Tweaking Teams Search
Microsoft improved the search capabilities in Teams with the introduction of contextual search (CTRL/F) in June. Now they’ve improved things again by including Files information in the set of autosuggested results generated when users type words into the search box. The file information scanned by search comes from SharePoint Online sites that the user can access and their personal OneDrive for Business account. Adding file data to autosuggested results seems like a small change, but the extra information makes Teams searches more productive.
What the User Might be Looking For
The idea of autosuggested results is that the search function tries to predict what information a user is looking for based on their input without performing a search. If the autosuggested results are accurate, users get faster access to information. If not, the user can progress to a search of available locations by pressing Return.
Take the example in Figure 1. As I type in “Microsoft 365,” search scans its indexes to find likely matches to create an autosuggest list that appears under the search box. The list includes several group chats (including those associated with meetings), teams (and channels if they match), and files. In this instance, three Word documents are suggested. The documents are stored in SharePoint Online sites. If files are found in OneDrive for Business, the author’s name is shown.
Finding Full Search Results
To speed things up, the autosuggest list for files is limited to three entries. To see more matching entries, hit return to see the complete list of results in the left-hand pane (Figure 2).
If you want to get even more precise with searches of Teams data, construct queries in KQL syntax as explained in this article. The update to Teams search is now available worldwide.
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