Elastic Gmail connector reference

The Elastic GMail connector is a connector for GMail.

Important

As of Elastic 9.0, managed connectors on Elastic Cloud Hosted are no longer available. All connectors must be self-managed.

Self-managed connector reference

Availability and prerequisites

This connector is available as a self-managed connector from the Elastic connector framework.

This self-managed connector is compatible with Elastic versions 8.10.0+.

To use this connector, satisfy all self-managed connector requirements.

Create a Gmail connector

Use the UI

To create a new Gmail connector:

In the Kibana UI, navigate to the Search → Content → Connectors page from the main menu, or use the global search field.
Follow the instructions to create a new Gmail self-managed connector.

Use the API

You can use the Elasticsearch Create connector API to create a new self-managed Gmail self-managed connector.

For example:

		 PUT _connector/my-gmail-connector {
  "index_name": "my-elasticsearch-index",
  "name": "Content synced from Gmail",
  "service_type": "gmail"
}

	

Note

The user needs the cluster privileges manage_api_key, manage_connector and write_connector_secrets to generate API keys programmatically.

To create an API key for the connector:

Run the following command, replacing values where indicated. Note the encoded return values from the response:

		 POST /_security/api_key {
  "name": "connector_name-connector-api-key",
  "role_descriptors": {
    "connector_name-connector-role": {
      "cluster": [
        "monitor",
        "manage_connector"
      ],
      "indices": [
        {
          "names": [
            "index_name",
            ".search-acl-filter-index_name",
            ".elastic-connectors*"
          ],
          "privileges": [
            "all"
          ],
          "allow_restricted_indices": false
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

	

Update your config.yml file with the API key encoded value.

Refer to the Elasticsearch API documentation for details of all available Connector APIs.

Usage

To use this connector as a self-managed connector, use the Connector workflow in the Kibana UI.

For additional operations, see Connectors UI in Kibana.

Connector authentication prerequisites

Before syncing any data from GMail, you need to create a service account with appropriate access to the GMail and the Google Directory API, which is part of the Google Admin SDK API. You also need to enable domain-wide delegation to impersonate the users you’re fetching messages from.

To get started, log into Google Cloud Platform and go to the Console.

Create a Google Cloud Project. Give your project a name, change the project ID and click the Create button.
Enable Google APIs. Choose APIs & Services from the left menu and click on Enable APIs and Services. You need to enable GMail API and the Google Admin SDK API.
Create a Service Account. In the APIs & Services section, click on Credentials and click on Create credentials to create a service account. Give your service account a name and a service account ID. This is like an email address and will be used to identify your service account in the future. Click Done to finish creating the service account.

Your service account needs to have access to at least the following scope:
- https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly
Create a Key File.
- In the Cloud Console, go to IAM and Admin > Service accounts page.
- Click the email address of the service account that you want to create a key for.
- Click the Keys tab. Click the Add key drop-down menu, then select Create new key.
- Select JSON as the Key type and then click Create. This will download a JSON file that will contain the service account credentials.
Google Workspace domain-wide delegation of authority.

To access user data like messages on a Google Workspace domain, the service account that you created needs to be granted access by a super administrator for the domain. You can follow the official documentation to perform Google Workspace domain-wide delegation of authority.

You need to grant the following OAuth Scopes to your service account:
- https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly
This step allows the connector to access user data and their group memberships in your Google Workspace organization.

Configuration

The following configuration fields are required:

GMail service account JSON

The service account credentials generated from Google Cloud Platform (JSON string). Refer to the Google Cloud documentation for more information.

Google Workspace admin email

Google Workspace admin email. Required to enable document level security (DLS). A service account with delegated authority can impersonate an admin user with permissions to access Google Workspace user data and their group memberships. Refer to the Google Cloud documentation for more information.

Google customer id

Google customer id. Required to fetch messages and to enable document level security (DLS). Go to Google Workspace Admin Console → Account and copy the value under Customer Id.

Include spam and trash emails

Toggle to fetch spam and trash emails. Also works with DLS.

Enable document level security

Toggle to enable document level security (DLS. DLS is supported for the GMail connector. When enabled:

Full syncs will fetch access control lists for each document and store them in the _allow_access_control field.
Access control syncs will fetch users' access control lists and store them in a separate index.

Deployment using Docker

You can deploy the Gmail connector as a self-managed connector using Docker. Follow these instructions.

Download the sample configuration file. You can either download it manually or run the following command:

		curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/connectors/main/config.yml.example --output ~/connectors-config/config.yml

	

Remember to update the --output argument value if your directory name is different, or you want to use a different config file name.

Update the configuration file with the following settings to match your environment:

elasticsearch.host
elasticsearch.api_key
connectors

If you’re running the connector service against a Dockerized version of Elasticsearch and Kibana, your config file will look like this:

		# When connecting to your cloud deployment you should edit the host value
elasticsearch.host: http://host.docker.internal:9200
elasticsearch.api_key: <ELASTICSEARCH_API_KEY>

connectors:
  -
    connector_id: <CONNECTOR_ID_FROM_KIBANA>
    service_type: gmail
    api_key: <CONNECTOR_API_KEY_FROM_KIBANA>1

	

Optional. If not provided, the connector will use the elasticsearch.api_key instead

Using the elasticsearch.api_key is the recommended authentication method. However, you can also use elasticsearch.username and elasticsearch.password to authenticate with your Elasticsearch instance.

Note: You can change other default configurations by simply uncommenting specific settings in the configuration file and modifying their values.

Run the Docker image with the Connector Service using the following command:

		docker run \
-v ~/connectors-config:/config \
--network "elastic" \
--tty \
--rm \
docker.elastic.co/integrations/elastic-connectors:9.0.0-beta1.0 \
/app/bin/elastic-ingest \
-c /config/config.yml

	

Refer to DOCKER.md in the elastic/connectors repo for more details.

Find all available Docker images in the official registry.

Tip

We also have a quickstart self-managed option using Docker Compose, so you can spin up all required services at once: Elasticsearch, Kibana, and the connectors service. Refer to this README in the elastic/connectors repo for more information.

Documents and syncs

The connector will fetch all messages of all users the service account has access to.

Sync types

Full syncs are supported by default for all connectors.

This connector also supports incremental syncs.

Sync rules

Basic sync rules are identical for all connectors and are available by default.

Advanced sync rules are available for this connector. The connector supports the GMail advanced search syntax under the messages field.