Welcome to Microsoft Search, intelligent search for the modern workplace
Published May 06 2019 08:33 AM 79.8K Views
Microsoft

- Bill Baer, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Search

@williambaer

Introducing Microsoft Search

 

Today, we’re announcing general availability of Microsoft Search, an intelligent, enterprise search experience from Microsoft that applies the artificial intelligence technology (AI) from Bing and deep personalized insights surfaced by the Microsoft Graph, to make search more effective for you – so whether you’re looking to complete a task, pick up where you left off, or discover answers or insights, it’s just a click away, across all of your applications, your desktop, and your browser.

 

 

Microsoft Search is everywhere you are, in the header of the apps you’re already using including Office, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Bing and Windows to name a few. It’s a single, unified and consistent search experience that evolves the definition of search in the enterprise.  We believe search is more than just a list of links, search needs to work both for and with you, anticipating your needs where you are working, with answers and insights in the flow of your work.  Microsoft Search brings you natural language understanding, instant query predictions, contextual results, and more.

 

Search that works with and for you

 

Wherever you’re working, Microsoft Search is there to help.  Features like instant query predictions help you find content that is relevant at the point in time such as documents you were recently working on, the people you’re working with, as well as recommended documents that your colleagues have mentioned you in, keeping you up to date with what has been worked on since you last looked at, all by just clicking in the new search box.

 

Microsoft Search is even more than just helping you find information – it works for you.  Powerful features like task completion help you accomplish key tasks.  If you’re adding an image to a document or presentation, Microsoft Search will guide you through the most common tasks to work with that object, such as cropping, rotating, and more. Task completion with Microsoft Search is not only available across Microsoft 365 apps but is contextually aware based on where you’re working so you can complete tasks more efficiently and with better outcomes, for example, you can type /files in Microsoft Teams to get back to your most recent files.

 

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Everything you need, everywhere you’re working

 

Microsoft Search connects you with what matters the most – people, files and conversations, connecting you to a world of information in the context of your work.  With Microsoft Search you can discover your files, recent and relevant conversations across Microsoft Teams and Yammer and more, whether you’re working in SharePoint, OneDrive, Office, Windows, or Bing.

 

You can also search for people listed in your organization. You’ll see colleagues’ contact information, conversations, events and files you have in common. You can even start a Microsoft Teams conversation, place a phone call, send an email or get a map to their office location right from an adaptive card, accelerating productivity and reducing the time you spend searching for the right answer.

 

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Microsoft Search works in and across the apps you’re using.  You don’t need to remember where something is located, so if you’re working in Word and want to reuse information from a presentation that a colleague shared from OneDrive, there’s no need to switch to OneDrive and search for that presentation, you can simply search from Word.

 

When you need to get back to work quickly, you can use your own personalized query history or Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint so you won’t have to recall those important results and files or sift through pages of history to get back to where you were.

 

Work knowledge, meet world knowledge

 

The address bar has become a natural place to discover information. Microsoft Search helps you save time by bringing you the best of the web and work in a single experience, all without switching context or apps. Using the advanced AI technology from Bing and its world knowledge combined with insights from the Microsoft Graph we’ll be soon making it simple to ask simple, natural language questions and get answers – whether searching in Bing or right from the address bar. For example, you can ask “Can I bring my cat to work?”.  We use Bing’s knowledge of the world to expand and understand “cat” and couple that with mining your organization’s intranet to derive the answer and get you to the right place. 

 

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Sometimes knowledge is not always contained within the organization. Sometimes answers come from both inside and outside. Bringing together work knowledge and world knowledge means you just need to search once to find what you need to get work done. Microsoft Search in Bing federates these queries, so there’s separation between your business and web results.  Search queries are de-identified and logs are separated from public Bing search traffic. This level of protection is unavailable anywhere else in the industry.

 

Privacy and control to meet your needs

 

Microsoft Search inherits the industry leading privacy and security controls in Microsoft 365 and reflects the security of your information as it changes over time. With near-instant updates to permissions — so you only see search results for content you have access to.

 

For IT administrators, Microsoft Search puts advanced controls and analytics at your fingertips, providing the insights and settings that allow you to make the most of your search experience and empower the people across your organization to do more, by finding more.  As an example, you can provide the information and answers people need to complete tasks, like policies, benefits, resources, tools, and more in work results. You can also target specific groups, like new hires or remote workers and these are just a few things you can do.

 

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Coming soon to Microsoft Search

 

Microsoft Search brings together the best of Bing and the Microsoft Graph to get insights from the people, sites, devices, and documents you work with and is the basis for consistent learning across your organization ranking search results relevant to your needs. You can already see all the results that satisfy your query, and personalized search prioritizes the results that are most likely to achieve your objective.  With that said, we’re also excited to announce that coming soon we’ll provide a universal endpoint that spans the applications and services in Microsoft 365.  The Microsoft Search API will enable developers to implement queries to provide complete recall results, suggestions and recommendations in the search box control in addition to an event API to send relevance signals.  We’ll share more details in late May.

 

This is just the start of the journey.  As we move forward we'll continue to add new capabilities including the ability to integrate Microsoft Search into your own applications with popular 3rd party connectors so you can make the most of all of your information whether that is located in Microsoft 365 or in your own systems, we’ll make it customizable to tailor to your liking, and surround it with a rich set of APIs.  We’ll also continue to extend the unified search control to applications like Yammer and Microsoft Teams in Microsoft 365.

 

Getting started…

 

Microsoft Search is ready when you are.  Use the power of Microsoft Search to search across your company’s content. From Outlook and OneDrive to Office and Microsoft Teams, and more, Microsoft Search answers your questions and delivers relevant suggestions to help you make the most of your time.

 

Need some motivation? Try searching for “me” in Office.com, “my documents” in Bing – or just click in the new search box for intelligent suggestions tailored to you.

 

Keep update to date on news and announcements, learn more about Microsoft Search, and start discovering the information trending around you to help you get work done at https://aka.ms/MicrosoftSearch and follow us @MicrosoftSearch.

18 Comments
Silver Contributor

In the M365 Admin Center, when I go to the Microsoft Search in Bing page, it shows me that Microsoft Search in Bing is now available, but there is not a Location tab to click on

Iron Contributor
New Microsoft Search isn't working in SharePoint Online Document Library pages.
 

If you navigate to a Document library view in SharePoint and try to search from the new Office 365 Navbar Search input, the search doesn't work as expected.

The first problem is that it shows results for OneDrive instead of the library that you are in, so it isn't library-specific like one would expect.

The second problem is that clicking "See more results" doesn't do anything.

 

It looks likes using this new Search input from a SharePoint online site's home page will search the site just fine, but once you get to Document library pages in your site, the new Search input is broken.

 

Hopefully you can forward this bug on to a team that can fix it. Thanks

Copper Contributor

I have a few queries regarding the content shared on the blog:
1. What is the difference between "Recents document" sectin of Delve, One Drive and the one shown on portal.office.com?
2. In earlier search view, every search result had a card associated which was visible when the user used to hover on the specific result. Is there a reason for the removal?
3. Why can I not see "Search this library' option in my laptop? I am using MAC.
4. What is the source of Organisation Chart shown in the contact card? Can we change the source using some settings?
5. How are results rendered in each of the sections in the contact cards; Email, Files, Attachments etc? What is the upper limit for visible documents in each of the sections? Are there any configuration settings for the same?
6. I can not see "Microsoft Search" in the admin center. Do I need to have special privileges for the same?

Thanks
Shweta

Copper Contributor

Exiting feature! Being based in Sweden I am wondering if GA means the country restrictions has been lifted? Is it available in all regions? If not any timeline?

Copper Contributor

I also experienced the issues described by Kevin M. and today they are resolved. 

 

This is a major step forward to make the modern search experience consistent and useful from sites and libraries, something my business partners have been craving.  Thank you!


Iron Contributor

I'm not sure I would call it resolved as much as they put in a temporary fix.

 

Now when I go to document library pages (or any list pages) the new Search input in the navbar disappears and we see the old search input above the quick nav area. I would assume this isn't there end goal, as they are preaching consistent Search everywhere, but at least it lets us do list-specific searching again for now.

Brass Contributor

Why is the People tab not available from SharePoint search like it is from Office.com search?

Iron Contributor

@Bill Baer  Searching for Enterprise Keywords or Tags does not seem to be working as one would expect either.

 

Typing a keyword or tag into the search input only provides results if you are on the root folder of a document library. It does nothing if you are in a subfolder of that library or are at the site level. I would expect, and hope, that searching for keywords/tags would work anywhere in a SharePoint site.

Brass Contributor

The experience seems strangely inconsistent for us at present in modern sites.

 

If I search within a library, it works, but just shows the results in the view with no filter options. If I click the link at the bottom of the results 'Expand search to all of SharePoint' then it takes me to the classic search center.

 

If I search from the site level, I get a different experience. But it doesn't include People.

 

When 'All' is selected, I don't get a filter for File Type. I have to click on the 'Files' tab to make that appear.

 

Our execs are asking for a user guide on search, but it seems like things aren't quite ready yet. I hope the inconsistencies are being worked on so the experience for the users is simple and seamless.

Brass Contributor

I've spent hours researching this. It looks like what I am experiencing is the way it is supposed to work. I have to say I think it is not intuitive. I thought the aim of the new search was to prevent the users having to change contexts. But now we have a single search box that exposes multiple different user experiences. And the users will have to know to switch the context of where they are searching from in order to find what they are looking for. For example, users can't find people from the library or site. They have to go to SharePoint home or Office 365 home.

 

And users have to know to change the scope to get the correct filters. (File filter isn't available in the 'All' scope for example)

 

That seems a very surprising to me and will require quite a bit of training for the users.

 

Is this the intended user experience?

Brass Contributor

Does someone know why Microsoft Search is still not shown in the Header Office Bar on top in my SharePoint tenant. I thougth it was already released?

Copper Contributor

Hi,

Following on from Michael Bohm when with this be fully Released as it's still only showing for users who are set up for Targeted Release within my Tennant?

Copper Contributor
Copper Contributor

@Bill Baer are there any plans to show emails in Microsoft Search in Bing search results?

I understand that the concept that teams is targeted at internal conversations and Outlook for external conversations.

I'm getting resistance to a shift to Teams as there is concern over communication in two applications instead of one making information harder to find.

I was hoping Microsoft Search would negate this argument by allowing a search across all emails and conversations that a user has access.

Brass Contributor

@Bill Baer Asked again, is the Microsoft Search in the SharePoint SuiteBar only visible if the tenant is set to targeted release? Or does it have something to do with whether Delve is enabled or disabled? 

Copper Contributor

This article states "With Microsoft Search you can discover your files, recent and relevant conversations across Microsoft Teams and Yammer and more, whether you’re working in SharePoint, OneDrive, Office, Windows, or Bing."  We are not seeing conversations from Teams or Yammer returned in search when outside of these applications.  Is there a way to search in one place across Teams, Yammer and Email to find a conversation?

Copper Contributor

That was an insightful blog. Today we have new age enterprise search platforms that like 3RDi Search and Coveo that are developed for every search and associated needs of enterprises.

Brass Contributor

@carpadum we are new to this, but have the exact same requirement, do you know if it is now possible to search in one place across Teams, Yammer and Email to find a conversation?

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