Interesting news from Microsoft… they’ve just announced the launch of Copilot Search in Microsoft 365. This new feature is changing how we search. Well, not really, if you’ve been paying attention to your web analytics. It is definitely making finding content easier and more intuitive than ever before. But what it could mean for the M365 world could be VERY BIG.
What is M365 Copilot Search?
So… what exactly is Copilot Search? Well, it’s a Copilot-integrated feature in M365 that helps you find information more efficiently. Think of it as AI-powered search that understands your queries (not just keywords) and provides relevant results quickly. Copilot Search leverages the AI technology you’re familiar with to enhance your search experience, giving you higher-quality and user-friendly results.
How Copilot Search Improves Your User Experience
When we look for content, we want an answer. Sometimes that answer is a website, or a document, but often times it’s just a word, phrase, or sentence. We want an answer to a question, in other words. Traditional search engines were designed to return websites as results. Newer advancements in technology resulted in short answers (a la Google). It was more intelligent. It understood our intent behind our keywords. AI is taking this to a whole new level.
Copilot Search is designed to improve your results and user experience in general. Imagine asking Bing a complex question and getting a detailed, accurate answer in seconds. Whether you’re looking for the latest news, researching a topic or planning a trip, Copilot Search has you covered.
Integration with Microsoft 365
One of the neatest features of Copilot Search is the integration with Microsoft 365. You’re probably already an M365 user, so you’ll find that Copilot Search improves things by providing quick access to relevant documents, emails, and calendar events. It even has the “memory” like normal Copilot, letting you go back to previous searches. That familiar AI experience is starting to show up in many other places than just the “normal” AI experience. It really sounds like a big win for those of us getting used to “prompting” with AI.
What does this mean for Microsoft Search?
That’s the big question. Is Microsoft Search dying? I’ve been thinking about this over the last few weeks. We’ve been seeing Microsoft retire many features of Microsoft Search over the last year. Most of them were done quietly, like Locations and Q&A in the Search and Intelligence Center. They’re quietly ramping down the product, it seems. Is Copilot Search the replacement?
It sure looks like it. Copilot Search launched with a lot of impressive features, and as long as the momentum keeps up, it’s positioned to take over in place of the Microsoft Search bar.
What About Licensing?
Licensing is the next big question I think about. AI is expensive. That’s why we pay so much per user for M365 Copilot. How will users find content in SharePoint if they don’t have M365 Copilot licenses? It’s possible that Microsoft Search will continue for those users, with less and less features.
We still have PnP Modern Search, though, and there’s no sign yet that SharePoint Search is going away. PnP Modern Search has traditionally performed MUCH better at finding SharePoint content. Maybe that’s the way forward for organizations that wouldn’t be rolling out Copilot? It’s definitely something most organizations use to give their users a better search experience compared to Microsoft Search.
The next year will answer all of these questions, I think. M365 Community Conference and Microsoft Ignite may make everything clear for what Microsoft has in store for Microsoft Search, but only if you read between the lines. I’ll be doing that, so stay tuned on my blog for more information!
