Forum Discussion
MicrosoftSearch box changes in modern SharePoint and OneDrive experiences
We wanted to make sure that the community is aware of some UX changes coming to the search box on modern OneDrive and SharePoint experiences! These are part of the changes we had announced as part of Message Center post published on March 28 (MC176702), and then talked about in our blog posts at Build and SharePoint conferences this month.
The changes we are detailing below are already rolled out to Targeted Release users and tenants. So if you are part of the Targeted Release program, you should already be using these updated experiences.
The major experience change is the removal of the search box in modern experiences from where it was in the site header in communication sites, or the command bar in team sites.
A new search box connecting our users to Microsoft Search will be shown at the top of the page in the suite header instead, and provide a consistent place to access search functionality. Similar changes are rolling out to other experiences across Office 365: Office.com, Office desktop applications, Outlook on the web, etc.
SharePoint start page shown after the search box move
The change will affect the following modern experiences:
- SharePoint start page (formerly known as SharePoint home). This is the page you are taken to when you click on "SharePoint" in the suite navigation control.
- Modern SharePoint sites, including modern site pages, document libraries, lists, and the site contents page.
- OneDrive for Business.
Classic sites/experiences will not be affected by this update. The search boxes on classic pages will continue to work as they currently do. We will provide an update to classic experiences later this year. This change will be announced using message center posts as well as this community.
Hub site with the Microsoft Search search box - scoped to search across the hub
This update will take effect without requiring any action from you. The functionality provided by the new search box includes personalized suggestions in addition to functionality provided by the previous search box.
We are planning to roll out these updates to our customers in Production over the coming weeks during the month of June.
Note:
During our rollout to Targeted Release, we have heard from a small number of customers who had customized the search box experiences and had adverse effects. If you have customized your search box, please ensure that you test the changes using Targeted Release users in your tenant to make sure that you are not negatively affected. If you see negative effects, follow this link and tell us more about it.
33 Replies
Kerem Yuceturk Is there any roadmap for GCC yet? And specifically GCC low.
- Do you have a timeframe for the GCC High rollout of this feature?
Kerem Yuceturk Thank you for posting this info! I think we have received the change and users are finding that they no longer get a peek of the document showing where the text is found inside the document text. This was a very popular search feature. Any way to enable this in the new experience?
Seconded. We use it to help us locate indexed list items in a massive list, but now we (1) don't see a preview and (2) selecting "see more results" seems to return irrelevant results.
Is there a way we can push this to users as it will be really helpful with our new intranet page
some (2 or 3) users already have it and i have put our Sharepoint as to recieve preview features but dont want to put them on all office 365 early release really
would be great if there was a powershell etc for this to be achieved
thanks
Hi Kerem Yuceturk,
It's now almost at the end of February 2020. Do you have a new update on the status?
Thanks!
Kind Regards,
Frank
- Kerem Yuceturk
Frank-Ove Kristiansen, and everyone. Thank you again for your interest in this.
We are slightly delayed in our schedule, and expect the roll out to resume closer to the end of March. We want to make sure that the changes we make result in much faster load times for the search box and a good experience for our users. We appreciate your patience.
If your company is interested in receiving the experience that exists in Targeted Release today for all your users, please send me a private message.
Hi Kerem Yuceturk,
Since we are now a week into April, is there a new estimate for when this roll out will resume?
Kind regards
Emma
Kerem Yuceturk - Any hints on how to get the search bar to appear on a modern page when displayed in Teams? With the move to the top of the frame, it's stripped out and I can't access the search bar of any modern page or site (including a search sub-site I created to try and get *something* to work), but specifically the hub site I'm using the scope to search.
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi mtjindy. I believe the site header, navigation, command bar and the search box are all stripped out when pages are embedded in Teams. This was already the case before this change, so whether or not the search box is in the header or not should not have any effect on pages.
We are looking at some future integration scenarios with the Teams search box, but we don't have any concrete plans we can share at the moment. Maybe a page with a custom search box could be used to redirect to the search results page for your scenario? Maybe the PnP Modern Search Web Parts could be used?
- Is there any update on when we can expect this to reach standard release users? The message center post claimed it would be rolled out worldwide by the end of June. It is now almost the end of July and still only first release users can see the field at the top of the page in our tenant.
- Kerem Yuceturk
Emma_Degerman, thank you for reaching out. We've been working on some updates based on the feedback we have received from customers in Targeted Release, and this has pushed out our release by a few months. Our current estimate is that the new admin center changes will start rolling out in early September to enable Bookmarks, Locations, and Q&A configuration, and once that completes, we will complete the rollout with the search boxes moving to the top into the suite header towards the end of September.
Thank you for your patience!
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi everyone,
Microsoft Search Admin rollout is expected to complete by October 1, and then we will start to roll out the search box updates in the first week of October. I will post another update when that rollout starts.We appreciate your patience.
The number one thing our users use search to do is find people...how do i search for people using the new modern Microsoft Search box?
Hello,
Do you have some news for "people search" ?
How can i enabled it ?
- Knut Kristian Johansen
erock12: We have only added people suggestions to the office.com search box for now.
erock12, this should be straight forward. As soon as you type one letter the searchbox will suggest apps, files, people and sites from within your tenant. If this is not working, the feature may have not completed rolling out yet.
