Connect Notion

Add pages and databases from Notion so your bot can answer from your wiki, help centre, HR handbook or any other workspace content.

Steps

1. Open your bot, go to the Data sources tab and click New data source.
2. Choose Notion and click Create data source.
   
3. If your team hasn't connected Notion yet, click Connect with Notion on the Content tab and sign in to Notion.
4. In Notion's permission screen, select every page you want Chat Thing to be able to use. Pages you don't select can't be added to any bot later. You can change this afterwards (see change which pages Chat Thing can access).
5. Back on the Content tab, click Add pages or Add databases (on a small screen, Add > Add pages or Add databases).
   
6. Search for a page or database by title and click Add next to it. Add as many as you need, then close the dialog.
   
7. Click Synchronise.
   

All child pages of a page you add are included automatically, and so are the entries of any database you add or any database inside one of those pages. Each database entry is synced as its own item, and the page that contains the database shows only the database's title. Add only top-level pages: adding a child page as well creates duplicates.

Your bot knows which page, and where in your workspace, each piece of content came from. If a page is published to the web in Notion, your bot can link to it in answers. Pages that aren't published are never linked.

How long syncing takes

Notion limits how quickly its content can be read, so every page is fetched one at a time.

• First sync, and every sync you start by hand: every page is fetched. Expect about 10 minutes for a few hundred pages; a workspace with thousands of pages can take over an hour.
• Scheduled syncs: only pages edited in Notion since the last sync are fetched again. Chat Thing still checks every page for changes, so the sync is quick but not instant: a few hundred pages with a handful of edits usually take a minute or two.

To sync parts of a very large workspace separately, split it across several Notion data sources, one per section. Each counts towards your data source limit.

Change which pages Chat Thing can access

1. Click Connections in the sidebar (team owners and admins only).
2. Under Connected services, find Notion and click Reconfigure.
3. Sign in to Notion again and select the pages Chat Thing should have access to.

To remove the connection completely, click Disconnect instead. Data sources that used it show Disconnected and stop syncing until you reconnect with Re-authenticate in the data source's menu. Content already synced stays in your bot until you delete the data source.

Check it works

1. After the sync, each page or database shows Finished in the Status column.
2. Ask your bot a question that one of the pages answers.

Troubleshooting

I can't find a page in the search

Chat Thing can only see pages you selected when you connected Notion. Use Reconfigure (above) to give it access, then search again.

Images from Notion don't appear in answers

Images aren't included when Notion content is synced. Describe anything important in text.

A change in Notion isn't in my bot after a scheduled sync

Scheduled syncs only fetch pages that Notion reports as edited. A few changes don't count as an edit of the page that shows them: an edit to a synced block's original shows up in its copies, and a renamed page shows up in mentions of it. Open the data source and click Synchronise to fetch every page again.

The sync is taking a very long time

This is normal for large workspaces. Use View sync progress in the data source's menu to follow it, and consider splitting the content across several data sources.