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Connect Spotter to the Apps Where Your Team Gets Work Done

by Shannon Thompson, Senior Product Manager at ThoughtSpot
and Abhinav Singh, Principal Product Marketing Manager at ThoughtSpot
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📌 Key takeaways

  • 1. The connector marketplace puts 100+ apps, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Gong, GitHub, and Box, inside Spotter settings.
  • 2. Guided setup pre-fills the MCP server URL where the app has one, and Test connection checks it before anyone uses it.
  • 3. Any MCP server can be added as a custom connector, with the same testing, sharing, and permission controls.
  • 4. Read-only tools run by default, while write, delete, and interactive tools ask for your approval in the conversation.
  • 5. Business users can browse the marketplace, so they know which connector to request from their Spotter admin.

Your data warehouse can tell you that pipeline dropped. It can't tell you why, because the reason sits in a sales call, a support ticket, or a thread in your team chat. When your AI analyst can't reach those places, you end up doing the last mile yourself: copying numbers into Slack, pasting call notes into a doc, and switching tabs until the story makes sense.

Spotter could already connect to any MCP server, but getting one in place meant hunting for a server URL and digging through setup docs. The Spotter connector marketplace, generally available in ThoughtSpot 26.10, removes that step. You pick from more than 100 popular apps, set one up from Spotter settings in a few clicks, and share it with exactly the people who need it.

What Is the Spotter Connector Marketplace?

The Spotter connector marketplace is a catalog of ready-made integrations that connects Spotter to the apps your team already uses. Open Spotter > Settings > Connectors and you see two lists: My added connectors, which shows connectors already configured for your instance, and Available to add, which lists 110 apps at launch. 

The marketplace includes tools across several categories: team communication (Slack and Microsoft Teams), documents (Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Box, Notion, and SharePoint), revenue operations (Salesforce, Gong, and HubSpot), work management (Jira, Confluence, Linear, and GitHub), and data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery).

A connector does two jobs. It brings outside context into an answer, such as notes from a customer call or the status of a Jira ticket. It also lets Spotter act on the answer by posting a finding to Slack, writing a report into Google Docs, or updating a record in Salesforce.

Francois Lopitaux, SVP of Product Management at ThoughtSpot, put the reason plainly: "The answer is only half the job. The other half is getting it where the work happens."

What Does MCP Mean, in Plain Terms?

MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that gives an AI assistant one common way to use another app's tools, so each app doesn't need its own custom integration. When an app publishes an MCP server, Spotter can call the tools it offers, such as search, read, create, or update.

You don't need to know how the protocol works to use a connector. What matters is the result: if an app speaks MCP, Spotter can work with it, whether or not it appears in the marketplace. 

ThoughtSpot also provides its own MCP server, which allows external AI agents to interact with ThoughtSpot. That's a separate integration from connecting external applications to Spotter.

What Does a Connector Do in Practice?

Say you run sales operations and you ask Spotter, "Why did EMEA pipeline drop last week?" 

Spotter starts with your governed data in the warehouse and finds the drop is concentrated in three large opportunities that slipped a stage. With the Gong and Salesforce connectors shared with you, it keeps going:

  • From Salesforce, it reads the change history on those three opportunities, including close-date moves.

  • From Gong, it pulls notes from the latest calls on each account, where a budget freeze comes up twice.

  • It drafts a short summary with the number, the three deals, and the reason in the customer's own words.

Then you ask Spotter to post the summary to your EMEA forecast channel. Because posting is a write action, Spotter stops and asks you to approve it in the conversation by default. You read the draft, approve it, and the summary lands in Slack without you leaving the Spotter chat.

How Do You Add a Connector?

For most apps, you fill in a short guided form. Each connector in Available to add opens a setup window with what ThoughtSpot already knows filled in:

  • One-click connectors, such as Slack and Web Search, add instantly.

  • Template connectors, such as Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and Snowflake, link to the provider's own MCP setup guide, where you register an app and get credentials such as a client ID and secret.

  • Where the app has a static MCP server URL, as with Gong, the form fills it in and you only supply credentials.

Before you add anything, click Test connection. Spotter confirms the server is reachable, fetches its list of tools, and calls one tool against the live server. If a step fails, the error names the step and what to fix.

What if the app isn't listed, or you run your own internal MCP server? Click Add custom connector, enter a display name and the server's MCP URL, and pick an authentication method: none, OAuth, or bearer token. See Register a new connector for the full steps.

Who Can Add and Share Connectors?

Setup isn't limited to admins anymore. Alongside administrators, any user with the new Can Manage Spotter privilege can add, edit, share, and remove connectors from Spotter settings. 

Once a connector is shared with you, it appears in the connector menu in the Spotter chat box. Turn it on there, and if it uses OAuth, sign in to the app with your own account.

Business users get a view-only look at the whole marketplace, so they know exactly which connector to ask for. Those requests go to the Spotter admin directly, not through Spotter. 

How Do You Control Who Uses Each Connector? 

You decide who gets each connector and what Spotter can do with it. Share a connector with specific users or groups in an org, and only they will see it in the Spotter chat box. Every tool a connector brings has a permission. Read-only tools such as search are allowed by default, while write, delete, and interactive tools wait for your approval in the conversation. If you want different rules, open the connector’s menu and choose Manage Permissions, where you can set each tool, or a whole category at once, to always allow, needs user approval, or always deny. 

What Happens to Your Credentials and Data?

Your CDO and IT team will ask this first, so here are the details:

  • Credentials: With OAuth, ThoughtSpot doesn't store your third-party credentials and uses tokens to talk to your apps.

  • Per-user or shared: With OAuth, each user signs in with their own account. A bearer token is set once by the admin and shared by every user of that connector.

  • Visibility: Spotter only sees what you can see in the source app. If you can't open a private Slack channel, neither can Spotter.

Because a bearer token is shared, every user of that connector acts with the token's access. Where access should follow each person, choose OAuth.

How Do You Get Started Today?

If you're a ThoughtSpot customer with Spotter 3, you can add your first connector in four steps:

  1. Go to Spotter > Settings > Connectors.

  2. Browse Available to add, or search for the app you need.

  3. Click Add, fill in any remaining details, and click Test connection.

  4. From the connector's menu, choose Share and pick the users or groups who should have it.

Once it's shared with you, the connector shows up in the Spotter chat box, ready for your next question. Start with one read-heavy connector your team asks about often, such as Gong or Jira, and leave write actions on approval until you've seen how people use them. The full details are in the connector marketplace documentation, Register a new connector, and Managing connector permissions.

An answer that stays inside your analytics tool is only half finished, and the other half now happens where your team already works.

New to ThoughtSpot? Request a demo to see Spotter work across your own apps, or start a free trial.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Spotter connector marketplace? 

The Spotter connector marketplace is a catalog of 100+ connectors available in Spotter settings. These connectors let Spotter retrieve context from apps such as Slack, Salesforce, and Gong, and perform supported actions in connected apps, subject to configured permissions.

Can I connect Spotter to an app that isn't in the marketplace? 

Yes. If the app provides a compatible MCP server, you can add it as a custom connector. Enter the server's MCP URL and choose an authentication method: none, OAuth, or bearer token.

Can Spotter change data in my apps without asking? 

Not by default for tools that require approval. Write, delete, and interactive tools require approval in the conversation by default. Administrators can customize permissions for individual tools or categories, choosing to always allow an action, require user approval, or always deny it.

Does ThoughtSpot store my app credentials? 

No. ThoughtSpot does not store your app credentials. With OAuth, ThoughtSpot uses tokens instead of storing your app password. Bearer tokens are entered by an administrator and shared by all users of that connector.

Who can add connectors? 

Administrators and users with the Can Manage Spotter privilege can manage connectors from the primary Org. Other users can browse the marketplace in view-only mode and contact their Spotter administrator to request a connector.