Did you know that there are ways to significantly improve the search experience in Office 365/SharePoint? No? Then you should read below.
The powerful search engine in SharePoint has two functions, a classic and a modern one, the latter – Microsoft Search in SharePoint – is placed at the top of SharePoint in the title bar.
Microsoft Search is personal to the logged-in user, which means you only see results for the documents you have permission to view. When users start typing in the search box, they see results based on past activity and on trending content in Microsoft 365. And the results are updated as you type. This is because all content in SharePoint is indexed to give you, the user, a faster search result. This is good, but also something that can be improved.
Smarter search with metadata
What many people miss is that there are ways to improve the search experience from basic search to enterprise search. And the key is to add metadata tags that allow users to find exactly what they’re looking for. Let us tell you how.
SharePoint is preconfigured by default with the basic search, and updating to Enterprise search requires the following;
- Customise the search function so you have access to specific verticals, tailored to the type of information you are looking for.
- Tag pages, content and documents with relevant metadata.
- Customise the search results page by adding refinements to the metadata that is relevant to your organisation. Search refinements help users “drill down” into search results to find what they’re looking for.
With MetaShare, the user finds what they are looking for
Our MetaShare solution is a document management app for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint that simplifies document management in Office 365 and increases operational efficiency for your organisation. MetaShare comes pre-configured with a custom search results page that has relevant refinements for the metadata fields that are available by default in SharePoint. You can then easily add more refinements, for the metadata fields you have defined in your organisation. MetaShare always presents the documents in a table so that it is easy to see the metadata about the documents, in order to possibly filter further on other dimensions.
In MetaShare, you will only see the values, under each refinement, that are relevant to the documents you are looking for. In MetaShare, we show how many documents are tagged with different metadata values.
MetaShare is quick and easy to implement, so you can get up and running quickly without having to be a SharePoint specialist. With MetaShare, you can create a search function that allows your users to finally find what they’re looking for, without spending a lot of time and money customising the search function in SharePoint.