M365 Search (Preview)

M365 Search provides intelligent and advanced enterprise search capabilities across multiple entities in M365. Search through Files by SharePoint and OneDrive Business, People by Exchange, Messages by Teams and Exchange and External Graph content. Seamlessly search through all M365 entities through one connector.

This connector is available in the following products and regions:

M365 Search Connector (Preview)

M365 Search connector (currently in Preview) provides intelligent and advanced enterprise search capabilities across nearly all entities in M365 including People, Files, and Messages. This connector brings the power of Microsoft Search to Power Automate and Apps, making it seamless to create search-driven experiences that meet the needs of your organization. Now, you can build enterprise-ready custom applications and workflows in just a few minutes.

Prerequisites

The tenant requires an M365 license to be able to access workloads such as Exchange, SharePoint, Teams.

How to Get Credentials

Authentication and authorization have been built-in, so any user already logged-in to M365 will be able to use this without additional Auth related steps.

Get Started in Power Automate

The action in a flow allows picking the entity type and content sources, what fields to retrieve, filtering options for fields, and number of results.

Actions

There are 4 entities to search by and each is in an Action. Each action is served by different content sources:

• Search Files: Search through SharePoint and OneDrive Business Files in M365.
• Search Messages: Search through Messages from Teams and Exchange in M365.
• Search People: Search through People from Exchange in M365.
• Search External: Search through External Graph Connector content.

Inputs

• Search Input: Search phrase or query text
• Number of Results: How many results show up at once. This can be useful for pagination. Result defaults to 10 but can be edited.
• Start From Result #: The number the entity will start search from. E.g From Result # 5 will skip the first 4 results.

Output Fields and Details

Each Action (or Entity Type) has 5 default fields that are displayed. These default fields can be edited and new fields can be added.

• Files: Description, DocId, Filename, Path, Title. Additional fields include Rank, SiteId, Author, etc.
• Messages: ConversationTopic, Preview, DateTimeLastModified, DisplayTo, Subject. Additional fields include HasAttachments, Importance, etc.
• People: Id, DisplayName, EmailAddresses, Department, CompanyName. Additional Fields include OfficeLocation, JobTitle, etc.
• External: URL, Description, DocumentId, Id, Title. Additional fields include HitHighlightedProperties.

Filter Fields, Operators and Values

Each Action (or Entity Type) has a filtering option. Each entity type can be filtered down by specific Output Fields. There are three parts of a Filter: Field, Operator and Value. Fields are output fields for each entity type e.g. Filename. Operators are ways to filter by e.g. = equals. Values are what the results should be scoped down to e.g. Planning Document

For example, to scope Files down to a SharePoint site, in the Search Files action, select Filters Field = Path, Filters Operator = contains, Filters Value = https://microsoft.sharepoint.com/sites/FabCon.

Use Cases

Use Case 1 (In Power Automate and App):

A company has a finance compliance Power App, and they have compliance documents spread across 5 libraries. They only want to have their end users search through those 5 libraries. With the Search connector, they are able to filter and specify a single or multiple SharePoint sites that an end user can search through.

How to Get Started: Open the M365 Connector, and search for Files Entity Type then specify one or multiple SharePoint URLs to ground the search in (Filtering).

Use Case 2 (In Power Automate and App):

A car company has product data including product images and reviews that are stored in ABC, an external product. They don't store it in-house but have an API and a Graph Connector to ABC. The External data can be used in a Power App for an end user to search for a product and have the images and reviews show up.

How to Get Started: Open the Microsoft Search Connector, and search for External Entity Type then specify the External connector to ground the search in.

Common FAQ

Is search tenant wide?

Yes

What does Relevance mean in search?

Relevance refers to the process of ranking and sorting search results based on importance and usefulness to user’s query. It is determined by a combination of factors such as the content of the results and the search.

How does security and privacy work?

Security is dependent on the end-user who is running the flow or app, not the user who creates the flow or app. The results that are retrieved from content sources such as SharePoint and OneDrive for Business are security trimmed at the source. End users can’t see resources such as Word documents they can’t see and access through Office 365. They can only see their own files that have been shared with them in SharePoint. It follows the same security and privacy principles as in Microsoft Search. Read more here: Microsoft Search Overview | Microsoft Learn

What are examples of connectors for External data?

View Graph connectors here: Graph Connectors

How do you search for a specific phrase? / Can you use exclude functions?

Use KQL functions in the Search Input box. Learn more here: Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax reference | Microsoft Learn

Throttling Limits

Actions

Search External

Search Files

Search Messages

Search People