Connecting a data source

A data source is a connection to where your files live. Insight AI connects to SMB network file shares — the standard Windows/Samba shares most organizations already use for shared drives. Once connected, a source can feed one or more ingestion pipelines.

Before you start

You’ll need connection details for the share, typically from your IT team:

• The server’s name and IP address or hostname
• The port (usually 445)
• A username and password with permission to read the share
• At least one group in your workspace — every data source is owned by a group

Tip

Use a service account with read access rather than a personal login where possible. The credentials are stored encrypted, keyed to the owner group.

Create the data source

1. Go to Data Sources in the dashboard and select Create Data Source.

2. Fill in the form:

   Field	What to enter
   Data Source Name	A recognizable name, e.g. Finance shared drive.
   Owner Group	The group that owns this source (and its encrypted credentials).
   Username	The SMB account name.
   Password	The SMB account password.
   Remote System Name	The server’s machine (NetBIOS/host) name.
   Local System Name	Optional client identifier — the pre-filled default is fine (5–15 letters, numbers, or underscores).
   IP Address	The server’s IPv4 address or hostname, e.g. 192.168.1.100.
   Port	Your server’s SMB port (standard SMB uses 445; any value 1–65535 is accepted).

   

3. Select Create Datasource.

Insight AI tests the connection immediately by signing in to the share (retrying briefly if the server is slow to respond). If authentication fails, you’ll see “Invalid SMB credentials” and the source is not created — fix the details and try again.

Verify what Insight AI can see

Open the source from the list and switch to the Shares tab. You’ll see a Network Shares file tree of the server’s shares; expand folders to browse the files inside. This is the best way to confirm the connection works and the right content is reachable.

• A share marked with a red ⚠ (for example “Access denied”) means the account can connect to the server but can’t open that particular share. Other shares still work normally.
• If nothing loads and you see a connectivity error, the server may be unreachable from Insight AI — check the address, port, and network access.

Delete a data source

Open the source and select Delete Datasource on the Details tab. Pipelines that used this source will no longer be able to ingest; documents already indexed in collections remain searchable until the collection is re-ingested or deleted.

What gets read from the share

Connecting a source doesn’t index anything by itself — ingestion happens when you run a pipeline. During ingestion, Insight AI walks all accessible shares and folders recursively and processes supported document types, skipping hidden and system files and anything over the size limit.