Anthropic is integrating its Cloud AI assistant with Microsoft 365 services so it can layer content from Word documents, Teams messages, and Outlook emails into conversations with the chatbot. This is part of a series of updates to Cloud to make chatbots more useful at work.
Cloud will now connect to Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive to search and analyze documents so you don’t have to manually upload them. Microsoft 365 Connector is now available to all Cloud Team and Enterprise Plan customers, but administrators need to enable the integration before end users can connect their accounts.
Microsoft Outlook integration with Cloud lets the chatbot access email threads and analyze communications to surface relevant context in its responses. Clouds will be able to search within Microsoft Teams by accessing chat conversations as well as channel discussions and meeting summaries.
Anthropic is also rolling out enterprise search in the cloud, a new feature that makes it easier for AI assistants to search across a company’s data sources. Because many businesses use a variety of tools to manage HR processes, communications, and other parts of the business, data often resides in 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 given topic,” says Anthropic.
The Cloud and Microsoft 365 integration works by using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector, Anthropic’s open source standard for connecting AI applications to other data sources and apps. Microsoft is embracing MCP, and promises to use it widely in Windows as it rewrites its operating system to convert the computers you talk to to AIPC.
Microsoft has also increasingly relied on anthropic AI models to improve its Microsoft 365 apps. Anthropic’s models now support PowerCoPilot Explorer, GitHub CoPilot, CoPilot Studio, and a new Office agent capable of creating Word and PowerPoint documents from Microsoft’s own CoPilot chat interface. Microsoft is adapting Anthropic as it invests more and more in its AI models and is trying to avoid putting all its AI eggs in one complicated OpenAI-shaped basket.
