Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Retirement of custom default result sources in Microsoft Search for modern search experiences

In November 2021 I posted about bookmarks being the successor feature of promoted results for organizational scoped searches in Microsoft Search, which was the first step to modernize the Microsoft Search stack and remove dependencies on classic SharePoint search features and API’s.

The next step is now under way, as announced by MC526131 - Retirement of custom default result sources in Microsoft Search for modern search experiences.

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For most customers the change, which will start April 10th 2023, should have no impact. The way KQL rewrite works for a default result source was never intended for modern search experiences as any change was applied to all verticals showing SharePoint and OneDrive content. The ability for an admin to edit and add KQL per vertical in the modern experience is a better and more accurate feature – succeeding the result source feature which doesn’t really work well in modern search experiences in SharePoint. See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/manage-verticals#keyword-query-language-kql for more information on vertical management.

I want to be crystal clear that nothing happens to classic search experiences nor to experiences which are powered by the SharePoint Search API. Everything keeps on working as before – it’s just Microsoft Search in out-of-the-box modern experiences which retires reading the setup.

I also want to point out that this does not effect query rule triggered promoted results on SharePoint sites or SharePoint hub-sites, as the modern experience will show a promoted result for these scopes regardless of the result source they may have been targeted towards.

And as a last note, this only applies to environment where search vertical administration is rolled out.

That’s it and you can likely ignore this post as it should not affect you