MCP Connectors – TextCortex Help Center

What Are Connectors?

Connectors are the integrations that give your AI access to the tools and data your team already uses.

Without them, the AI works from whatever you paste into the chat. With them, it reads and writes directly from the source.

How Connectors Work

When you activate a connector, you give the AI permission to interact with a specific platform during a session.

Connectors started as read tools: pull a ticket, fetch a contact, check a deal status. They're becoming much more than that. Write tools mean your AI can now take action directly inside the platforms where your team works: draft a support ticket, create a task, update a deal stage, post a summary, log a note. No tab-switching, no copy-pasting.

Connectors vs. Knowledge Base Integrations

Some platforms, like Microsoft SharePoint, can be added to TextCortex in 2 ways: as a knowledge base integration or as a connector. They sound similar, but they do different jobs.

Knowledge base integration

Copies (syncs) content from the platform into a TextCortex knowledge base ahead of time.
The AI searches that synced copy and answers with references to the original documents.
Read-only. It can't change anything in the source platform.
Content is only as fresh as the last sync (manual, or daily automatic sync).
Best for: asking questions across large sets of documents, like policies, handbooks or project archives.

Connector (MCP)

Nothing is copied in advance. The AI connects to the platform live, at the moment you ask.
Always works with the current version of a file, record or ticket.
Can read and, with write tools, take action: create, upload, update, move.
Acts through the account you connected, so it only reaches what that account can reach.
You control every tool individually (see Managing Connectors & Permissions below).
Best for: live lookups and getting work done inside the platform.

In short: a knowledge base is something the AI searches. A connector is something the AI uses.

You can use both for the same platform. For SharePoint, a common setup is a knowledge base for company-wide Q&A plus the connector for working with specific files. See Microsoft SharePoint Integration for both setups.

Connectors and Skills

A connector opens a door. A skill decides what to do once the door is open.

The same Asana connector can power a sprint setup skill, a task summary skill, and a deadline tracker skill. The connector handles access. The skill handles logic. See What Are Skills? for how workflows get encoded.

Common Connectors and What They Enable

Google Drive

A Google Drive connector lets the AI search, read, upload, move, copy, and organize files directly from chat. Ask it to find last quarter's proposal, pull a specific doc into context before drafting a response, or organize files into folders. No opening Drive in a separate tab.

Microsoft SharePoint

A SharePoint connector lets the AI search sites, browse document libraries and lists, and read Word, PDF and Excel files live. With write tools, it can create folders, upload documents, copy and move files, add list items and update specific Excel cells. A reporting skill uses it to save a finished report straight into the right team folder. (SharePoint can also be synced as a knowledge base. See Connectors vs. Knowledge Base Integrations above for the difference.)

Microsoft Outlook

An Outlook connector gives the AI access to your inbox and calendar. It can read and send emails, and search inbox history. A meeting prep skill uses it to pull relevant email threads and upcoming events before a call. A follow-up skill uses it to draft and send replies directly.

Microsoft Teams

A Teams connector lets the AI search chat and channel messages, pull meeting transcripts, schedule Teams meetings and post to chats or channels. A meeting recap skill uses it to fetch the transcript, pull out action items and post the summary to the team's channel.

Notion

A Notion connector lets the AI read and write pages, databases, and docs. A project kickoff skill uses it to create briefs and populate templates. A knowledge base skill uses it to search internal docs and pull relevant context before drafting a reply.

Slack

A Slack connector lets the AI post updates, summaries, and alerts to specific channels. Most workflow skills end with a Slack step: the project kickoff summary goes to #projects, the weekly support digest goes to #support-ops, the SEO report goes to #marketing.

Jira

A Jira connector lets the AI read and act on issues, epics, and sprints. An engineering triage skill uses it to pull open bugs by severity, flag anything unassigned past a threshold, and surface blockers before the standup.

Zendesk

A Zendesk connector gives the AI access to tickets, customer history, and tags. A support skill uses it to pull open tickets, filter by urgency, and draft replies based on issue type.

Klaviyo

A Klaviyo connector lets the AI read segments, check campaign performance, and draft email flows. An email marketing skill uses it to pull a target segment, check suppression lists, and produce a sequence with copy, subject lines, and send timing.

HubSpot / Salesforce

A CRM connector is the backbone of most sales skills. It lets the AI check whether a company is already a customer, find open deals, look up contact ownership, and filter prospecting lists before anything reaches an SDR. Sending outbound to an existing customer is the kind of mistake that only happens once, and a CRM connector prevents it.

Apollo

An Apollo connector gives the AI access to contact and company data for outbound prospecting. A sales skill uses it to search for accounts by industry and size, enrich contacts with email and role data, and score leads by intent signals before cross-checking them against the CRM.

Chaining Multiple Connectors

Skills often chain 2 or 3 connectors in sequence. A project kickoff skill might write a brief to Notion, build the task tree in Asana, and post a summary to Slack.

A prospecting skill might search Apollo, filter through HubSpot, and export to a formatted list.

The skill defines the sequence. Each connector just does its part when called.

Advanced Connector Use

As skills get more specialized, connectors do heavier work.

An SEO audit skill might call an analytics platform for domain metrics, pull ranking data for 200 keywords, identify traffic-losing pages over 90 days, and write a full HTML report, all in one session.

A content research skill might query a CMS across 1,000+ posts, run 5 parallel keyword research queries, and check competitor rankings, chaining a CMS connector, an SEO connector, and a file output.

The connectors are the same ones you already activated. The skill just asks more of them.

Custom MCP Server

If we don't support a tool your team relies on, you don't have to wait for us to build it.

Our Custom MCP Connector framework lets you connect any third-party system's MCP server to TextCortex yourself.

If your industry runs on a niche CRM, an internal tool, or anything not on our standard list, you can wire it in directly if the tool supports an MCP server. Once connected, it works like any other MCP connector: your skills can call it, read from it, and write to it.

Setting one up requires 3 fields:

Display name: What the connector will be called inside TextCortex. Pick something your team will recognize at a glance, like "Internal CRM" or "Warehouse API".
Server URL: The MCP endpoint for the third-party tool. You'll find this in that tool's MCP documentation, usually listed under something like "MCP server" or "agent integration".
Authentication key: The API key or token that authorizes TextCortex to connect. Generate this from the third-party platform's developer or API settings.

A note on security: Custom connectors require API keys or authentication credentials from the third-party system you're connecting. Treat these like passwords. Never share them, don't paste them into chat, and store them in a secure location (a password manager or secrets vault, not a spreadsheet). If a key is compromised, revoke it immediately from the third-party platform and generate a new one. TextCortex does not have access to your credentials and cannot recover them if lost.

Managing Connectors & Permissions

Connector permissions can be configured within the conversation by going to Tools -> Connectors, or through your TextCortex settings in the Integrations permissions section.

Each connector guides you through the login process (typically using OAuth or an API key) and defines what the AI is allowed to access.

Control each tool

Open a connector and go to the Tools tab to see every tool it offers. Tools that only read are listed separately from tools that make changes.

On/off switch: turn any single tool on or off. The AI can't use a tool that's switched off.
Ask First: for tools that make changes, the AI shows you what it's about to do and waits for your approval.
Instant: the AI runs that tool without asking. Best kept for low-risk, repetitive actions.
Use in this chat: switch the whole connector on or off for the current conversation.

For example, the Microsoft SharePoint connector has 14 tools, and 6 of them make changes (like Upload File and Move Item). You can leave all the read tools on, keep Ask First on for moves and uploads, and switch off anything your team doesn't need.

Once active, any skill that references it works automatically.

To see how connectors get wired into workflows, read Skills.