Author: Tobias Hassmann
Search Relevance for Microsoft Graph Connectors
A look under the hood
Microsoft Graph Connectors enable your organization to bring your data from multiple sources into Microsoft 365. They allow you to have all relevant information for your work at your fingertips. With Microsoft Graph Connectors you can bring information from systems like ServiceNow or internal Websites into Microsoft Search and make that information available in all key endpoints like SharePoint Online, Office.com, and Bing. This avoids unnecessary context switching or moving between applications. The foundation for all this is Search: it ensures that you find and discover what you need in no time. Our team of dedicated Microsoft Search engineers and data scientists is committed to continually improving and optimizing search result relevance.
Where can I find Graph Connector content in Microsoft Search?
When you onboard content via Graph Connectors, it will be indexed in Office 365. The content is hosted in a compliant environment and remains in your tenant’s boundary. Microsoft Search uses top-notch Artificial Intelligence technology to ensure the best possible discovery and search relevance for Graph Connector content.
Graph Connector content in SharePoint Online, Office.com, Bing.com Work vertical
Microsoft Search users find Graph Connector content in the All vertical and in dedicated custom verticals. In response to a top customer request, we will show Graph Connected content merged inline in the All vertical with Microsoft Office 365 content based on its relevance score in the first half of 2023. As a result, Graph connector results will be seamlessly integrated into the search UI. This allows users to apply filters or pagination to further refine their search – including Graph Connector content.
Users can find all relevant work content in the All vertical on SharePoint Online, including Microsoft Graph Connector content. It is seamlessly integrated into the All vertical for better discoverability and easy engagement.
Users can also search for Graph Connected content in custom verticals, which are created and managed by the tenant search administrator.
Graph Connector content in other clients
Connected content is also available in the Work vertical in Windows search. Windows Search follows the vertical configuration on Bing.com, Office.com and SharePoint Online and thus ensures a coherent experience for all company users. All results are personalized, and all content adheres to the same access controls and permissions that are applied across all Microsoft Search experiences.
In Teams mobile you can search for Graph Connector content from within custom verticals on the go.
This screenshot shows results from a ServiceNow Graph Connector shown on Teams Mobile under a vertical called “Support KB”. Users can simply select a result and are routed to the respective article.
Users can access their important work content on the go and without needing to change applications. In Teams mobile users can also find results from custom Microsoft Graph Connectors, for example, Figma content (first screenshot). When the user clicks, they are directed to the Figma file directly (second screenshot).
Finally – the look under the hood!
Search is key to ensure that users, who are looking for Graph Connector content, always find what they need so that they can be more productive. Search is a complex and broad task that is best solved at scale via Artificial Intelligence-technology. Microsoft Search delivers on this task for you and for all your company content. Also, Search always operates within compliant boundaries.
New search relevance models are updated and evaluated all the time. They become successively available for all customers if they measurably improve search. Models learn from various user interaction data what results are most relevant for a given query. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, the models can predict and generalize for queries that have never been issued before and for content that does not even exist yet.
The search models use numerous features to find relevant results for a query. Most of them are not noticeable by users. A short list of features may demonstrate how Search is constantly improving and adapting to your tenant needs:
- Search utilizes a variety of characteristics associated with the content, the user query, and the query-content connection to identify the most pertinent content for a query and arrange the content by relevance.
- Search tracks and learns which content is trending and popular.
- No matter if your query is composed of singular or plural terms, the search will yield relevant documents.
- Search understands what content is popular with the tenants and individual users and ranks it accordingly.
What can I do as an administrator to ensure awesome relevance?
Microsoft Search ensures that search over Graph Connector content works well out of the box for any scenario. This also means that you save time to focus on other . For the best possible out of the box relevance, you can do the following:
- Upon Graph connector onboarding, define search attributes. Also ensure to map semantic labels as appropriate, which are essential for great out of the box search relevance.
- Make sure that Graph Connector items have meaningful titles. That is, a title should clearly describe and represent what the item is about.
- Ensure that the content property is filled with meaningful and representative text content.
- Manage your content diligently throughout its lifespan: ensure that your important content is indexed, and that outdated content is removed.
- Provide a meaningful name for your custom search verticals.
- Leverage the multiple customization options for your verticals to cater them to your individual context.
- Later in 2023, admins can add an importance weight to textual custom properties of Graph Connector content. This impacts the importance of a query term match in that property for ranking the search results. We suggest applying importance weights only when the search scenarios that they ought to address are well understood.
- To ensure users remain focused on finding the most relevant results, review and adjust the result types using adaptive cards to optimize the appearance of Graph Connected content search results. This will minimize distractions when scanning the results.
Wrapping it up
Providing awesome relevance is a complex challenge that Microsoft Search is committed to solve for you. Microsoft Search will provide awesome relevance for you and all your content. It combines the power of Microsoft Graph Connectors, the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, a top-notch search stack paired with content management curation- and UX customization options to create a one-stop-shop for search over all content that matters to you, your users, and your company