Content Sources > Google Apps

Use the Content Sources > Google Apps page to perform the following tasks:

• Enabling Personal Content Integration
• Updating a Personal Content Integration Configuration
• Disabling Personal Content Integration

Integrating Personal Content

Personal content integration enables the Google Search Appliance to search private and public content from your Google Apps domain and display the results with those from the search appliance's index. Search results are restricted to only the ones that the user has privileges to view. Personal content integration is supported for Google Apps for Business domains only.

Personal content integration uses the Google Data (GData) APIs (www.googleapis.com) with the OAuth protocol to access secure content in your Google Apps domain. OAuth is an open standard authorization protocol that allows third parties to access user data without the need to know a user's password. 

All requests that the search appliance makes to Google Apps must be signed. Personal content integration only supports the HMAC (Hash-Based Message Authentication Code) signature method.

Before Starting this Task

Before the Google Search appliance can integrate personal content, the Google Apps domain administrator needs to allow the search appliance to access Google Apps search results. Google recommends that the Google Apps domain administrator and the search appliance administrator work together to establish access by performing the following steps:

1. Registering a client.
2. Enabling access to a domain for apps search scope.

Registering a Client

You, as a search appliance administrator, register a domain with Google. For example, suppose your organization is example.com, then you might want to register a domain such as www.example.com.

To register a domain with Google, you need to prove ownership of the domain. This domain can be any domain for which you can prove ownership. For example, the domain might be www.example2.com. It does not have to match example.com.

After you register the domain, you must obtain the following credentials:

• OAuth consumer key--The OAuth consumer key is the value used by the search appliance to identify itself to Google Apps.
• OAuth consumer secret--The OAuth consumer secret is used by the search appliance to establish ownership of the consumer key.

For information about obtaining these credentials, see "Using OAuth 2.0 for Login."

For information about registering a domain with Google, see "Using OAuth 2.0 for Web Server Applications."

Enabling Access to a Domain for Apps Search Scope

You need to provide the OAuth consumer key to the Google Apps domain administrator so that she can enable access to this domain for apps search scope. The scope for apps-search is:

https://www.googleapis.com/auth/appssearch

To enable access to the domain, the Google Apps domain administrator uses the Google Apps control panel.

Configuring Certificate Authorities

To enable personal content integration, you must first configure certificate authorities (CAs) on the search appliance. To do this, take one of the following actions:

• Enable the default CAs by using the Administration > Certificate Authorities page, or
• Do not enable the default CAs, but instead, manually install the Google Internet Authority G2 CA, available at http://pki.google.com/. If you choose this option, you will be required to update and reinstall the CA when it expires.

Configuring Your Firewall to Pass Packets

Google doesn't guarantee that www.googleapis.com will resolve to an IP within any given range. For information about using a set IP address for www.googleapis.com, see "Firewall and proxy settings." To define a set IP addresses, use the Administration > DNS Override page in the Admin Console.

Updating to the Latest Software Version

An update to the latest search appliance software version might be required to include enhancements from the underlying cloud-based services, such as Google Apps.

About ID Mapping

The Google Search Appliance's primary verified ID for any particular logged-in user needs to match Google Accounts and ID Administration (GAIA) ID, which are created by the Google Apps domain administrator. The Google Apps domain administrator might also create a GAIA alias to match the GSA primary verified ID, if required.

For example, if the currently logged-in search appliance user has an id of rchand@example.com, it is directly mapped to GAIA username rchand@example.com.

If the id of the currently logged-in search appliance user does not have an "@", the domain name that administrator configured is appended. For example, if the administrator admin configures the domain name to be example.com, and the search appliance user's ID is 'rchand', it maps to the GAIA username rchand@example.com. In a rare case, the user name that is constructed by the search appliance might actually belong to a different user, and search results from Google Apps might be returned to the wrong user.

About Import/Export

The Administration > Import and Export page enables you to export search appliance configuration information to a file or import configuration information to the search appliance. To prevent the risk of importing or exporting the OAuth consumer secret, Google Apps integration information is not included in the search appliance configuration information.

Enabling Personal Content Integration

To enable personal content integration:

1. Type the Search Feed URI for accessing search results in Google Apps, which is: https://www.googleapis.com/apps/search/v1r1.
2. Type the name of your Google Apps Domain, as provided by your Google Apps domain administrator.
3. Type the OAuth consumer key, as provided by your Google Apps domain administrator.
4. Type the OAuth consumer secret, as provided by your Google Apps domain administrator.
5. Click Enable.

Updating a Personal Content Integration Configuration

To update a personal content integration configuration:

1. Update the Search Feed URI, Domain, OAuth consumer key, or OAuth consumer secret, as appropriate.
2. Click Update.

Disabling Personal Content Integration

To disable personal content integration, click Disable.

Showing Google Apps Content in Search Results

After enabling integrating personal content, you can show Google Apps in search results for a specific front end.

To show Google Apps content in a front end:

1. Click Search > Search Features > Front Ends and click Edit for a particular front end.
2. In the Page Layout Helper box on the Output Format tab, select the Search Results section.
3. In the Sidebar elements section, click  Google Apps results.
4. Click Save.

Feature Limitations

In the current search appliance release, integrating personal content has the following limitations:

• In a GSA Unification configuration, configure integrating personal content only on the primary search appliance, not on the secondary search appliances.
• Only a direct https connection to the apps search server is supported. This features does not support https over proxy.

For More Information

For information about the OAuth protocol, see Using OAuth 2.0 to Access Google APIs.

For detailed information about integrating Google Apps, see "Integrating with Google Apps," which is linked to the Google Search Appliance help center.