Ask Your Org: how to use Claude's built-in company knowledge search

Available on: Team and Enterprise plans only. If you're on Pro or Max, Ask Your Org isn't available yet — it requires a plan with org-level admin controls.

Anthropic added a feature to Claude called Ask Your Org. It's a pre-configured project that lets you ask questions in plain English — and Claude searches across your connected company tools simultaneously, then gives you a single synthesized answer with sources.

Instead of searching Slack, checking Google Drive, scanning email, and opening SharePoint separately to find something, you ask one question and get one answer that pulls from all of them.

What changed

When you open Claude on a Team or Enterprise plan, you'll see a project called "Ask Your Org" in your sidebar. Once an Owner completes the setup, it connects to your company's data sources and becomes searchable by everyone in the org.

What's an Owner? In Claude's Team and Enterprise plans, each organization has Owners (sometimes called admins) who can change org-wide settings, add connectors, and provision users. If you're not sure whether you're an Owner, check Settings → Organization in Claude — if you can see the admin panel, you are. If not, your IT admin or the person who manages your Claude plan is.

Claude searches across:

• Slack conversations
• Microsoft 365 (SharePoint documents and email)
• Google Workspace (Gmail and Google Drive)
• Any custom data sources added via MCP connectors

The search is permission-aware: Claude only shows you information you could already access in the original tool. If you don't have access to a Slack channel, Ask Your Org won't surface conversations from it.

Your searches count against your normal usage limits. Anthropic doesn't index or store your data — queries go directly to the connected source systems.

If you're managing Claude for your org

Ask Your Org is off by default until an Owner completes setup. Here's what that looks like:

1. Open Ask Your Org in the Claude sidebar and click "Set up for your org"
2. Connect your data sources — you'll need to add at least a Documents connector and a Chat connector (email is optional)
3. Add any additional tools or MCP connectors for internal systems
4. Name the project and save

Microsoft 365 note: Connecting SharePoint and email requires signing in with an account that has access to your org's Microsoft 365 tenant. For most enterprise setups, this is a standard user login — it doesn't require Azure AD admin rights. If your org has conditional access policies, check with your IT team first.

Once active, it's available to everyone in your organization automatically.

To turn it off org-wide: Organization Settings → Capabilities → Disable.

The key compliance point: no data is indexed or stored by Anthropic. Each query hits the source system directly. You only see what you already have permission to access. This is the answer most IT/legal teams will ask about first.

If you're using Claude in your daily work

The practical shift: questions that used to require switching between 4–5 tools can now start with a single Ask Your Org query.

Useful for:

• "What did we decide about [topic] in Slack last month?" — searches channels you have access to
• "What's our policy on [X]?" — searches SharePoint and Drive for relevant docs
• "What were the action items from the [client] call?" — searches email threads and meeting notes
• "Summarize everything we know about [prospect] before the call" — pulls from email, docs, and Slack in one go

The answers come with source citations — you can click through to the original document or message.

One limit to know: responses count against your usage limits the same as any other Claude conversation. Long multi-source queries on large data sets take more time than simple questions.

If you're building with Claude

Custom connectors via MCP let you add internal data sources that aren't Slack/M365/Google — a proprietary database, a ticketing system, a wiki. The standard MCP connector interface applies.

If your organization has internal tools that would be useful to query alongside standard data sources, this is the route. The MCP documentation covers how to build and register connectors.

What to do right now

On Team or Enterprise: Check if Ask Your Org is already set up by looking for it in your Claude project sidebar. If it's there and connected, you can start using it immediately.

If you're an Owner and it's not set up yet: The setup takes about 15 minutes. The main step is authenticating with your connected tools (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 requires signing in once to authorize access). Once done, it's available org-wide.

Not sure if you're an Owner? Go to Settings → Organization in Claude. If you can see the organization settings panel, you have Owner access.

On Pro or Max: Ask Your Org requires a Team or Enterprise plan. It's not available on individual plans.

Related: Setting up Claude for your team · Getting IT approval for Claude