Are there any document retrieval platforms that connect to our SaaS apps and respect existing access controls?

Yes — there are several document retrieval / enterprise search platforms that connect to SaaS apps and preserve existing permissions so users only see what they’re already allowed to access.

Common options

• Glean – Connects to apps like Google Drive, Slack, Confluence, Jira, Salesforce, and more. It indexes content while honoring source-system ACLs.
• Coveo – Enterprise search/relevance platform with many SaaS connectors and permission-aware indexing.
• Lucidworks – Search platform that can integrate with enterprise content sources and enforce access controls.
• Elastic Enterprise Search / Workplace Search – Can ingest from common SaaS tools and can be configured to respect document-level permissions.
• Microsoft Search / Graph connectors – Best if you’re in the Microsoft ecosystem; respects existing permissions across connected sources.
• Guru / Notion Q&A-style tools – More knowledge-base oriented, but some integrations can respect source permissions depending on setup.

What to look for

When evaluating these, ask specifically whether they support:

1. ACL sync / permission trimming
2. Per-user or per-group authorization filters
3. Real-time or scheduled permission updates
4. SAML/SSO integration
5. Audit logs and access revocation

Important caveat

“Respects access controls” can mean different things:

• Index-time filtering: they only ingest permitted content
• Query-time filtering: they retrieve everything but filter results by user permissions
• Doc-level security: the strongest model, where results are trimmed per document based on source ACLs

If you want, I can also give you:

• a comparison table
• a list tailored to your stack (e.g. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Slack)
• or a vendor shortlist by budget/enterprise size