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Enterprise search

📖 Lesson content

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Explain what Enterprise Search is and the types of questions Enterprise Search can answer
  • Understand how the setup process works for both admins and users
  • Recognize how security and permissions protect organizational data

Estimated time: 15 minutes

What is Enterprise Search?

Enterprise Search adds a dedicated "Ask {Your Org Name}" option to your sidebar. This is designed specifically for finding and synthesizing knowledge buried across your company's tools and data sources. Think of Enterprise Search as a pre-built Project for your entire organization — your company's knowledge base is already loaded, so you can jump right in to get context-aware responses to your questions.

Unlike regular chats with connectors enabled, Enterprise Search is specifically designed for information gathering, using custom instructions configured by the Anthropic team.

What can you ask?

Enterprise Search is particularly valuable for questions that span multiple sources or require synthesizing information from across your organization. Here are some common use cases:

Getting up to speed

  • "What happened yesterday while I was out?"
  • "Summarize key updates across the business from the last week"
  • "What are the current blockers on the Platform project?"

Policy and process questions

  • "What is our company's remote work policy?"
  • "How do I submit an expense report?"
  • "What's the process for requesting time off?"

Research and analysis

  • "What are the main reasons customers cite for choosing competitors?"
  • "Summarize discussions about the Q4 product roadmap"
  • "Find information about our customer onboarding process"

Onboarding new team members

  • "How does our authentication system work?"
  • "Who should I talk to about learning the billing system?"
  • "What tools does the engineering team use for deployment?"

Performance and project tracking

  • "Find discussions and documents related to the marketing campaign"
  • "What were the key decisions from last week's leadership meetings?"
  • "Summarize team contributions to the Infrastructure initiative"

When you ask a question, Claude searches across all your connected tools—such as SharePoint documents, Slack conversations, Gmail threads, and Google Drive files—and synthesizes information into a unified response. Plus, it always cites its sources so you can get the full context.

Setting up Enterprise Search

Enterprise Search requires a two-step setup process: first an admin configures it for the organization, then individual users authenticate with their personal accounts.

For admins (Owners)

The Enterprise Search project is enabled by default for all Team and Enterprise organizations, but an Owner needs to complete the initial setup before team members can use it:

  1. Click "Ask Your Org" in the left sidebar.
  2. Click "Set up for your org" to continue (or "Disable" to turn the feature off).
  3. Connect your organization's tools. You'll be required to choose a connector for Documents (like Google Drive or SharePoint) and Chat (like Slack or Microsoft Teams). Email is recommended but optional.
  4. Click "+ Add more" to set up any additional tools your team needs.
  5. Customize the project name. Whatever you enter will appear as "Ask [Name]" in everyone's sidebar.
  6. Add a description, then click "Finish set up."

Once setup is complete, the project becomes available to all members of your organization.

For users

After an admin has set up Enterprise Search, you'll see the "Ask {Org Name}" project starred in your sidebar. Here's how to get started:

  1. Click on the project in your sidebar.
  2. Follow the guided onboarding flow to connect to the recommended services.
  3. Authenticate with each service you want to search (Slack, Google, Microsoft 365, etc.).
  4. Start asking Claude questions about your organization's knowledge.

The more connectors you enable, the more comprehensive your search results will be. You can always add more connectors later by clicking "Connect" in the project's Instructions section.

User — each individual

1. Click Ask Your Org

2. Authenticate with each service

3. Ask cross-source questions

Admin/Owner — once per org

1. Connect document tool — Drive/SharePoint

2. Connect chat tool — Slack/Teams

3. Add email + custom tools

4. Customize project name + description

Enterprise Search — search across org tools

Setup stage

Cross-source synthesis with citations

That's a lot of data … is this safe?

In short, yes. Enterprise Search only shows what you already have permission to access in the original connected tool. Plus, your conversations remain private, and your connected data isn't indexed or stored separately.

Lesson reflection

Before moving on, consider:

  • What questions do you frequently ask colleagues that could be answered by searching your organization's documents and communications?
  • Are there onboarding or training scenarios where Enterprise Search could help new team members get up to speed faster?
  • Which data sources would be most valuable to connect for your specific role?

What's next

In the next lesson, you'll learn about Research mode—Claude's capability for deep, multi-step investigations that go beyond quick lookups to comprehensive analysis.

For more information on Enterprise Search, visit the Anthropic Help Center.

Feedback

As you progress through the course, we'd love to hear from you about how you are using concepts from the course in your work and any feedback you may have. Share your feedback here.

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