Enterprise Search — corporate knowledge search

Enterprise Search adds a dedicated "Ask [organization name]" section to Claude's sidebar. This feature is built specifically for searching and synthesizing knowledge hidden within your company's tools and data sources. Unlike regular conversations with connected connectors, Enterprise Search is specifically designed for information gathering and uses custom instructions configured in collaboration with the Anthropic team. When you ask a question, Claude searches across all of your connected tools: SharePoint documents, Slack conversations, Gmail threads, Google Drive files — and synthesizes the information into a single answer. It always cites sources so you can get the full context. Enterprise Search is available for Team and Enterprise plans and is enabled by default for all organizations on these plans. However, initial setup by an administrator is required before use.

Enterprise Search is especially valuable for questions that span multiple sources or require synthesizing information from across the organization. For getting up-to-date information: "What happened yesterday while I was out?", "Summarize the key updates from the past week," "What are the current blockers on the Platform project?" For questions about policies and processes: "What is our company's remote work policy?", "How do I submit an expense report?", "What is the process for requesting time off?" For research and analysis: "What are the main reasons customers choose competitors?", "Summarize the Q4 product roadmap discussions," "Find information about our customer onboarding process." For onboarding new employees: "How does our authentication system work?", "Who should I contact to learn the billing system?", "What tools does the development team use for deployment?" For tracking performance: "Find discussions and documents related to the marketing campaign," "What are the key takeaways from last week's leadership meetings?"

Enterprise Search is enabled by default for all organizations on Team and Enterprise plans, but the owner must complete the initial setup before team members can use it. Here is the procedure for an administrator. Step one: click "Ask the organization" in the left sidebar. Step two: click "Set up for your organization" to continue. Step three: connect your organization's tools. You will need to select a connector for documents, for example Google Drive or SharePoint, and a connector for chats, for example Slack or Microsoft Teams. Email is recommended but optional. Step four: click "Add more" to configure additional tools that your team needs. Step five: set up the project name. Whatever you enter will appear in all members' sidebars as "Ask [name]." Step six: add a description and click "Finish setup." Once setup is complete, the project becomes available to all members of the organization.

Once the administrator has set up Enterprise Search, an "Ask [organization name]" project will appear in the sidebar, pinned with a star. To get started, click on the project in the sidebar. Follow the interactive onboarding process to connect to the recommended services. Authenticate in each service that you want to use for search: Slack, Google, Microsoft 365, and others. After that, you can start asking Claude questions about your organization's knowledge. The more connectors you enable, the more complete the search results will be. You can always add more connectors later by clicking "Connect" in the project's instructions section. An important nuance: the quality of Enterprise Search answers directly depends on which sources are connected. If the answer you need is stored in a tool that you haven't connected, Claude won't be able to find it.

Enterprise Search only shows what you already have permission to access in the original connected tool. This is a fundamental principle. If you don't have access to a specific document in Google Drive, Claude won't be able to find it through Enterprise Search. Your conversations remain private, and your connected data is not indexed or stored separately. This means that search is performed in real time against your sources, rather than against a pre-built index that might contain outdated data. For organizations, this also means that Enterprise Search does not create new security risks: existing access boundaries are fully respected. A marketing department employee will not gain access to financial documents through Enterprise Search if they don't have the appropriate rights in the source systems. This makes Enterprise Search safe to deploy even in organizations with strict data segregation requirements.