Connectors — plugging Claude into your existing tools
In plain terms
Without connectors, Claude is a brilliant consultant locked in a meeting room: everything it knows is what you bring in, by copy-paste. With connectors, you give it an access badge to your tools — it reads your calendar, your emails, your documents, your CRM on its own, and can take action there. No technical skills required: it all happens in three clicks in the settings.
Connect a tool in 3 clicks — step by step
Everything happens in Claude's settings (web or app). The path is the same as authorizing an app on your phone:
1
Open the settings — click your initial (bottom left) → Settings → Connectors tab. This is the "outlet board": you see what's plugged in and what can be.
2
Browse the catalog — Browse connectors button: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, Slack, Notion, Canva, HubSpot, Asana, Stripe, and hundreds more. Pick your tool → Connect.
3
Authorize, on the provider's side — a window from the tool opens (for example the Google page). You sign in on their side and click "Authorize." Claude never sees your password — it just receives an access badge, which you can revoke at any time from the same place.
📌 And that's it
Starting with the very next conversation, ask: "Look at my calendar for tomorrow and prepare a brief on each meeting." Claude picks the right connector on its own. If an action is consequential (sending an email, creating an event), it asks for your confirmation before acting.
Which connectors for which department?
👔
Executive leadership
Gmail / Outlook, Calendar, Drive — "Summarize the important emails from this week and draft replies," "Prep my day tomorrow."
📈
Sales
HubSpot / Salesforce, Apollo — "Which deals have been stalled for 30 days?", "Prep me for the 3pm call with the account history."
🗂
Operations & projects
Notion, Asana, Jira, Monday — "Give me a status on project X: overdue tasks, blockers, next deadline."
📣
Communications & finance
Slack, Canva, Stripe — "Draft the announcement in #general," "What's the revenue collected this month?"
🎯 Example — a connected CEO's Monday morning"Cross-reference my calendar for the week with my latest Gmail exchanges and the CRM: for each external meeting, tell me who I'm seeing, where things stand, and the point to move forward." — One request, three tools queried, zero copy-paste. That's the difference between an assistant and a colleague.
⚠️ The executive's 3 rules of caution1. Only connect the tools you need — each connector is a door of access. 2. Check the connector's publisher: favor the official connectors in the catalog. An unknown third-party connector = the same instinct as a suspicious attachment. 3. For sensitive data, align the connector with your plan (see Module 13 bis — Team/Enterprise).
Claude Tag — Claude becomes a colleague in Slack
In plain terms
Available in beta on Team and Enterprise, Claude Tag turns Claude into a team member in Slack: anyone in a channel can delegate a task by mentioning it (@Claude), it learns the channel's context over the course of exchanges, and an "ambient" mode lets it step in proactively (summaries, reminders of pending actions). It replaces the former "Claude in Slack" app. The distinction matters: connectors plug Claude onto your tools; Claude Tag installs it inside the team's workspace — several colleagues interact with the same instance, as they would with a colleague.
The technical term to know: MCP
All these connectors rely on MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard created by Anthropic — think of it as the USB-C of AI: a universal port adopted across the whole industry. In practice, that means the catalog grows every week and your teams can build a port for an in-house tool.
🛠️ For IT — technical details (click to expand)
For your technical teams (only)
An internal tool with no official connector (e.g. n8n, an in-house ERP) can be plugged in as a "custom connector": Settings → Connectors → Add a custom connector, or via the configuration file below.
💡 MCP has become the industry standard
The open protocol created by Anthropic is now adopted by OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google (Gemini), Microsoft (Copilot, VS Code), and Cursor — nearly 10,000 public servers listed in the official registry. A major revision of the specification makes it simpler to deploy at scale and introduces "MCP Apps" (mini-interfaces provided by the connector). In practice: connectors built for Claude increasingly work everywhere — a safe investment. And the standard is leaving software: the Model Hardware Standard (in preview, MCP-compatible) lets Claude operate physical instruments — microscopes, automated systems, robotic arms — in partner labs and factories.
🛠️ Your turn — 5 minutes
Connect your calendar and ask for tomorrow's brief.
Expected result : One brief per meeting, with nothing copy-pasted.
🧪 Exercise — Test what you've learned
You want Claude to read your Google Calendar. What should you do?
A. Ask IT to install a module and configure a JSON file
B. Settings → Connectors → Google Calendar → Connect → Authorize on Google's side
C. Give my Google password to Claude in the conversation
