Before teams hand Claude tasks, decide what it can read, what it can change, and who pays for its work. Connectors, Cowork, Claude in Chrome, and Claude Tag each give Claude real access to company systems.
When you need this
- Teams want Claude connected to Drive, Slack, Microsoft 365, Jira, or internal systems.
- People start handing Cowork scheduled or multi-step tasks.
- Someone asks to add @Claude to a Slack channel.
Evaluation criteria
Connectors
Which services can Claude reach, and with whose permissions?
Look forConnectors inherit each person's permissions in the connected service. A custom connector with a shared credential reaches whatever that credential can. Owners enable each connector, and Enterprise-managed auth grants connectors by role through your identity provider.
Read versus write
Can Claude change data in this system, or only read it?
Look forWrite tools limited to the teams that need them. Anthropic's Cowork safety guide treats write tools as the higher risk and warns that prompt injection needs both untrusted content to read and a harmful action to take.
Cowork
Where do Cowork sessions run, and what can they reach?
Look forCowork is on by default on Team and Enterprise. Cloud sessions are on by default on Team and off on Enterprise, where admins grant them by role. Claude works only in the folders people connect and needs approval to delete. Cowork can stream activity to your SIEM through OpenTelemetry.
Browser
Can Claude act in a browser with people's logins?
Look forOn Team and Enterprise, admins turn Claude in Chrome on or off and set site allowlists and blocklists. Anthropic advises against using it for banking, health records, or credentials.
Claude Tag in Slack
What can @Claude reach in each channel, and who pays?
Look forOwner-only setup; access set organization-wide, per workspace, or per private channel; guest channels blocked by default; an organization spend limit with per-channel limits and alerts at 75% and 95%. Channel, thread, and group DM work bills to the organization. A one-to-one DM from a member with a connected Claude account bills to that person's seat.
Monitoring
Will you know what Claude did, and for whom?
Look forUsage analytics with connector read and write counts, OpenTelemetry for Cowork, and the Claude Tag Activity page listing every scheduled task and network call.
Questions to ask vendors
- Which internal systems should Claude reach through an audited MCP server, and which through a direct connector?
- Which Slack channels hold data that Claude Tag must not reach?
- Who reviews scheduled Cowork tasks that run with no one watching?
- Do we route Cowork through Bedrock, Google Cloud, or Foundry for data residency?
Red flags
- Write access enabled for every connector by default.
- Claude Tag added to large public channels with no per-channel spend limit.
- Scheduled tasks that send or delete without a person approving.
- Claude in Chrome left on for everyone with no site blocklist.
Products in this piece
Sources
- Official documentation
- 9
- Public source
- 3
- Claude Help Center: Use connectors to extend Claude's capabilities
- Claude Help Center: Authorize MCP connectors for your entire organization
- Claude Help Center: Use Claude Cowork on Team and Enterprise plans
- Claude Help Center: Use Claude Cowork safely
- Claude Cowork
- Claude in Chrome
- Claude Help Center: What is Claude Tag?
- Claude docs: Work with Claude Tag
- Claude Help Center: View usage analytics for Team and Enterprise plans
- Hacker News comment on non-technical teammates using Cowork with audited MCP servers (Aug 11, 2026)
- Hacker News comment on a six-person team using Claude Desktop with an audited MCP server (Apr 10, 2026)
- Hacker News comment on Cowork with corporate Google Workspace, Jira, and Slack (Aug 17, 2026)