Unlocking the Power of Unstructured Data: Data Cloud Expands Connectivity with SharePoint and Google Drive (Beta)

Introduction

In today’s data-rich enterprises, valuable insights are increasingly hidden in unstructured formats—documents, presentations, PDFs, images, and collaborative content. The ability to process and derive insights from these formats is becoming a key differentiator. While structured data remains the backbone of analytics, the future of enterprise intelligence lies in how effectively we tap into unstructured sources.

Data Cloud's capabilities in this area are significantly enhanced by expanding its connectivity to diverse data sources. By seamlessly integrating with more platforms, Data Cloud can ingest a richer variety of data, leading to more comprehensive analyses and valuable business outcomes.

The importance of robust connectivity lies in breaking down data silos and enabling a holistic view of customer interactions, operational processes, and market trends, regardless of where the data resides or its format. Unstructured data, such as documents, emails, presentations, and media files, often contains critical information that, when processed effectively, can unlock deeper understanding and drive intelligent actions.

Why Expanded Connectivity Matters

The reality is that unstructured data lives in a growing number of locations across the enterprise. From sales proposals stored in SharePoint to product briefs and customer onboarding documents in Google Drive, these files hold critical context that can enhance AI models, enrich customer profiles, and improve decision-making across business functions.However, without seamless access to this content, much of it remains siloed and underutilized.

That’s why expanding connectivity to third-party content repositories is foundational to our unstructured data processing strategy in Data Cloud. These connectors enable customers to bring in metadata and content, apply automated classification, and feed high-value signals into Data Cloud's harmonization and activation engines.

To address this need, Salesforce is expanding Data Cloud’s connectivity to external content repositories—beginning with two beta connectors that make it easier to extract, classify, and operationalize data from documents stored in SharePoint and Google Drive.

Introducing the Beta Connectors

🔗 Microsoft SharePoint Connector (Beta)

Microsoft SharePoint Connector: The SharePoint connector allows Data Cloud to ingest both structured and unstructured data from Microsoft SharePoint Sites and Lists. It brings in both file metadata and content and applies automated classification, entity extraction, and enrichment. This enables the alignment of SharePoint documents—like marketing decks, legal files, or implementation plans—with customer profiles and business objects in Data Cloud. For more details, refer to the Microsoft SharePoint Connector documentation.With the SharePoint connector, Data Cloud customers can:

• Connect to Microsoft SharePoint Sites

• Ingest both file metadata and content

• Apply automated entity extraction, classification, and enrichment

• Align SharePoint content to customer profiles and business objects for downstream activation

This opens new possibilities for surfacing insights from marketing decks, legal documents, implementation checklists, and more—all within the Data Cloud ecosystem.

🔗 Google Drive Connector (Beta)

Google Drive Connector: The Google Drive connector enables Data Cloud to ingest a broad range of content from shared Drives—including structured files (like CSVs and spreadsheets) and unstructured documents (such as PDFs, Google Docs, and Google Slides). It applies content extraction, semantic indexing, and maps the data for downstream processing and activation. For further information, visit the Google Drive Connector documentation.The Google Drive connector allows:

• Secure authentication and connection to user or shared Drives

• Metadata and content extraction from key document types (Docs, Sheets, PDFs, etc.)

• Normalization and indexing for semantic enrichment

• Downstream processing and mapping to first-party data in Data Cloud

This connector is especially powerful for customers who collaborate heavily in Google Workspace and want to turn that content into actionable intelligence.

A Step Toward Smarter, Context-Aware Experiences

These beta connectors are a foundational step in empowering enterprises to unlock actionable intelligence from content they already have—securely, scalably, and intelligently. By integrating commonly used content sources, we move closer to making unstructured data a first-class citizen in every customer workflow.By connecting to an ever-wider array of data sources, Data Cloud empowers organizations to leverage all their data assets, transforming raw, unstructured information into actionable intelligence and driving more informed decision-making.These new connectors mark a significant step forward in enabling smarter, more context-aware applications built on Salesforce. By pulling unstructured content into Data Cloud, we can now:

• Power AI agents with richer inputs for better responses

• Enrich customer 360 views with contextual knowledge from documents

• Enable knowledge-based workflows across service, sales, and marketing

• Improve data governance and discoverability of critical unstructured assets

As we continue to roll out more connectors and capabilities, our goal remains the same: make every piece of enterprise knowledge work harder, smarter, and faster for our customers.

Get started today!

If you’re interested in exploring these beta connectors, check out the full documentation here:

• SharePoint Connector (Beta)

• Google Drive Connector (Beta)

In the following article, I explore how Data Cloud’s Unstructured Data Processing delivers a comprehensive, AI-ready solution — from ingestion and enrichment to activation — helping customers turn messy documents, emails, and files into actionable insights.

Read the full story here: [🔗 Delivering Comprehensive Agentic Experiences: How Data Cloud is Raising the Bar]