides escalation paths when needed
Real impact: Reduces IT ticket volume by enabling self-service and faster first-line resolution.
2. HR Policy Questions
Answer employee questions about policies, benefits, and procedures.
An employee is asking about our parental leave policy. Use Glean to:
1. Find the official parental leave policy document
2. Check for any recent updates or changes
3. Look for related FAQs or guidance
4. Search for examples of how this policy has been applied
Provide a clear answer with links to the official policy.
Search Glean for our PTO policy. How much vacation do employees get?
What's the rollover policy?
Use Glean to explain our expense reimbursement process. What's allowed?
What's the approval workflow?
What it does:
- Retrieves official policy documents
- Finds supplementary guidance and FAQs
- Provides consistent, accurate answers
- Reduces HR team inquiries
3. Meeting Preparation
Gather context and prepare for upcoming meetings automatically.
I have a 1:1 with [person] in an hour. Use Glean to prepare me:
1. Find recent projects or documents they're working on
2. Check for any Slack messages or emails between us
3. Look for action items from our last meeting
4. Search for any blockers or issues they've mentioned
Create a meeting prep doc with topics to discuss.
Use Glean to prepare for my team meeting. Summarize what everyone worked on
this week based on Slack, Jira, and documents.
I'm meeting with [stakeholder] about [project]. Search Glean for the current
status, open issues, and recent discussions.
What it does:
- Aggregates recent activity and context
- Identifies action items and follow-ups
- Surfaces relevant discussions
- Creates structured meeting prep
4. Daily Digest and Morning Briefing
Get a personalized summary of what you need to know to start your day.
Create my daily morning digest using Glean:
1. Summarize important Slack messages I missed overnight
2. List action items from recent emails
3. Show my calendar for today with context on each meeting
4. Flag any urgent mentions or escalations
5. Highlight documents that were shared with me
Prioritize by urgency and relevance to my role.
Use Glean to create a Monday morning team update: What happened last week in
our Slack channels, what's coming up this week from calendars, any blockers
mentioned?
Search Glean for everything important that happened while I was out. Summarize
decisions, action items, and urgent items needing my attention.
What it does:
- Aggregates information from multiple sources
- Filters by relevance and urgency
- Extracts action items automatically
- Provides context for meetings
5. Incident Response and Timeline
Quickly understand incidents by pulling together logs, discussions, and actions.
We had an outage this morning. Use Glean to build an incident timeline:
1. Find the initial alert or escalation in Slack
2. Locate related Jira tickets or incident reports
3. Search for relevant code changes or deployments
4. Gather discussion from incident channels
5. Identify when the issue was resolved
Create a chronological timeline with key events and actions taken.
Use Glean to help with an incident postmortem. Find all related Slack
threads, Jira tickets, PRs, and logs to create a complete picture.
Search Glean for context on this incident: customer impact from support
tickets, root cause from engineering, and timeline from Slack.
What it does:
- Aggregates incident data from multiple sources
- Creates chronological timelines
- Identifies root causes and resolutions
- Supports postmortem creation
6. Onboarding New Employees
Provide comprehensive onboarding information and resources.
A new engineer is starting next week. Use Glean to create an onboarding package:
1. Find our engineering onboarding documentation
2. Locate setup guides for dev environments
3. Identify key people on the engineering team and their roles
4. List common resources and tools they'll need access to
Create a structured onboarding checklist with links.
Search Glean for onboarding materials for [role]. What should a new hire read,
who should they meet, what tools do they need?
Use Glean to help me onboard to [team/project]. What docs should I read first?
Who owns what? What's the current state of work?
What it does:
- Compiles onboarding documentation
- Identifies key contacts and resources
- Creates structured checklists
- Ensures consistent onboarding experience
7. Software Access Requests
Streamline software access approval workflows.
Employee needs access to [software]. Use Glean to:
1. Find our software access policy
2. Check who typically approves this type of request
3. Look for the access request form or process
4. Verify any compliance or security requirements
Draft an approval request or create a ticket with all required information.
Search Glean for the process to request [tool] access. What's the approval
workflow? What information do I need to provide?
Use Glean to check if we have licenses available for [software] and who manages
access provisioning.
What it does:
- Retrieves access policies and procedures
- Identifies approval workflows
- Ensures compliance requirements are met
- Streamlines request processing
8. Company Announcements and Updates
Find important company information and announcements quickly.
Search Glean for recent company announcements about:
1. Organizational changes or new leadership
2. Product launches or major features
3. Company events or all-hands meetings
4. Policy updates that affect employees
Summarize the most important updates from the last month.
Use Glean to find information about [upcoming event]. When is it? What's the
agenda? How do I register?
Search Glean for our Q3 OKRs and how they were announced. What are the company
priorities this quarter?
What it does:
- Searches announcements and updates
- Filters by relevance and recency
- Summarizes key information
- Provides links to full details
Gather information to prepare for performance reviews.
Help me prepare for my performance review. Use Glean to:
1. Find projects I worked on this review period
2. Locate documents I created or contributed to
3. Search for positive feedback or recognition in Slack/emails
4. Identify key metrics or results I delivered
Create a summary of accomplishments with supporting evidence.
I'm writing a performance review for [direct report]. Use Glean to find their
projects, contributions, feedback from others, and key achievements.
Search Glean for my work on [major project] to document my contributions for
the performance review.
What it does:
- Aggregates work artifacts and contributions
- Finds feedback and recognition
- Quantifies impact where possible
- Creates evidence-based summaries
10. Finding Subject Matter Experts
Quickly identify who to ask for help on specific topics.
Who should I talk to about [technical topic/project]? Use Glean to:
1. Find people who've authored docs on this topic
2. Check who's been active in related Slack discussions
3. Look for code owners or recent contributors
4. Identify team ownership from org docs
Recommend 2-3 people to contact and why they're relevant.
Use Glean to find experts on [tool/technology] in our company. Who has
experience with this and might be able to help?
Search Glean for who owns [service/project]. Who should I talk to about making
changes or asking questions?
What it does:
- Identifies document authors and contributors
- Analyzes discussion participation
- Surfaces code ownership
- Recommends specific people with context
Best Practices
Maintain Up-to-Date Documentation
MCP works best when your knowledge base is current:
- Regularly update IT runbooks and troubleshooting guides
- Keep HR policies and FAQs current
- Archive outdated documentation
- Mark documents with last-reviewed dates
✅ "Search IT knowledge base for VPN troubleshooting"
✅ "Find HR policy about remote work"
❌ "How do I fix this?" (too vague, no context)
Combine with Ticket Systems
After Glean helps resolve an issue, document the solution in your
ticketing system so future queries are even more effective.
For HR questions about individual employee situations, verify the answer
with official sources before providing guidance.
Leverage for Self-Service
Empower employees to use Glean directly for common questions, reducing
load on IT and HR teams.
Troubleshooting
Can't find documentation?
- Verify that knowledge base connectors (Confluence, wikis) are set up
- Check that documents are properly indexed
- Ensure you have permissions to access the documentation
Outdated information in results?
- Use date filters: "policies updated in the last year"
- Check document metadata for last-updated dates
- Flag outdated docs for archiving or updating
Missing context from Slack?
- Verify Slack connector includes relevant channels
- Check that historical messages are indexed
- Use specific channel names in queries
Privacy concerns with employee data?
- MCP respects existing permissions
- Verify connectors honor data access controls
- For sensitive HR queries, ensure proper authorization
See also