Patent attributes
Techniques for enabling access to external data of a user for facilitating communications via a communication platform are described herein. A user of the communication platform maintains external data with a third-party service provider. The communication platform receives, in association with a user account of the user, an indication of intent to grant the communication platform access to the external data and an authorization code (the “code”). The communication platform later receives, from the first user account, a request to access the external data. For example, the request can include an input corresponding to an intended recipient of a message. In response to the input, the communication platform sends a request, with the code, to the third-party service provider to obtain contact data associated with the intended recipient and causes the contact data to be presented in association with the message, such as in a “To” field of the message.