Governing Feedback Data Sharing in Microsoft 365 Apps and Copilot

Microsoft treats user feedback as confidential and uses it to improve the product experience. That does, however, involve real people reading what’s submitted. For many organizations that’s fine; for others it’s something they want to control—particularly when feedback is sent from Copilot chat, where a message might contain sensitive business context.

Good news: you can govern what can (and cannot) be sent in the feedback dialog.

Note: Prompts and responses used inside a Copilot conversation are not viewed by Microsoft. What I’m covering here is only the optional feedback form users can submit.

Where to configure Feedback policies

These settings live in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center as Cloud Policy:

• Go to config.office.com → Customization → Policy Management.

• Create or edit a policy configuration for Microsoft 365 Apps and scope it to the users/groups you want.

• Search for Feedback to find the policies below.

Official docs for Cloud Policy: https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365-apps/admin-center/overview-cloud-policy.

These policies apply to apps and web experiences that use the standard “Send feedback to Microsoft” UX from Microsoft 365 Apps (including Copilot surfaces that use that dialog). Teams uses its own policy model for feedback, so manage Teams separately.

Also important: these settings are not “restrictive by default.” If you don’t explicitly disable them, users can include logs and content samples by default.

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/manage/manage-feedback-ms-org for a list of products covered by feedback policies set at config.office.com

The four knobs that matter (set to Disabled to restrict)

I’m listing them in the order I recommend you evaluate them.

1) Allow Microsoft to follow up on feedback submitted by users

• What changes: the small text at the bottom of the dialog that says Microsoft may contact the user.

• Why it matters: disables the consent for follow-up (no contact back). Many orgs prefer no outbound follow-ups to end users.

2) Allow users to include screenshots and attachments when they submit feedback to Microsoft

• What changes: hides the Include a screenshot control in the form.

• Why it matters: screenshots often contain customer content.

• Gotcha: this does not cover log/content attachments (that’s the next policy).

3) Allow users to include log files and relevant content samples when feedback is submitted to Microsoft

• What changes: removes the option that shares the prompt, generated response, relevant content samples, and additional log files with the feedback.

• Why it matters: this is the big one for Copilot. When enabled, users can (and by default will) include parts of the conversation and context data. Setting it to Disabled prevents those from being sent.

4) Allow users to submit feedback to Microsoft

• What changes: blocks the feedback dialog from appearing at all.

• Why it matters: the nuclear option. If you don’t want any feedback sent from the product UI, turn this off.

What users will see

Here’s how the UI shifts as you apply the policies:

• With default settings, users can add a screenshot and (by default) include prompt/response + logs/content samples.

  

• Disable follow-up → the small “Microsoft may contact you…” text is removed/changed.       

  

• Disable screenshots → the screenshot checkbox/button disappears (users cannot attach images), but log/content sharing may still be available unless you disable it too.

  

• Disable log files and content samples → the “Share prompt, generated response, … and additional log files” option is removed, so no conversation context is shared.

  

• Disable submit feedback → the dialog doesn’t show.

Recommended approaches

Pick the level that matches your risk tolerance:

• Leave as is: The default behavior allows Microsoft to capture valuable feedback to adjust products and experiences to the better for those using them.

• Balanced: Disable screenshots and log files/content samples, allow feedback, and optionally disable follow-ups.

• Strict: Disable screenshots, log files/content samples, and follow-ups.

• Locked down: Disable submit feedback entirely.

If you do allow feedback, you may want to consider disabling the log files and relevant content samples option for Copilot users. While this data is handled securely by Microsoft, turning it off can help ensure that no conversation snippets or contextual information are included in feedback—something some organizations prefer for peace of mind or to align with their internal data handling practices.

Final thoughts

I work at Microsoft, and I know there are actual people reading feedback to make our products better. That’s a feature, not a bug—but each organization has different requirements for customer data. With Cloud Policy you can decide what’s appropriate for your tenant, from light filtering to full lockdown.

Again, this doesn’t change how Copilot processes prompts during normal use—those aren’t viewed by Microsoft. We’re only talking about the separate, optional act of sending product feedback according to your level of comfort, and is why the options are there.

If you’ve got a mixed environment (e.g., Teams), remember to set feedback controls where that app expects them.

Happy governing!

Copilot Productivity Tip – Structured formatting in Word

Time spent per day before: 15 minutes per document
Time spent with Copilot: 5 minutes per document

Resources

• Transform your content with Copilot in Word
• Copilot in Word | Locate key information

Taking my previous post about re-writing text in Word, we can prompt to have key points from the text pulled out and as an example formatted as a table for easier consumption.

The prompt used is “Extract key points into a table with two columns for key point header and details”, and the output is the table below.

Key point	Details
Copilot can rewrite the content	Copilot can check and improve the tense, the passive voice, the readability, and the personal tone of the content.
Copilot may or may not respect the writer's style	Copilot's suggestions may vary depending on the instructions given by the writer. The writer can try to specify the style they want and see what Copilot does.

Copilot Productivity Tip – Word re-write

Time spent per day before: 30-60 minutes per document
Time spent with Copilot: 5-10 minutes per document

Resources

• Transform your content with Copilot in Word
• Copilot in Word (video)

Writing in a language that is not one's own can be challenging. That is why Copilot can help rewrite the content to make it more consistent and clear. Copilot can correct the tense, the passive voice, the readability, and the personal tone of the content. This way readers can enjoy the content more and understand the main points better.

Some writers may have a specific style that they want to use. Copilot in Word may or may not respect that style, depending on the instructions given. But one can always try to tell Copilot what kind of style they want and see what happens. Maybe Copilot will surprise them with some creative suggestions. Or maybe Copilot will ignore them and do whatever it wants. Who knows?

Original draft

Here’s the original blog-post I started out with before throwing Copilot at it.

Not everyone is a native writer of the language they produce content in. Thus, using Copilot to rewrite your content for consistency in terms of tense, passive language, readability, and personal flavor will ensure those consuming the content have a better experience and more clearly pick up on the points you want to come across in your argumentation.

If you have a particular writing style, then Copilot in Word may or may not be able to assist, but you can try to add this as part of the prompting instructions and verify the outcome.

Automatic rewrite

When using the auto rewrite feature this is what I ended up with.

Sometimes, people write content in a language that is not their native one. Therefore, using Copilot to edit your content for consistency in grammar, voice, clarity, and tone will help those who read the content have a better experience and understand the messages you want to convey in your reasoning.

If you prefer a specific writing style, then Copilot in Word may or may not help you, but you can attempt to include this in the prompting instructions and check the result.

Manual prompt for rewrite

This time around I wanted to give more instructions to simplify my writing.

“Rewrite the text using shorter sentences and language understood by an audience with little experience in Copilot or Word. Make instructions concise and relatable for beginners.“

Do you write in a language that is not your first one? Then Copilot can help you make your writing better. It can fix grammar mistakes, make sentences easier to read, and use the right words for your message.

Do you have a favorite way of writing? Copilot in Word might be able to copy it. Just tell it what you want and see what it does. You can always change it if you don't like it.

Manual prompt with styling

And this is the prompt I ended up with for the final post, as it reflects some of my personal writing style. Maybe this will makes it way into Word eventually using writing samples for style.

“Rewrite the text using shorter sentences and language understood by an audience with little experience in Copilot or Word. Make the text longer than the original, write in third-person tense and **DO NOT** use *I*, *You*, *Your* and *We*. Throw in some subtle irony and sarcasm.”

Copilot Productivity Tip – Teams Message Rewrite

Time spent per day before: 10 minutes, rethinking the words to use
Time spent with Copilot: 1-2 minutes, letting Copilot do the work

Resources

• Rewrite and adjust your messages with Copilot in Microsoft Teams

One of the challenges when writing is to convey feelings or emotion on what you type. I like to be short and concise in my messaging, but sometimes this may not be the best way to communicate when talking to people you don't know, or even people you know.

Let’s take the message “I don’t agree with your points” and run it thru Copilot to make it longer and Enthusiastic.

The output can be something like: “Thank you for sharing your perspective. However, I have a different view on the matter and I would like to explain why I disagree with some of the points you made.” which is less likely to piss Vesa off :)

You can even do a customized prompt for formatting: “Make it sound like it was written by Super Mario”. The above prompt is actually a prompt hack to overcome Responsible AI to add some Paolo Italian flavor into the message.

Copilot Productivity Tip – Teams Chat Catchup

Time spent per day before: 30-60 minutes
Time spent with Copilot: 5-15 minutes

Resources

• Use Copilot in Microsoft Teams chat and channels (video)

My workday at Microsoft involves communication with multiple teams spread around the globe, which means in-person communication is not always possible. This is why Teams has become the go-to tool for many conversations and discussions. When I start my day at 8am in the morning I know chats has happened in other time zones, and instead of reading everything right away I can use Copilot catchup for a summary, and then decide if I need to read it all.

I typically use the “Summarize what I've missed” Copilot suggested prompt inline in the chat which opens the Copilot pane, or I open the pane manually as seen below with prompts such as “Highlights from the past day” or “Highlights from the past 7 days”.

Copilot Productivity Tip – Teams Meeting Insights

Time spent per day before: 0-120 minutes

Time spent with Copilot: 0-15 minutes

Resources

• Get started with Copilot in Microsoft Teams meetings
• Copilot in Teams and Intelligent recap | After the meeting (video)
• Copilot in Teams | Catch up on meetings (video)

The beauty of online meetings with transcripts is the ability to quickly go back and find key points later without having to watch the recording or read thru the full transcript. 

By default Teams provides an AI notes section with a quick summary, and using the Copilot pane you can ask more direct questions such as summarizing your talking points, or ask what your action items were for the meeting.

My best example is a late night meeting where I forgot to take notes and the next morning I knew I was supposed to contact an “Andrew”, but had forgotten the full name. Requesting the name in the meetings Copilot quickly gave me the name, saving me around 15 minutes and some grief.

Easier editing of Microsoft Search verticals in SharePoint sites (finally fixed!)

This is perhaps a tiny one, but for the longest time search verticals in a SharePoint site or SharePoint hub site has been a bit of a mystery when you wanted to edit a vertical. To invoke edit, you had to double click the vertical, as there was no Edit button in the ribbon.

The issue has been known since the feature rolled out, but not addressed. I'll be as blunt to say I decided to take matters into my own hands and just fix it. So here you go, a gift from me to allow a more intuitive way of editing search verticals in SharePoint - as the Microsoft 365 Admin center has had the Edit button always.

At last the experience matches the documentation at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/manage-verticals#manage-site-level-verticals.

Demystifying Author properties on files in SharePoint and search

For as long as I have been doing SharePoint, figuring out what properties to use when filtering or displaying search results in regards to people has been a challenge as the documentation in this space is somewhat lacking. I’m not sure why I haven’t done this writeup earlier, but no time like the present.

New useful managed properties to use in Microsoft Search

For those working with hub sites in SharePoint you have for a long time used the managed property DepartmentId, later accompanied by RelatedHubSites when hub site hierarchies was enabled.

Now the time has come to have these properties, and some more, added to the public documentation.

Take a peek at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/crawled-and-managed-properties-overview which covers these new properties available for online experiences.

The documentation UX is not ideal, so ensure you scroll the table of properties to the right to read the comments per property. Here’s a copy of the table for reference where I moved the comment for visibility.

Note the (*) highlighting that it’s not guaranteed that each item has a value in the property.

Property name	Type	Comment	Multi-valued	Queryable	Searchable	Retrievable	Refinable	Sortable	Mapped crawled properties
DepartmentId	Text	Site ID of the hub of the immediate hub. Applies to all items in the hub/associated sites.	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	ows_DepartmentId
RelatedHubSites	Text	Site IDs of associated hubs including hub hierarchies. Can be used instead of DepartmentId for most scenarios. Applies to all items in the hub/associated sites.	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	ows_RelatedHubSites
IsHubSite	Yes/No	Applies to the site result of a hub (contentclass=STS_Site)	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	ows_IsHubSite
ModifierAADIDs	Text	Semi-colon separated list of AADIDs for modifiers of a file or page ordered in date descending order. (*)	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
ModifierDates	Date and Time	Semi-colon separated list of modification dates for modifiers of a file or page ordered in date descending order. (*)	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No
ModifierNames	Text	Semi-colon separated list of the names for modifiers of a file or page ordered in date descending order. (*)	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
ModifierUPNs	Text	Semi-colon separated list of UPNs for modifiers of a file or page ordered in date descending order. (*)	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No
ChapterTitle	Text	Semi-colon separated list of auto-generated chapters on Teams meeting videos. (*)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	ChapterTitle
ChapterOffset	Text	Semi-colon separated list of time codes matching the chapter titles for auto-generated chapters on Teams meeting videos. (*)	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	No	ChapterOffset

* Property is not guaranteed to contain data.

Retirement of Dynamic Ordering feature in classic search experiences

In MC44789 post from April 22nd, 2023, Microsoft announced the retirement of the dynamic ordering feature experience in classic search.

If you don’t know what the feature is, the below image highlights the feature seen in the query builder in classic search result sources, query rules and search web parts.

The above screenshot show a rule which if it matches the term xrank in the title results will be boosted to the top of the result list.

Wait what?? So I will no longer be able to boost items per my own logic? Sure you can, and this is called out in the MC post – “Functional parity may be achieved by adding XRANK clauses directly to the query template in the Query Builder dialog.”

Previously when testing the query from the test tab you could see the output of the final query. However this is no longer the case and I’ll teach you how to transition dynamic rules over to manual XRANK.

Today using the constant boost, or cb, parameter to rank is not the recommended approach. The reason is that the internal rank scale has changed over the years so the value 5,000 may or may not be required to move something to the top. The below example has a rank of –17921 so adding 5000 would not help.

The recommended parameter to use today is to use standard deviation boost with the stdb parameter.

See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/search-concept-xrank or https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-development/keyword-query-language-kql-syntax-reference#dynamic-ranking-operator for all parameters.

Manually writing dynamic ordering rules as XRANK

A query temple to boost a result to the top can then look like:

{?{searchTerms} XRANK(stdb=100) Title:xrank}

Feel free to replace 100 with a smaller or larger number as needed.

If you want to boost items with title=foo pretty high, and less with title=bar you can use a nested XRANK statement, similar to what multiple dynamic ordering rules will accomplish.

{?({searchTerms} XRANK(stdb=5) Title:foo) XRANK(stdb=2) Title:bar}

If you want to demote results instead of promoting them, use a negative number.

If you go for decimals instead of integers, I recommend reading https://www.techmikael.com/2014/11/you-should-use-exponential-notation.html to ensure they always work.

Filter on managed properties in search with or without values

Back in 2014 I wrote the post How To: Search up items which don’t have a value set, which covers how to write keyword query syntax (KQL) filters to return or restrict items depending on if a specific managed property has a value or not. Recently Microsoft added support to more easily query if managed properties of type Text contain or does not contain a value.

Here’s a link to the updated documentation:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-development/keyword-query-language-kql-syntax-reference#filter-on-items-where-a-text-property-is-empty-or-contains-a-value

Note: The new supported syntax only works for Microsoft 365 / Online

 

 

Items missing or having a text value

The syntax is as follows:

KQL Syntax	Description
NOT <Property Name>:*	Items where a property does not have a value
<Property Name>:*	Items where a property does has a value

The documentation uses the following example to list SharePoint sites associated to a hub site.

(DepartmentId:* OR RelatedHubSites:*) AND contentclass:sts_site NOT IsHubSite:true

Deciphering the query:

KQL	Description
(DepartmentId:* OR RelatedHubSites:*)	return items which has a value in the original DepartmentId managed property or in the successor RelatedHubSites property
contentclass:sts_site	return only site items
NOT IsHubSite:true	exclude hub site results

Note that hubs connected to another hub will not be included in the above query. If you want those, then remove the NOT IsHubSite:true part and post-process the results as needed.

For completeness let’s cover how to accomplish the same for other types of managed properties.

Items missing or having a YesNo value

To find items missing a value in a date property the syntax shown in my 2014 seems to no longer work and should be replaced with the following where the date is some low non-used date.

KQL	Description
NOT (RefinableYesNo00:true OR RefinableYesNo00:false)	return items not having a value in a YesNo property
(RefinableYesNo00:true OR RefinableYesNo00:false)	return items having a value in a YesNo property

 

Items missing or having a date value

To find items missing a value in a date property the syntax shown in my 2014 seems to no longer work and should be replaced with the following where the date is some low non-used date.

KQL	Description
NOT RefinableDate00>1900-01-01	return items not having a value in a date property
RefinableDate00>1900-01-01	return items having a value in a date property

 

Items missing or having a number value

For number type managed properties it’s easier as you typically know the range of values.

KQL	Description
NOT Size>=0	if the managed property only contain positive values, then this will return all items with no value set
NOT RefinableDecimal00>=0 NOT RefinableDecimal00<0	return items where the property RefinableDecimal00 has no value
Size>=0	return all items having a value which is greater than your smallest value

There are still new things to learn from the SharePoint Search API I won't share. I will NOT!

…I will, just a tad bit late :)

This was a tweet I made Friday October 21st once I understood the root cause of an API issue which has popped up in the last months. The issue affected PnP Modern Search web parts when query rules were enabled, and also the Search Query Tool with default settings.

I thought it was a weird API issue which had been introduced as part of an ongoing service upgrade for Microsoft Search lately, but turns out everything was working as expected – except the expected part hasn’t been expected for the past many years. And a big thank you to engineers at Microsoft helping me understand what the root cause is.

On the API side it manifests itself as follows with the following simple API REST query executed in the SharePoint Search Query Tool where you only get 2 main results where you would expect 10.

https://tenant.sharepoint.com/_api/search/query?querytext='mikael'&rowlimit=10

Where are the rest of my 10 results? Well, they happen to be located in the Secondary Results, a place I never looked.

I’ll explain the behavior, and it is actually correct (sort of), and I will explain why this happens now in 2022.

A trip down memory lane

When SharePoint 2013 was released Microsoft released the feature of query rules, which allowed to bring in result blocks into the search results as seen below.

The below screenshot triggers the rule “People Name in SharePoint” which bring in two result blocks.

And the query rule definition

The definition above says to always place people on top, and possible show documents authored by the person as a block within the results, or interleaved.

The thing is that the logic/setting to have it ranked has changed.

Todays logic – changed in October 2021

The old logic

The old logic introduced with SharePoint 2013 would start the block high up, and if results in the block was not clicked it would move down the page, and eventually off the page, which is what has happened for most customers over the years.

The new logic now introduced will ALWAYS interleave the block on the page 1 results, never moving it off the page.

So how does this affect the API?

By default an API query will invoke query rules unless explicitly turned off, e.g. the above query https://tenant.sharepoint.com/_api/search/query?querytext='mikael'&rowlimit=10

As Modern Search was introduced quite some time back this has greatly reducing the use of the classic search center. This means that people haven’t clicked results in result blocks from quite some time, no clicks are recorded and the block moved off the page – never appearing in API queries.

Now as the logic has changed, the blocks come back, which is not a bug, but maybe not expected.

Together with query rules there is another API setting available, one I have never thought about, but it’s been there all along. “Enable Interleaving” which by default is set to true documented at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/office/sharepoint-csom/jj262234(v=office.15).

Of course, if you don’t need query rules for your scenario you should always disable them on the API call. Problem solved!

Then again, using the PnP modern search web parts a common scenario is to use promoted results, and thus you need query rules enabled. Which leads to queries on people names triggering the original “People names rules” causing interleaving to happen and the results split into primary and secondary result tables in the response.

The solution then is to set EnableInterleaving=false.

Changing the query to https://contoso.sharepoint.com/_api/search/query?querytext='mikael'&enableinterleaving=false&rowlimit=10 ensure 10 results as expected in the primary result set.

I have released a fix to the Query Tool which by default will disable interleaving, or you can set it yourself.

https://github.com/pnp/PnP-Tools/releases 

And I have made the same fix to the PnP Modern Search Web Parts v4.8, and any interleaving should be done manually at the template level if strictly needed.

Query variable trick in Microsoft Search verticals (and classic)

Microsoft has been working on both classic and modern scenarios for Microsoft Search, and evaluating existing solutions to determine the best way to support query variables. This post is not exclusive to Microsoft Search, and the same technique can be used with any SharePoint classic search experience. The only difference is the type of query variables that are supported for each experience.

For supported query variables in Microsoft Search modern experiences see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/manage-verticals#profile-query-variables.

For supported query variables in classic search see https://www.techmikael.com/2014/05/s15e03-query-variables-constant-trouble.html.

Solution

The sample case solution provide an option to filter search results down a city. All items are tagged with a managed property City to allow for the filtering. On the SharePoint page of the solution the user can pick their own or a specific city. When picking their own, no query parameter is passed with the city. When picking a specific city the user is sent to a vertical in Microsoft Search passing the city value as a query string parameter:

_/layouts/15/search.aspx/verticalname?City=Helsinki

Which brings us to the query template to use:

{searchTerms} {?City:{Request.City} NOT UNIQUESTRING}{?City:{Profile.positions.detail.company.address.city}}

To see what properties you can use for a Profile query variable, view the output of https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/me/profile in e.g. Graph Explorer. For our test case the City location for a person is available via the query variable {Profile.positions.detail.company.address.city}.

What the above query template achieve is: If a query string parameter City is present, this will be used as part of the query. If not present, the City value of the logged in users profile will be used instead. The {?} notation means that if a query variable is missing, the part enclosed within the braces will be removed all together from the template on evaluation.

I’m using a trick with UNIQUESTRING (which could be any random unique string not present in the search index) to invalidate the last part of the query if we have a query string parameter in the URL. It adds invalid KQL sort of for a property which does not exist, and is thus ignored.

Let’s add some examples to illustrate the evaluation where the ignored part of the query is highlighted in yellow, and the inclusion part in green. The user’s profile value for city is Oslo.

Scenario 1 – Click on Oslo

• ?City=Oslo
• Users City=Oslo

Ending query: City:Oslo NOT UNIQUESTRINGCity:Oslo    

Scenario 2 – Click on Helsinki

• ?City=Helsinki
• Users City=Oslo

Ending query: City:Helsinki NOT UNIQUESTRINGCity:Oslo

Scenario 3 – Click on My City

• ?City=<missing>
• Users City=Oslo

Ending query: City:Oslo

Scenario 4 – Click on Helsinki (and missing a city in the profile)

• ?City=Helsinki
• Users City=<missing>

Ending query: City:Helsinki NOT UNIQUESTRING

Scenario 5 – Click on My City and missing a city in the profile

• ?City=<missing>
• Users City=<missing>

Ending query: <empty>

And that’s all there is to it. By matching values on a users profile with values on other data you can create quick navigation and filtering scenarios. By adding SPFx into the mix even more control and logic can be built around the search results pages and passing in values.

Surface Dynamics 365 Data in Microsoft Search

If you’re a user of Dynamics 365 did you know that it’s now possible to surface search results from Dynamics 365 in Microsoft Search?

Head over to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/manage-dynamics365, or direct your admin to follow the directions on how to enable the experience.

Quick steps:

• Navigate to https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?#/MicrosoftSearch/connectors
• Click “add a new app or service”
  
• Pick D365 and follow the setup wizard
  

Bookmarks to take over for promoted results in Microsoft Search

As announced in the M365 message center post MC293777 Microsoft Search will over the course of November to December of this year execute phase one to deprecate the support of classic query rule based promoted results / best bets, and replace it fully with Bookmarks and Q&A answers.

Message center announcement: In order to improve the Microsoft Search experience, promoted results will no longer be supported in Microsoft Search for Organization level scoped searches and will be replaced by the Bookmarks and Q&A features.

In 2019 Microsoft Search released Bookmarks and Q&A as the successor to promoted results for organization scoped queries. Since the launch Microsoft Search has seen a tremendous uptake in usage of Bookmarks and it currently outnumbers the classic feature by more than 3:1, and users have more success when using them.

Org scoped queries means queries performed from SharePoint Home office.com, the Work vertical in Bing, or if a user upscope on the search result page in SharePoint using the breadcrumb, and also sites in SharePoint configured to show org scoped results by default.

Up until now the search result page has returned both Bookmarks and promoted results, meaning admins has two ways to configure the same user experience. With this change promoted results will stop being shown in Microsoft Search, but will continue to work in classic search experiences (for those still clinging to it), or experiences built on SharePoint Search API’s.

Microsoft made the change internally over a year ago and the time has now come for the rest of the world!

Why bother?

I’ve worked with query rules ever since they were introduced in SharePoint 2013 and they are a pain to work with. Which is why I way back in 2014 came up with an easier approach, “Better best bets with lists”, and some premier field engineers in Microsoft iterated it to “Even better best bets with lists”.

Well, those times are over my friend, and here’s my list of benefits using Bookmarks/Q&A over promoted results:

• Management – if you ever tried to manage more than 10 query rules, you must like to be challenged for patience
• Targeting – you can times scope a bookmark (also possible with query rules), you can geo-target, you can AAD target and you can device target Bookmark answers. Something very hard to accomplish with query rules.
• Client support – Bookmark answers will show in SharePoint, Office.com and Microsoft Search in Bing, with more to come. As Microsoft Search is not only SharePoint you can expect Bookmark and other answers to show in the full M365 eco system of client applications when applicable! Currently rolling out to Teams.

What you need to do to prepare

Microsoft Search provides an alternative to promoted results using either Bookmark or Q&A answers.

If your organization set up Promoted Results in SharePoint, you can import the Promoted Results into Microsoft Search and make the imported content available to your users. This is an easy way to quickly populate search results as soon as you set up Microsoft Search and make it more effective for your users. We recommend using promoted results from SharePoint as a reference to understand how to name and create relevant search results.

Microsoft Search allows a search administrator to import promoted results as Bookmarks. To import promoted results, in the Microsoft 365 admin center, open the Search & intelligence admin center and then select Answers. In the Answers dialog, select Bookmarks and choose Import SharePoint results to import promoted results from SharePoint. Also see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftsearch/manage-bookmarks#import-sharepoint-results.

What is Microsoft 365?

I’ve read numerous posts after the release of Microsoft 365 at Inspire stating that Office 365 now has a new name. This is not the case.

Microsoft 365 is a combination of:

• Office 365
• Windows 10
• Enterprise Mobility + Security

aka, a bundled offering, and is primarily target for businesses up to 300 users. The idea is that you per user per month pay for subscribing to Windows 10 as an operating system, Office 365 products and device and security management.

If you scroll far enough down on https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business you see a comparison of Office 365 Business premium vs. Microsoft 365 Business.

And if you scroll down on https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise you see the Enterprise offerings in E3 and E5 SKU’s (but with no pricing).