Anthropic is integrating its Claude AI assistant with Microsoft 365 services so it can surface content from Word documents, Teams messages, and Outlook emails in conversations with the chatbot. It’s part of a series of updates to Claude to make the chatbot more useful at work.
Claude will now connect with Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive to search and analyze documents without you needing to upload them manually. The Microsoft 365 connector is available now for all Claude Team and Enterprise plan users, but administrators need to enable the integration before end users can connect up their accounts.
The Microsoft Outlook integration with Claude lets the chatbot access email threads and analyze communications to surface relevant context in its answers. Claude will also be able to search through chat conversations in Microsoft Teams, as well as access channel discussions and meeting summaries.
Anthropic is also launching enterprise search in Claude, a new feature that makes it easier for the AI assistant to search across all of a company’s data sources. As many businesses use a variety of tools to manage HR processes, communications, and other parts of a business, data is often in many different apps and services. “Enterprise search is particularly valuable for onboarding new team members, answering strategic questions like analyzing patterns in customer feedback, and quickly identifying the right internal experts to consult on any topic,” says Anthropic.
The Claude and Microsoft 365 integration works by using a Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector, Anthropic’s open-source standard for connecting AI applications to other data sources and apps. Microsoft has been embracing MCP, promising to use it widely in Windows as it rewrites its operating system to turn computers into AI PCs that you talk to.
Microsoft has also been increasingly relying on Anthropic AI models to improve its Microsoft 365 apps. Anthropic’s models are now helping power Copilot Researcher, GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, and a new Office Agent that is able to produce Word and PowerPoint documents from Microsoft’s own Copilot chat interface. Microsoft is cozying up to Anthropic just as it’s investing more in its own AI models and trying to avoid putting all of its AI eggs in one complicated OpenAI-shaped basket.
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