Anthropic Connects Claude to Microsoft 365, Unlocks Enterprise Search

Anthropic’s Claude now connects to Microsoft 365 via its Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting the assistant pull files, emails, calendar events and Teams chats into its context. The update promises faster, context-rich answers and enterprise search across OneDrive and SharePoint, while putting data governance and admin controls front and centre.

What Claude can now access

Using the Microsoft toggle, Claude can pull from Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Outlook Calendar. That lets it search files, read email threads, analyse chat conversations and extract calendar context, enabling it to answer practical questions such as “What's our next milestone for the project about X?” or “Summarise feedback from the last three client emails.”

Enterprise search: a single pane for siloed data

Beyond personal accounts, Anthropic says Claude now supports enterprise search: once administrators configure and enable access, Claude can search across organisation-wide tools and archives. That capability promises to reduce information silos by surfacing policy documents, past decisions and meeting summaries without leaving the chat interface.

The immediate gain is practical: product managers can pull milestones, HR can ask about policy clauses, and customer-success teams can summarise client email threads quickly. Anthropic highlights that admins can also set up custom “project” environments, letting teams curate which data sources feed Claude for project-specific queries.

Admin controls and privacy guardrails

The feature is gated: Microsoft 365 connector is available to Claude Team and Enterprise subscribers, and admins must first enable it before individuals authenticate their accounts. Anthropic lets admins choose which data sources to connect and who can access enterprise search — a crucial control for organisations that must balance productivity with compliance and data access policies.

Although the integration is guaranteed to provide more context-sensitive answers, it increases the requirement of model hygiene and data quality. Organisation-wide inputs elevate the risk of biased or ill-designed data to distort outputs – a physical issue when AI responses are taken as inputs to making decisions. Admins should have transparent data curation, retention and audit trail policies.

Microsoft has been integrating Claude models into Copilot, and this closer integration with Microsoft 365 brings third-party LLMs and platform ecosystems closer. For enterprises, the choice is no longer just about raw model capability but about how well the model plugs into existing workflows and admin tooling.

Anthropic’s MCP-based Microsoft 365 connector elevates Claude from an assistant to an integrated workplace aide capable of cross-app search and context-rich responses. The business worth of it is saved time and reduced context switches, but its widespread use in the enterprise will be dependent on the ability of the administrative settings, data control, and the certainty that responses that are based on company repositories are correct and verifiable.