What Is Microsoft Search?

From the Office suite and the Sharepoint mobile app to Outlook and Bing.com, Microsoft Search wants to anticipate your needs with minimal input. The function works best with Microsoft's business services, allowing companies, schools, and organizations to take advantage of the AI-based technology to keep colleagues and partners connected. Here's what you need to know about the AI-driven feature.

You want to use Microsoft Search with a Microsoft product like Outlook, SharePoint, or Office 365—or with a Windows 10 computer, laptop, or tablet—for the best productivity experience.

You must be signed in to a Microsoft account to use the search function in Bing. Microsoft's computer programs and mobile apps have the search function baked right in. You can even access Microsoft Search from your Windows 10 taskbar, giving your entire business or personal ecosystem an intuitive and contextualized touch.

Much like Apple's continuity function, Microsoft Search lets you have the same data collecting experience across all of its platforms, including desktop, mobile, and the web. The search bar looks the same on all platforms, and search results can be saved and pulled up on other platforms. You can also set search results to populate for several users within a business or organization.

While Microsoft Search is intended to ease office productivity, it does require some administrative customization to fit the exact business or organization that uses it. While basic set up of Microsoft Search is fairly simple, there are many Power Apps like Slack, SQL Servers, and DropBox that admins can add for further customization of a company's ecosystem.

Microsoft's Trust Cloud works with its Azure Active Directory authentication to populate results for search users. This means the search method is different from the mechanisms powering the public Bing search, thereby adding an extra layer of security to Microsoft Search.

If you're set on using Microsoft Search, here are some of the best uses for it:

• Contacts and Meetings: Find contact information, details on upcoming meetings with colleagues, shared internal documents, group memberships, etc.
• Group information: Find details about groups within an organization, the people within certain groups, and the content shared between specific groups.
• Documents: Find internal documents, resources, and tools, as well as track down documents and files created by you, colleagues, or group members
• SharePoint sites: Locate SharePoint websites you've created or those created by colleagues or group members.
• Save conversations: Find your one-on-one conversation with colleagues, as well as chats in Microsoft Teams or Microsoft Yammer.
• Get Directions: Search for locations and directions for buildings, offices, campuses.