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Knowledge connectors

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Introduction

Knowledge connectors are how Docebo Knowledge gets its content. A connector links Docebo to a system your organization already uses to store knowledge, such as Confluence, Google Drive, or SharePoint, so that content from that system can be added to Knowledge collections and made available to your users.

At least one connector must be set up before you can create a Knowledge collection, since collections are built entirely from content pulled in through connectors. This can be done by Superadmins in “Knowledge connectors” under the “Add-ons and integrations” menu, after the feature was activated via the Launch pad.

Why connectors instead of file uploads

Docebo Knowledge is built around connecting to source systems rather than uploading individual files. This is a deliberate choice, and it's what makes the feature low-maintenance:

  • Content stays current automatically. Because a connector reads directly from the source system, any change made there, a page edited in Confluence, a file updated in SharePoint, is reflected in Docebo without anyone needing to re-upload or replace anything manually.
  • You don't need to build a separate permission structure. Uploaded files would need their own visibility rules managed inside Docebo. With a connector, permissions are inherited from the source system instead, so there's nothing extra to configure or keep aligned over time.

In short, once a connector is set up, keeping knowledge accurate and access correct is handled for you.

How syncing works: metadata first, content on demand

Connecting a system doesn't mean everything in it gets pulled into Docebo right away. Syncing happens in two stages:

  1. At the connector level, Docebo syncs metadata only: things like folder and space hierarchy, file and page names, and structure. This is what makes the content browsable and selectable, but nothing is extracted or indexed yet.
  2. At the collection level, when a Superadmin actually adds a piece of content to a Knowledge collection, that's the point where its content is extracted and indexed.

This two-step approach is intentional, and it brings two concrete benefits:

  • More trustworthy answers. Instead of an entire system being dumped into Docebo, only the content a Superadmin has deliberately curated into a collection becomes searchable and usable by search, the AI assistant, and agents. That curation step is what keeps answers relevant and trustworthy.
  • Lower cost. Since indexed data volume is what's priced, and only content that's been explicitly added to a collection gets indexed, you only pay for what your organization actually chooses to use. Connecting a system, and browsing it, never by itself creates any indexing cost.

Setting up a connector

Setting up a connector is a technical task, and it will typically require support from your IT department. In practice, this usually means someone with administrative access to the source system (for example, a Google Workspace admin, a Microsoft Entra ID admin, or an Atlassian organization admin) needs to register an application for Docebo, grant it a defined set of read-only permissions, and share the resulting credentials so a Superadmin can complete the connection in Docebo.

A few things that make this easier to plan for and scope confidently:

  • Setting up a connector doesn't cost anything. There's no license fee or setup fee for connecting a system; the only cost tied to Docebo Knowledge is the indexed data volume described above.
  • You control the scope, right from setup. As part of connecting a system, you choose which part of it to make available to Docebo, for example, specific Confluence spaces, specific SharePoint sites, or specific Google Shared Drives. Anything outside that scope is never synced, not even at the metadata level. This makes it straightforward to keep sensitive, confidential, or PII-heavy areas of a system out of Docebo entirely, without needing to first build any workaround inside the source system itself.
  • What gets synced and extracted is clearly defined per connector. Every connector works with a specific type of content (for example, files versus pages) and, within that, only certain content or file types. This is not something you need to guess or discover after the fact: it's clearly documented in the first step of the setup guide for each connector.

Setting up your first connector

Each source system has its own dedicated setup guide with the exact steps to follow, written to hand directly to whoever is supporting you on the IT side:

A note on permissions

Once a connector is set up, Docebo always enforces the permissions of its source system: a user can only find and use knowledge they already have access to there. For this to work correctly, a user's email address in Docebo must match their email address in the source system, and that email must be verified on their Docebo user profile. This is worth checking early, since it determines whether a given user will see any knowledge results at all once collections are published.