Bill Baer /bɛːr/

This week we shipped custom verticals and refiners on SharePoint content worldwide.

Search verticals only show results of a certain type or from certain content. Examples are Files or News. By default, Microsoft Search shows the verticals All, People, Files, Sites, and News. You can add search verticals that are relevant to your organization that represent content indexed with one or more Microsoft Graph … keep reading.

Vertical and filter customization on SharePoint content allows a Microsoft Search administrator to edit out-of-the-box search verticals, such as Files, Sites, News, etc., and create custom verticals on SharePoint content at the organization and site levels (tenant-scoped and site-scoped respectively).

For example, you can add an ‘Author’ filter to Files vertical to refine the results by one or more authors or a ‘Modified’ filter to the News vertical to refine the results by date created or modified and sort ascending or descending.

In the past, this level of customization has been limited to 3P verticals (verticals based on 3rd party data index-time merged with Microsoft Graph connectors).

With this new feature, you can create custom verticals based on SharePoint content (I.e. sites). Perhaps your organization is a legal firm, using custom verticals and filters with SharePoint content, you can create a dedicated search vertical where users can search by location, case type, retainers, etc.

In addition to creating these verticals and related filters, search administrators can also curate a vertical to narrow down results based on dynamic information such as location, user profile, etc., using query variables. Assuming the law firm in the above example is a MNC, a search administrator can use query variables to show results based on the users’ location from their user profile.

A final part of this feature includes the relocation of filters - instead of filters in the context region of the page (right rail), filters are now placed below their respective vertical.

Creating verticals and filters with SharePoint content

To create a custom vertical on SharePoint content, select Search & intelligence under Settings in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

In the Search & intelligence admin center, select Customizations, and then select Verticals. Click Add to add a new vertical and then click Next.

On the Name the vertical screen, provide a unique, meaningful name for the vertical and click Next.

On the Select a content source screen, select SharePoint and then click Next.

On the Add a query (Optional) screen, optionally add your query variable(s) using Keyword Query Language, for example:

filetype:pdf

marketing rese*

or perhaps a more complex file query such as:

({searchterms})
(
  NOT (Title:OneNote_DeletedPages OR Title:OneNote_RecycleBin)
  AND NOT SecondaryFileExtension:onetoc2
  AND NOT FileExtension:vtt AND NOT ContentClass:ExternalLink
  AND NOT (ContentClass:STS_List_DocumentLibrary AND SiteTemplateId:21)
  AND NOT ((filetype:aspx OR filetype:htm OR filetype:html OR filetype:mhtml))
  AND isDocument:1
  OR (
      (
        ContentTypeId:0x010100F3754F12A9B6490D9622A01FE9D8F012
        OR ContentTypeId:0x0120D520A808*
      )
      OR (
          SecondaryFileExtension:wmv
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:avi
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:mpg
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:asf
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:mp4
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:ogg
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:ogv
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:webm
          OR SecondaryFileExtension:mov
        )
      )
    OR (
        FileType:ai
        OR FileType:bmp
        OR FileType:dib
        OR FileType:eps
        OR FileType:gif
        OR FileType:ico
        OR FileType:jpeg
        OR FileType:jpg
        OR FileType:odg
        OR FileType:png
        OR FileType:rle
        OR FileType:svg
        OR FileType:tiff
        OR FileType:webp
        OR FileType:wmf
        OR FileType:wpd
      )
      OR (ContentTypeId:0x012000*)
    )
    AND NOT (ContentTypeId:0x0101009D1CB255DA76424F860D91F20E6C4118* AND PromotedState:2)
    AND NOT Path:https://contoso-my.sharepoint-df.com/personal/meganb/

Click Next.

On the Select a property for your filter screen, choose a property to filter the results by and click Next.

On the final screen, review the vertical settings, and then select Enable Vertical to publish the vertical.

The above steps will create a custom vertical that is tenant-scoped, meaning it will be available in SharePoint Home, Office.com, and Microsoft Bing (when signed in with a Work or school account).

In addition to tenant-scoped verticals, you can also create site-scoped verticals following a similar process as to that above under Site settings | Microsoft Search for your target site.

Resources

Manage Verticals

Manage Filters