Classic vs Modern and More Microsoft Search Questions Answered
Over the past several weeks we've had a number of community questions on classic vs modern search in relationship to SharePoint and Microsoft Search across social channels, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc. and here in the Microsoft Search community. We've selected the most common questions and have created the Q&A below to help answer those. As Microsoft continues to invest in modern experiences, including search, will existing SharePoint search administration options, such as Query Rules, Schema, Dictionaries, Type-Ahead Suggestions, etc. be deprecated over time or made available in Microsoft Search administration? As we continue the journey of modernizing classic search experiences across SharePoint and other Microsoft Search endpoints, we’ll transition their configuration options (where supported with Microsoft Search) to the unified Microsoft Search admin center in addition to their programmatic model where applicable. Microsoft Search is a cohesive search experience across Microsoft 365 and Bing so does not have affinity to a specific endpoint, such as SharePoint, but shares it’s underlying capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps and services. As a singular search experience across Microsoft 365, configuration options for search will move to the unified search admin console as well as “cleaning up” the search settings when in SharePoint context. Will there be changes to the web parts available to the “classic search” experience as search is modernized and transitioned to Microsoft Search? As Microsoft Search continues to roll out across Microsoft 365 we’ll modernize web parts in conjunction. For example, the Hightlighted Content web part will get an advanced capability to allow the use of KQL and CAML directly. This will help solve a lot of user configured roll-up scenarios. Secondly we are investing in making the modern search result page customizable in terms of custom verticals and the ability to add more refiners. We are also investing in an alternative to display templates, using adaptive cards, which will first arrive for the new custom connectors. If you however need full flexibility on how to display results you may as an example use the PnP Modern Search web parts configuring the search box on a site to land on that page, as announced at SPC. Are there plans to introduce classic search replacements for Refiners, Search Bar, and Display Templates? We are working on providing the capability for custom verticals, custom refiners and the use of adaptive cards for the modern search result page. Is it possible to ingest on-premises content into Microsoft Search, such as the ServiceNow examples shown at Microsoft Build in May 2019? ServiceNow is an example of external data being indexed into Microsoft Search using the new connector framework announced at Build and SPC. Any on-premises content or line of business content can be indexed the same way, much in the way hybrid search works today. Expect a number of connectors coming from Microsoft to support file servers, sql databases and SharePoint, as well as partner offerings. Near term, if using SharePoint on-premises, the cloud search service application (hybrid search) can be used to index across on-premises content and brought into Office 365. As Microsoft Search is a cohesive search experience across Microsoft 365, providing data can be brought into one or more endpoints, as described above, it will be available to Microsoft Search. For additional information on these approaches see also https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/connecting-your-data-into-search-and-services/. I read there is a 20M document limit for documents index using the cloud search service application (hybrid search) with SharePoint on-premises. The limit is not 20 million, but there is a limit depending on the licensing and volume you have available in the tenant. Via a service request this number can be increased today. Is Microsoft Search what had been called Bing for Business? Microsoft Search in Bing (formerly known as Bing for Business) is one of Microsoft Search’ endpoints along with SharePoint, Office.com, Outlook, OneDrive, etc. For ingestion the new connector framework is the way forward, and a new query api is being built via the Microsoft Graph. Is there a relationship between the Microsoft Search pipeline and Microsoft Graph? Yes. Indexing and query will be provided via Microsoft Graph APIs. Will it be possible to ingest content from non-Microsoft sources and enrich that content? Any enriching can be done on the custom connector side before the data is ingested into the Microsoft Search search index. How does Microsoft Search fit within the context of Enterprise Search? Microsoft Search is an Enterprise Search solution. With the new investments to easier ingest your own content, and taking advantage of machine learning across all workloads in the Microsoft Graph to provide best of breed ranking of results for the individual, we believe that if you are using Office 365 as one of your primary data sources, then using Microsoft Search will make it easier for your end-users to get a unified search experience on all their data, across all devices. We are investing in providing the same search results in all user experiences, that be bing.com, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, from your Windows 10 desktop search, or from any mobile device. Bill Baer Senior Product Manager Search & AI Mikael Svenson
