If your business uses Microsoft 365, you know how difficult it can be to locate information amongst many different programs and applications on your computer network, your devices, and any other place you may be working from. But what if there was a way to access the information you need as quickly as you needed it? What if there was a way to search across all your different, integrated apps in Microsoft Office 365 and find everything relating to one employee or one project so you could comprehensively view the progress of a project or an employee?

Sounds fantastic, right? It is, it’s new — and it’s called Microsoft Personalized search. Let’s take a look at what Microsoft Personalize search is, how it works, and how it can help your Canadian business reach its goals with less time spent searching.

What is Microsoft Personalized Search?

Microsoft Personalized Search is a cohesive way of searching across different apps in Office 365. Microsoft Search can help you and your employees find, discover, command, and navigate all your business software and cloudware to make business easier and more simplified — saving you time and dollars. Personalized search allows you to search for any application or project in Office 365.

How Does Microsoft Search Work?

Microsoft Personalized Search uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology from Bing, a search engine whose name you may recognize. This IA and Microsoft Graph’s deep insights into personal search usage make searching more effective for organizations. The purpose of the new Personalized Search is to connect your projects and your employees across your business’ data network to make projects easier, more collaborative, and above all, help you find the information you need when you need it.

Hyperlinked pages of results from searches are not what Microsoft or your business is after with its new search algorithm. Here are the differences you may notice right away:

1. That oft-used “search” box will be visible and available across the apps your business and employees work with every day — it will stay in one place in Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Sway, OneNote, Microsoft Teams, and Sharepoint.
2. As soon as your employees click in the search box, personalized results will begin popping up (names of people you share with most or recent documents); no query is required for suggestions
3. The search box will command the application you’re working in. Want a quick example? If they begin typing “acc” in Word, employees will get a list of suggested actions they perform often — no more hunting through toolbars and wasting precious business time.
4. Search results will include results from across your business organization, including a Word document you’ve been working on, the PowerPoint that goes with it, and the Excel spreadsheet that demonstrates the budget for that project. The employees working on the project will also pop up in the search results.
5. Organizational search will work wherever your employees are working: Bing, Edge, or Windows, as long as employees are signed into Office 365 accounts.

How Can Microsoft Search Help My Business?

The main benefit for your business of Microsoft Personalized Search is saving time. No more precious minutes spent looking through toolbars or trying to hunt down the document or presentation employees were working on. Another intangible benefit that will definitely increase your business bottom line is your oversight ability. With a word and one click on the search icon, you can locate all the information about a particular project and who’s working on it in a millisecond. You can reach out immediately to start a conversation, get an update, or suggest changes. The time and convenience Personalized Search provides is priceless.