# Connecting Amazon Q Business data sources
<a name="data-sources"></a>

A *data source* allows you to combine data from different places into one central index for your Amazon Q Business application. Amazon Q Business provides several easy ways to connect your data.

Before adding any data, you need to set up a retriever and an index for your application. Once that's done, you can add data in three ways:
+ **Upload documents directly** – Upload documents directly using the console or using the [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazonq/latest/api-reference/API_BatchPutDocument.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazonq/latest/api-reference/API_BatchPutDocument.html) API operation.
+ **Connecting a Amazon Q Business data source** – Use the AWS Management Console or the the [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazonq/latest/api-reference/API_CreateDataSource.html](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazonq/latest/api-reference/API_CreateDataSource.html) API operation to connect a supported data source connector to your Amazon Q Business application.
**Note**  
You must create an Amazon Q Business index to store your data before you connect a data source to your application.
+ **Connecting Amazon Kendra data sources** – Use existing Amazon Kendra data sources by connecting a [ Amazon Kendra index](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kendra/latest/dg/create-index.html) as a retriever.

  If you're connecting a Amazon Kendra GenAI Enterprise Edition index from an Amazon Q Business application, you can detach it and use it with other AWS Gen AI services, like Amazon Bedrock. Detaching an Amazon Kendra index automatically deletes the retriever Amazon Q Business created for it. For a list of features supported by Amazon Kendra GenAI Enterprise indices, see [Amazon Kendra GenAI Enterprise Edition index](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kendra/latest/dg/hiw-index-types.html#kendra-gen-ai-index).
**Note**  
Amazon Q Business uses user email ID to determine end user access to documents in an index. When you connect an Amazon Kendra index to Amazon Q Business, Amazon Q Business relays the user’s identifying email ID to Amazon Kendra to enable document filtering for end users. If data sources connected to your Amazon Kendra index don’t use email-ID based document filtering, or the email ID is not present, Amazon Q Business generates responses only from public documents.

**Topics**
+ [Creating an index for an Amazon Q Business application](select-retriever.md)
+ [Uploading files](upload-docs.md)
+ [Connecting Amazon Q Business data source connectors](supported-connectors.md)
+ [Troubleshooting data source connectors](troubleshooting-data-sources.md)
+ [Managing Amazon Q Business data source resources](managing-resources-data-sources.md)