POLR AI Getting Started Series · 4 of 5

Getting started with Claude Connectors and Plugins, reach into your real tools.

A hands-on course for built environment teams ready to let Claude reach into the tools where the work actually lives. Connect Gmail, Calendar, Drive, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, and Procore (via integration). Walk away with a daily morning brief that pulls from real tools, not a blank chat window.

About 120 minutes, self paced. Pairs with Skills. Designed for the operations leader, principal, BD lead, or finance lead ready to authorize the connections. Honest about the security and privacy trade-offs.

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Reading time · ~120 minBuilt for AEC opsPOLR AI Getting Started Series · 4 of 5

What you will cover

01Mental modelConnectors, MCP servers, and plugins in plain English. Where each one fits.02Your first three connectorsGmail, Calendar, Drive. Authorize, scope, and run a daily morning brief.03Reach into the restHubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, and Procore via integration. The pipeline-to-cash loop.04Custom MCP and pluginsWhen to build a custom MCP server or evaluate a plugin. The honest trade-offs.05Governance for a 50 person firmWho connects what. Scopes, revocation, audit. A posture you can defend to the owner.

Module 01 · Foundation

Connectors, MCP, plugins. What is what.

Three words get used interchangeably and they are not the same. Fifteen minutes to fix the mental model.

Three things, one job

Connector. An integration to a SaaS app (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack). Anthropic ships them. You authorize once. Scoped to that account.
MCP server. A small program (yours or someone else's) that exposes a tool or data source over the Model Context Protocol. The standard a custom integration speaks.
Plugin. A packaged set of MCP servers, prompts, and Skills shipped together. What you install when someone hands you a working setup.

The mental model that actually helpsConnectors are the keys to the apps you already pay for. MCP servers are the keys to anything that does not have a Connector yet. Plugins are someone else's keyring with a label on it.

The privacy posture

Connectors are scoped, not all access. You authorize per app, with the same scopes you would grant a coworker. Treat the decision the same way. Who do you give the keys to, and which keys.

POLR observation

Module 02 · First three

Gmail, Calendar, and Drive.

The three connectors that change the morning routine. Twenty minutes to authorize, scope, and run your first cross-tool brief.

Authorize and scope

connect.sh

01Settings ▸ Connectors. Add Gmail.
       Sign in with the same account you use for work.
02Review scopes. Read access only is the right starting point.
       You can grant write access later when you have a reason.
03Repeat for Calendar and Drive.
04Confirm by asking Claude what it can see.
 
you ▸What scopes do you have on Gmail, Calendar, and Drive
       right now? Tell me what you cannot see.

The daily morning brief

The first cross-tool query worth running every day. It compounds because it compounds your attention.

morning-brief.txt

you ▸Give me my morning brief.
 
       SOURCESCalendar (today), Gmail (overnight), Drive
       (any documents linked from today's meetings).
 
       SHAPEThree sections. What needs a decision today.
       What is waiting on someone else. What can wait until Friday.
 
# Citations on every line. No invented context. If you do not
# have the source, leave it out. I will read the inbox myself.

POLR tipAdd one connector, use it for a week, then add the next. Adding three at once is the fastest way to never finish setting up any of them.

Module 03 · Reach

HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, Procore.

The four tools where the rest of the work lives. CRM, finance, team chat, project management. Each one has a sharper authorization conversation than the first three.

HubSpot and QuickBooks

The pipeline-to-cash loop. HubSpot tells Claude what is moving through the funnel. QuickBooks tells Claude what has actually been billed and collected. Together they answer the question every principal asks at the end of the month.

Read access to QuickBooks is enough for 95 percent of useful queries. Money movement scopes stay off, always.
HubSpot scopes can be limited to specific pipelines. Use that. The principal does not need Claude reading HR records.

Slack and Procore (via integration)

Slack search becomes useful the moment Claude can read the right channels. Pick channels. Do not authorize all-channel access on day one.

Procore is in flux. There is no first-party Anthropic Connector for Procore at this writing [needs source for current state]. Useful patterns today are an MCP server pointed at a Procore data export, or a Zapier-style integration that pushes the fields the firm cares about into a Drive folder Claude already reads.

Three AEC use cases

The patterns where cross-tool reach pays back fastest.

Daily morning brief across Calendar, Gmail, and Drive.

Claude pulls today's meetings from Calendar, the overnight threads from Gmail (including any with [BRACKETS, needs approval to name client]), and the document each meeting is about from Drive. Returns a single brief, ranked by what needs a decision today. The morning routine starts in the brief instead of in the inbox.

BD inbox archeology on a target owner-developer.

Claude summarizes every email exchange with the target over the last 90 days, grouped by topic, with citations back to the original threads. The BD lead walks into the next meeting with the context that used to take half a day to reconstruct.

WIP variance memo for the Friday principal review.

Claude pulls the WIP variance commentary from QuickBooks, reconciles it against the project management notes and the email decisions that drove the changes, and drafts the variance memo in the firm's voice. The finance lead edits and sends, instead of assembling from scratch.

Module 04 · Custom

Custom MCP servers and the plugins ecosystem.

When the off-the-shelf Connectors do not reach what the firm cares about, MCP is the answer. Honest about when to build, when to buy, and when to wait.

When a custom MCP server is worth it

The data lives in a tool with no Connector and no plugin (Sage 300, Vista, a homegrown project tracker).
The tool ships an API. Not a CSV export, not a screen scrape. An API.
The query the firm wants to run lives in there at least weekly.

Two of three is the threshold. One of three is a project for next year.

Evaluating a plugin

Who wrote it. A real maintainer matters more than star count.
What it reads and writes. Read the README, then read the code.
How it handles secrets. If the answer is unclear, do not install it.

Module 05 · Governance

Governance for a 50 person firm.

The grown-up part. Who can authorize what. How to revoke. How to audit. A posture you can defend to the owner when they ask why Claude has access to their email.

The four roles

Owner. Decides which tools are eligible at all. Sets the firm policy.
Admin. Authorizes connectors at the org level. Reviews scopes quarterly.
User. Authorizes their own account on the tools the firm has approved. Cannot grant scopes the firm has not.
Auditor. Reviews access logs on a schedule. The CFO or the IT lead, named.

Revocation drill

revoke.sh

01Settings ▸ Connectors. Find the connection.
02Revoke. Confirm.
03Rotate the credentials in the source tool, just in case.
04Document the date, the reason, the person.
 
# Run this drill once with the team before you need it.

What you give upEvery connector is a small surface. Most are worth it. Some are not. Saying no to a connector is the most underrated move in this whole resource.

Want a connector and Skill setup audit for your firm?

POLR Coaching can run a one-week audit: which connectors to authorize, in what order, with what scopes, and which Skills to build to actually use the new reach. Comes with a written rollout plan.

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Part of the POLR AI Getting Started Series. POLR AI is an independent partner. We are not affiliated with Anthropic.