In the December Modern Work blog, I am going to be talking about Microsoft Search. Finding information is a huge challenge for businesses and something I’m sure we have all experienced, and over the years there has been a significant amount of research conducted that proves the impact this has on employee productivity:

  • McKinsey Global Institute found that knowledge workers spent 28 hours each week writing emails, searching for information, and collaborating internally – of that, 9.3 hours per week/1.8 hours a day on average, searching and gathering information alone.[i]

  • Research by IDC suggests that a typical knowledge worker spends 2.5 hours, roughly 30% of their workday looking for information. [ii]

  • A survey from Wakefield Research found that 54% of office professionals report wasting time searching for much-needed files.[iii]

 

Along with lost productivity, there are other risks associated such as decisions being based on incorrect or poor-quality information, and duplicated efforts from staff or Teams repeating work that may have already been done. This is made worse if there are too many places to search, if information is stored in many different repositories there are more places to look in and users must familiarise themselves with more systems.   

 

This is where Microsoft Search comes in, it is described as the intelligent search for the Modern Workplace and was introduced to address information overload and outdated search experiences, and drive better results with a consistent search experience across the Microsoft 365 platform. 

  • Productivity growth enabled by Microsoft Search in Bing leads to $13.6 to $40.7 million savings in labour costs in three years.[iv]

  • Improved ability to find answers reduces the number of certain support tickets by 30% to 60%[v]

  • Some participants reported a 50%-70% reduction in time spent doing work-related searches[vi]



The Microsoft Search Experience

The Microsoft Search experience is consistent in the Office web apps, Windows search, the Edge new tab page, and Bing.com and Office.com.

  • The search box appears in the same place across all the Microsoft 365 web apps and presents results that are relevant to which app you are searching from. For example, if you search from SharePoint, you will get sites, folders, and files, whereas Outlook will show emails. You can also search from the Office home page with produces results from all the M365 apps.

  • Microsoft Search uses AI to parse query intent from large phrases, so it can remove the words that are not important for the query.

  • The search results are personal to you, other people may get different results with the same search query, as people will only see content that they have permission to see.

  • Search history is recorded (but not shared with the company or Microsoft) to help users quickly get to items they’ve looked for before.

 

Optimise the Search Experience

Plan your content

Microsoft recommends you start by planning your content so can identify opportunities to optimise the Microsoft Search results for your company. You need to find out what information users are commonly searching for so you can include it when configuring answers. Below are some ideas for what to include in your planning:

  • What are the fundamental apps/websites/systems used by the business on a day-to-day or regular basis

  • Which teams do people internally normally reach out to (e.g. IT support, HR, marketing) or 3rd party supplier, and what is the process for users to engage with them

  • What are the company policies all staff need to be aware of

  • What information/policies are available for employee benefits

  • Reach out to IT, HR, management, etc, and find out what the most common queries they get are so you can build out Q&As in Microsoft Search

  • Find information about company events and conferences

  • Talk to your SMEs to understand what high-level information related to specific products or technologies would be valuable to make available to the wider organisation, to ideally reduce the number of queries going directly to them

  • Ask your staff what information they regularly need and what they struggle to find, so you can focus on that when preparing answers

 

Use Answers in Microsoft Search

You can create custom answers in the form of bookmarks, acronyms, Q&A, locations, and floor plans to improve findability.

Acronyms

An example most of us can relate to - Anyone who has worked in the Microsoft space knows that there is an endless number of acronyms that are nearly impossible to remember, and without a single reference point it can be challenging to find the definitions. Microsoft Search addresses this by allowing you to create a list of acronyms so users can easily search for definitions in Bing, SharePoint, Office 365, Outlook on the Web, Outlook Mobile and Teams Mobile.

Microsoft Search queries two data sources for answers:

  • Admin-curated: Data is provided by the admin.

As an admin, you can add acronyms individually or you can bulk import them with a CSV file. Our team here at Dicker Data has an active document that we regularly add Microsoft acronyms to as they come up, so I have attached our list so you can use that as a starting point. Once you have imported the acronyms, it can take up to a day to start appearing in search results.

 

Download Microsoft Search – Upload Acronyms Guide
Download Acronym Import Template

 

  • System-curated: Microsoft Search sources the answer from users’ emails, documents, and public information within the tenant.

No set-up is required for these as it’s all done by Microsoft Search discovering the acronyms in emails and documents. It ensures that users can only see information they have access to, so if the acronym was found in a user’s mailbox or OneDrive only that user would be able to see it. 


Users can search phrases like “What is AAD”, “AAD stands for”, “Meaning of AAD”, “Definition AAD”, and the results will include the meanings of the acronym that are available for that tenant.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks help people to navigate to systems and websites quickly via using search, as each Bookmark contains a URL. It’s important that bookmarks have a strong, clear title and description and that use at least 5 keywords so it’s easier to find the right content.

A good use case for this is adding all the systems and resources you present to new employees. For example, we have an onboarding guide for the Dicker Data Microsoft Team that includes links and information for the various portals we access. By creating Bookmarks for these, users can search for them at any time without needing to locate and refer to the onboarding document.

 

Floor plans

Floor plans are mostly valuable for large customers that have big offices or office throughout NZ or internationally, as you can search for an employee or a room and Microsoft Search will return a floor plan as the answer so you can work out where to go!

When setting this up you will need to upload your office floor plans (DWG format) and allocate a unique building code to each building (this code is what will appear in the users’ office location in their profile). You then need to make sure the office location is up to date for all users, and it should consist of both the building code and room label, e.g. if the user’s office is room 9 (room label = 19) in building 3 (building code = 3), then the users’ office location should say 3/19 (no floor/level number is required). Once updated, it can take up to 72 hours to replicate before the changes will start to appear in search results.

 

 

Locations

While floor plans help you to navigate the inside of your buildings, locations help you to find addresses and locate the building itself. It’s recommended that you add all important locations to the company.

Q&As

Q&As allow you to create answers for frequently asked questions (compared to bookmarks which are just providing a webpage link).

You can add Q&As individually, use the import feature to bulk add them, or use the Microsoft Search content creator extension.

 

Adoption plays a key part

Microsoft Search is so powerful, but for users to benefit from it, where they store their information matters. Successful adoption of the Microsoft 365 suite is key to ensure that users will store their files in OneDrive/SharePoint, and not resort to using local or third-party storage options instead. With all their information in Microsoft 365, they can easily search and find information anywhere, on any device.

 

I also encourage you to check out the Microsoft Search Adoption page which contains a bunch of resources like Day in the Life guides, eBooks, and Microsoft Search in Bing Adoption kits: Microsoft Search – Microsoft Adoption.

 

If you are after more information about Microsoft Search, you can contact me via my email below or book a meeting with me here.