Forum Discussion
MicrosoftConfigure modern search results to search all of your organization (rather than the current site)
Hey everyone,
We heard from many of you the need to be able to change the scope of your modern search results pages. When you create a new communication site or team site in SharePoint Online today, and type into the search box, you are taken to the modern search results page. This page shows results from your current site by default, and allows you to expand the scope of your search to the hub that the current site is associated with (if there is one), or to the whole organization.
But there is a desire for being able to change the behavior to always search over the whole organization, or across the hub a site is associated with, without needing an additional click, especially if the site in question will be used as a modern landing page for your organization.
Searching in a site will show results from that site (Strategy and Planning), with a control to expand the search scope to the hub (Sales) or the whole organization
I'm happy to say that with the latest version of the SharePoint PnP PowerShell extensions, it is possible to run a simple command as the site owner, and make your site use the organization, or the hub scope by default.
To change this setting:
1. Start PowerShell in administrator mode as you will be installing the PnP extensions.
2. Run the following commands to in this order:
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline
# If you previously had installed this module, you may need to use the "-Force" parameter to install the newer version.
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Connect-PnPOnline -Url https://contosodemosg.sharepoint.com/sites/Strategy -UseWebLogin
# this will prompt you to sign into your site. Use the site owner credentials to sign in
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $web = Get-PnPWeb PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $web.SearchScope = 1
# 1 for Tenant, 2 for Hub, 3 for Site, 0 for default behavior
PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> $web.Update() PS C:\WINDOWS\system32> Invoke-PnPQuery
After running these commands, the site will start to show results from the whole organization.After the change, results from the whole organization are displayed.To go back to the default setting, run the commands again with the value provided to "SearchScope" parameter to 0.
To search across the Hub, use 2 as the SearchScope value.
We will be providing a way to set this setting using the UI in a future release as well.
Updated in April 2020 to reflect the ability to search across Hubs.
Hi Rick DeFoe, we are actually working on making that happen. We hope that will be coming in the next couple of months.
77 Replies
I came here specifically looking for this feature, thank you for posting. Looking forward to updates to make it easier.
Thanks,
Rob.Kerem Yuceturk Here is an edit to update multiple sites.
https://www.siolon.com/blog/update-multiple-sharepoint-online-sites-to-search-whole-tenant/
- Kerem YuceturkThat's great! Thank you for sharing!
Kerem Yuceturk Greetings - Are there plans or is there a way to control what is displayed in the result details? For example we have a description in the page details, but the results return the first few lines on the page. Same with libraries or lists. Return title or subject information?
~ Catherine
- Kerem Yuceturk
CatherineB, we are working on a feature called modern display templates that will allow you to do this. My best estimate at the moment is that this will be available in the first half of 2020, we can provide a better estimate as we make more progress in our implementation.
Kerem Yuceturk : Thanks for post, it is really helpful. I have two questions
1) Can we configure Modern SharePoint site search with the enterprise search center site. i.e.add url of search results page in search settings of modern site?
2) Can we add two result blocks in one Query rule, In my case I am adding one from SP onprem remote url and one from SP online. At a time only one result block display results in Modern site search.
Thanks,
Swapnil
- I noticed you can no longer see the Q&A cards in search results. Is this a known issue?
- Kerem Yuceturk
RickyB, we noticed the issue as well where some of our users were not seeing the result cards, and addressed it recently. All Targeted Release users and tenants should see the answer cards now while they are searching at the organization level. We hope that this will be available more broadly by September.
- Worked like a charm on my primary hub (comm) site. Thanks!
Hello Kerem. Two questions about this setting:
- Does this apply to the new Global MS Search bar at the top as well?
- Will changing this turn off library searching?
Thanks in advance!
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi tg_olympus, Yes, this will take effect for the new search box in the header as well.
This only applies to modern site search results. Lists and Libraries will continue to search in that particular list or library. If you click on the link at the bottom of lists and libraries to expand the search, you will be able to get to modern site search results, which will respect this setting.
Cool, we just tried it. It works to a point but it seems to be still showing local results in the search results drop down. Would that be fixed up in the future?
Thanks!
I follow the directions step by step and i am getting error:
The property 'SearchScope' cannot be found on this object. Verify that the property exists and can be set.
Have the latest version of powershell.
Anyone seen this error?
Thanks
- VesaJuvonen
Some additional guidance if you are getting the "The property 'SearchScope' cannot be found on this object. Verify that the property exists and can be set."
Exception when you try to execute the version, you are running either wrong version of PnP PowerShell OR you have SharePoint CSOM SDK installed on your machine which is not recommended.
If you have just updated to use the latest PnP PowerShell, move to "Add or Remove programs" in your computer and make sure that you do not have SharePoint Client Side CSOM SDK installed as that msi unfortunately installed assemblies to the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) and that overrides any local newer assembly versions, which is most likely the conflict here.
- Yeap, that was it
I'm receiving the same error. I've made sure I'm running PowerShell in Admin mode as well. Forced the re-installation of module as well as tried update. No luck, any help is appreciated!
I noticed that the search box placeholder does not change on hub sites, see screenshots:
Hub search box:
All other sites:
Will this be fixed/updated so that the placeholder is consistent across hub and non-hub sites?
Kerem Yuceturk It seems that searching trough the REST API, this setting is ignored.
This query for example, searches only in the current site collection on a modern communication site:
https://drvaa.sharepoint.com/sites/werkomgeving-modern/_api/search/query?querytext=%27Tekst%20Zantboer%27
See also this issue:
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/260111/rest-search-results-from-communication-sites-arent-tenant-wide?newreg=2efcb9d44c774614a15563cf46e9671d
Geir-Magnus PettersenEven though the search api of the site is used you still can be able to get tenant wide results.
When doing a site scoped search we scope by limiting the search in the query template of the query with Path:"UrlToCommunicationSite". And when upscoping this path part of querytemplate is removed.
So you should still be able to get tenant wide results even if the search api of the communicationsite is used to post the query.
Are you only seeing results from your communicationsite after changing the site scope?
Kerem Yuceturk It seems that searching trough the REST API, this setting is ignored.
This query for example, searches only in the current sitecollection on a modern communication site:
https://drvaa.sharepoint.com/sites/werkomgeving-modern/_api/search/query?querytext=%27Tekst%20Zantboer%27
See also this issue:
https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/260111/rest-search-results-from-communication-sites-arent-tenant-wide?newreg=2efcb9d44c774614a15563cf46e9671d
- Kerem Yuceturk
Hi Renevdo, This is for the modern search results UI only. It has no effect on REST. You should be able to get to the scope that you want in REST in other ways like as Geir-Magnus Pettersen mentioned!
