The search feature in SharePoint has not been one of its most lauded—that is until the 2016 on-prem and SharePoint Online releases. With the back-end enhancements, SharePoint search works more like the goo-mumble search engine we all know and love and have sold our souls to.

Cool, cool, but how can you harness all that search power for good? Here are some ideas.

1. Manage document titles. This seems like such a small thing, but ensuring that your document title corresponds to your document content can make search better. Your users will not be pulling up documents that look like bad search hits but are actually bad title matches.

2. Use metadata, and well. We talked about metadata here. Amazon uses metadata artfully; it’s how you can always find what you want via keywords and filters. You can also use metadata navigation for lists and/or libraries.

3. Make document IDs your friends. Document IDs are unique properties that are given to files when they are created within a site collection. Click here to learn more about how to use them to your advantage.

4. Know your vulnerabilities. Be aware that the awesomeness of search in the cloud can expose folders previously relegated to the dark lairs of upper management. Delve enjoys surfacing anything relevant. Lock that stuff down with permissions at the folder or library level via advanced settings. Because SharePoint is security-trimmed, if you can’t touch it, you can’t see it… even in search results. Test your security before unleashing to the enterprise.

5. This is outside the idea of searching within “the search box,” but it’s a good tip nonetheless: Make navigation more intuitive. This is one of the reasons we dig our configurable mega-menu so much. We created it so that users can find what they are looking for without clicking through multiples sites and pages.

How many of these search-enabling tips are you using in your SharePoint experience? Need more help with search or other-things SharePoint? I know a guy.

Thanks for reading!
M

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