Use search to find content and people within your digital workplace. Performing a search involves entering text into an available search box and viewing a list of selectable quick search results or pressing enter to view a more extensive search results page (also known as the advanced search page). To help you narrow down your search results, you can include advanced search operators in your search terms, perform post-search filtering of results, and take advantage of search suggestions. 

Go to one of the following sections in this article: 

• Search query basics
• Doing a quick search
• Refining your search on the search results page
• Recommended search results
• Search box availability
• Indexing
• Relevance weighting
• Advanced search operators
• Stop words and reserved characters
• Additional resources

Search query basics

Keep in mind the following behaviors when crafting your search query:

• Query matching: When searching for content, you should use complete words. Searching for content using partial words will often not return any direct results; instead, the system will suggest what term to use. In contrast, when searching for users, you will get results if your query partially matches a user's name. 
• Relevancy: Search results are returned and sorted based on an algorithm for relevance with a few influencing factors. Refer to the Relevancy weighting section below for specific details.
• Multiple keywords: Your returned results will include all of your keywords when you search with multiple keywords. For example, if your query is vacation calendar your results will include content that contains both  vacation and calendar. You can toggle this behavior on the search results page.
• Case insensitive: Capitalization in your queries does not influence your results. For example, Vacation and vacation will return the same results. 
• Language: Search looks across all languages of multilingual content regardless of your current preferred language. 
• Archived content: By default, you will not see archived content in your search results. However, you can toggle this behavior while on the search results page.
• Access: Only content you have at least Read access to will be included in your search results.

Doing a quick search

After entering a query in a search box, a list of up to ten matches will appear. These results can contain a list of relevant people and content (excluding Microblog posts), any of which you can go to by selecting the result.

In addition to specific results, the following general links are provided:

• View all results: Select to go to the search results page, where you can view more results and refine your search.
• View All People: Select to go to the Member Directory page, where you can view more results and filter users in additional ways.

If you press enter after typing a query, you will be brought to the search results page.

Refining your search on the search results page

After entering your search query, you can press enter to go to the search results page. The search results page, also known as the advanced search page, divides search results into a Content tab and a People tab and provides additional features that can help you narrow down your search results. 

Content tab

The Content tab shows what content matches your search query. By default, results are paginated and show only ten results at a time. However, you can adjust this using the Results per page dropdown at the bottom of the page. 

In addition to your results, an alternative search term may be suggested when your term has no results or if your term closely matches a common term in your digital workplace. Selecting this suggestion performs a new search using the suggested term. These suggestions are based on the current language of the titles of existing content in your workplace. Suggestions will not suggest combining words (e.g., postseason will not be suggested if the query was post season). However, you will get suggestions to split words.

Content results include the following information:

• Title (for microblog posts, this is the author's name)
• URL
• Labels
• Content Type
• Last Modified Date
• Author
• Content Snippet (either the section that contains the term if it is present in the content or the first 200 characters of the content)
• Preview (supported file types only)
• Date and Location (events only)
• Recommended result indicator

You can further refine your content results using any combination of filters. As you add filters to your search, they will appear above the search results list. You can remove a specific filter by selecting the X next to its name or remove all filters by selecting Clear All. You can filter on the following:

• Content Type: Only show the selected content types. If no content types are selected, all are shown.
• Last Updated: Only show content updated within the selected period. You must select Apply to place this filter on your search results.
• Author: Only show content created by the selected user. Select a suggested user or search for one. You must select Apply to place this filter on your search results.
• Space: Only show content located in the selected space. Select a space using the dropdown or search for one.
• Label: Only show content that contains all of the selected labels. Select labels using the dropdown or search for one. You must select Apply to place this filter on your search results.  

You can broaden your content results using the options found under Additional Options; these settings are applied immediately when selected:

• Include Archived Content: Under Additional Options, toggle whether archived content is shown. 
• Search Logic: Toggle how search handles multiple keywords:
  • And: See results based on all search terms.
  • Or: See results based on any search term.

People tab

The People tab shows that users in your digital workplace match your search query. By default, results are paginated and show only ten results at a time. However, you can adjust this using the Results per page dropdown at the bottom of the page. If the people tab is not visible, it has been disabled by your digital workplace administrator (for instructions on enabling or disabling the tab, see Toggling the availability of the People tab).

People results are presented as contact cards which typically include the following information:

• Profile picture
• Name
• Reports To
• Job Title
• Department
• City
• Province/State/Region
• Country
• MS Teams link
• Facebook link
• Twitter link
• LinkedIn link

Some of these fields may not be visible depending on:

• Users' profile fields privacy settings.
• Whether a valid profile field is mapped to one of these display fields.

For information about mapping these fields, see Mapping which profile fields appear on contact cards in search.

You can further refine your results using the Group filter to show only specific group members. To select a group, use the dropdown or search for a specific group. However, be aware that when looking to filter by a space group, you can only select space groups from spaces you are a member of.

Searching from the search results page

The search box on the search results page provides additional functionality not available in other locations:

• Search history (): When you initially select the search box, a list of up to 10 of your recent queries similar to your current query will be shown. You can select one of these past queries to rerun it. If you want to clear a query from your history, select X to its right. To clear your entire search history, select Clear search history and confirm this action by selecting Clear. You will not receive these suggestions if you are not signed in to your digital workplace. 
• Autocomplete suggestions (): While typing your query, a list of up to 5 autocomplete suggestions will be shown, replacing any search history suggestions. These autocomplete suggestions are based on the titles of existing content you have access to in your digital workplace and will always yield search results. Select one of these results to search with it as your query.
• Searching multiple digital workplaces: If your digital workplace is part of a Networked Enterprise configured to allow searching the hub workplace from a spoke, a workplace selector dropdown will be present next to the search box on the Search Results page. Using this selector, you can search either your current spoke digital workplace or the hub digital workplace. You must rerun your search when switching between the available workplaces. Hub searches have the following limitations:
  • Only content can be searched.
  • Only Content Type, Last Updated, and Include Archived Content filters can be applied.

Recommended Search Results

Recommended Search Results give digital workplace administrators the ability to surface digital workplace content prominently in search results based on specific keywords and phrases. When a search query contains a keyword or phrase, the matched content will appear at the top of the search results list with a Recommended label.