Essentials Search Results

Configuration Guide

To configure the Essentials Search Results webpart, edit your page, select the webpart, and open the properties pane on the right.

Connection & Query Source

Set up parameter listening and define where search queries are sourced:

• URL parameter name — Set the key used to capture queries from the URL (Default: q). Must match the parameter name used across all connected search webparts on the page.
• Listening indicator — Confirms the webpart is actively listening for queries passed via ?q=....
• Use advanced KQL template — Toggle On/Off to enable custom Keyword Query Language (KQL) templates for advanced query rules.
• Content type — Select the scope of indexed content to pull from (e.g., All content).
• Limit to site (URL) — Restrict results to a specific site collection by entering its URL (e.g., https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/hr). Leave blank to search across the entire tenant.

Verticals

Organize content into categorized tabs to help users refine searches by content type:

• Show vertical tabs — Toggle On/Off to display or hide top vertical category tabs.
• Configure verticals — Click Edit (e.g., 4 verticals — Edit) to manage active category tabs:
• Quick add — Click quick-toggle chips to quickly add or remove common categories (e.g., All, Pages, Documents, People, Images, Videos, PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, News, List Items).
• Vertical properties — For each vertical, customize its Label, Icon (Fluent UI name) (e.g., Globe), Content scope, and Additional KQL filter (e.g., FileType:pdf OR Department:"HR").
• Add custom vertical — Click "+ Add custom vertical" to create entirely new category tabs.

Layout Options

Choose how returned search items are displayed on the page:

• Layout — Select from five display formats:
• List — Standard linear list view with detail summaries.
• Cards — Grid tile cards highlighting visual previews.
• Compact — High-density, space-saving list layout.
• Table — Structured row-and-column data grid view.
• Custom — Tailored rendering layout.
• Results per page — Use the slider to set the maximum number of items returned per page (e.g., 10).
• Sort by — Select the default ordering criteria (e.g., Relevance).

Display Settings

Toggle individual card elements, metadata fields, and pagination controls:

• Show thumbnails — Toggle On/Off to display or hide visual document/page preview thumbnails.
• Show result summary — Toggle On/Off to show hit-highlighted summary text snippets.
• Show site name — Toggle On/Off to show the host site source name.
• Show author — Toggle On/Off to show document or page creators.
• Show date — Toggle On/Off to display last modified or publication dates.
• Show file type badge — Toggle On/Off to display file extension badges (e.g., PDF, DOCX).
• Show result count — Toggle On/Off to show total count of matching results returned.
• Show pagination — Toggle On/Off to display page navigation controls at the bottom.
• Open results in new tab — Toggle On/Off to launch clicked search result links in a new browser tab.
• Show promoted results — Toggle On/Off to highlight promoted or bookmarked administrative search results.

AI Assistant & Misc

Configure generative search features, section headings, and fallback messaging:

• Enable AI assistant — Toggle On/Off to enable integrated generative AI capabilities for search summaries.
• Web part title — Specify a header title for the search results section (e.g., Search Results).
• No results message — Customize the fallback text displayed when no items match the query (e.g., No results found for "{query}").
• Show in mobile and email view — Toggle On/Off under Visibility to control rendering on mobile devices and email views.

Key Features Configuration

Property Pane Options

Illustration