Microsoft Search Setup: Bookmarks, Acronyms, Connectors, Copilot

Microsoft Search is the permission-trimmed search layer over Microsoft Graph: files, sites, people, messages, meetings and whatever you connect to it. A user only sees results they already have access to. Since Microsoft Search in Bing was retired on 31 March 2025, the work entry points are the search box at M365.cloud.microsoft (the former Office.com and Microsoft365.com), SharePoint, the search boxes inside Teams and Outlook, the Edge for Business address bar and the Windows search box; the last two route work queries to Microsoft Search rather than Bing.

Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license get a second front door, Copilot Search inside the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, which runs the same index with an AI overview and a hand-off into chat. Copilot Search needs the license; it is not available through pay-as-you-go Copilot billing. Everything else in this article works with any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license.

The Bing retirement took some answer types with it. Before you follow an older guide, check this table.

Two Microsoft Entra roles cover the work. The Search administrator has full access to the Search & intelligence settings: answers, customizations, connectors and insights. The Search editor can create and manage editorial content, which is bookmarks and acronyms, and nothing else. Give the editor role to the communications or HR person who owns the intranet; they will maintain bookmarks far more reliably than IT will.

The settings live in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Settings > Search & intelligence. The same answers can be managed programmatically through the Microsoft Search API in Microsoft Graph, which is how you bulk-load them from a script.

A bookmark is a curated result shown first on the results page when the query matches one of its keywords. It is the fastest improvement you can make, and a 50-person company needs about 30 of them.

1. Go to Search & intelligence > Answers > Bookmarks > Add bookmark.
2. Enter a title, the URL, and keywords. Keywords are what trigger it, so write them the way people actually type: "expense report", "expenses", "reimbursement", not "T&E policy".
3. Mark one keyword as reserved when only this bookmark should ever fire for it (for example, "payroll").
4. Add a category and, if the audience is limited, a group restriction so a management-only page is not promoted to everyone.
5. Publish, or save to draft for review by the editor.

For bulk work, export the existing bookmarks to a .csv file, edit, and import. The Microsoft Search browser extension for Edge and Chrome lets an editor publish a bookmark from the page they are looking at, which is how most of ours get created. Start with the questions your help desk and HR inbox already answer by email: time off, expenses, IT support, the org chart, the holiday calendar, benefits, the brand kit, the price list.

An acronym answer maps "RAP" to "Relecloud Acceleration Program" and shows the expansion above the results. Add them under Answers > Acronyms, with the expansion, a description and a source URL. Microsoft also surfaces system-curated acronyms mined from your organization's content; the admin-curated ones take precedence, so fix the wrong guesses by publishing the right entry.

Acronyms matter more than they used to. Copilot Search uses them to interpret a query: without the entry, a search for the internal program code finds nothing, because the three letters mean nothing to the index.

Verticals are the tabs on the results page (All, Files, Sites, People, and any you add). Result types pair a content source and a set of rules with a layout, and a priority decides which one applies when several match. Both are managed at the organization level under Search & intelligence > Customizations, or at the level of one SharePoint site. Filters can be added to default and custom verticals.

Decision rule: add a vertical only for a content set users search for by name, such as "Contracts" or "Policies", and only after the content is tagged well enough for a filter to mean something. A vertical that shows a Graph connector's content needs a result type with property mappings, or the tab renders empty.

Microsoft Graph connectors index content from other systems so it appears in Microsoft Search and, for licensed users, in Microsoft 365 Copilot. The gallery lists more than 100 connectors built by Microsoft and partners, grouped into categories such as collaboration tools, content management, databases, file systems and IT service management: Jira, Confluence, ServiceNow, Salesforce, file shares and SQL databases among them.

The licensing is simpler than it was. Microsoft provides an index quota of 50 million items per tenant at no extra cost, and any valid Microsoft 365, Office 365 or Microsoft 365 Copilot license lets a user see connector results. By default a single connection holds up to 5 million items. An item is one record from the source: one ticket, one wiki page, one row.

Order of work for a connector:

1. Pick the one system people ask IT to search on their behalf (usually the ticketing tool or the document management system).
2. Confirm the source system's permission model maps to Microsoft Entra users or groups; if it cannot, the connector will either show results to everyone or to nobody.
3. Create the connection under the Connectors area of the Microsoft 365 admin center (Microsoft has been moving it under the Copilot section), map the properties, and set the crawl schedule.
4. Build the result type and, if wanted, a vertical.
5. Run it for two weeks with a pilot group before telling everyone.

Where no gallery connector exists, a custom connector is built against the Microsoft Graph connectors API; that is development work, and our Microsoft Graph API integration service is billed by the hour.

Prices are per user per month and billed to you at Microsoft's list price. The point for planning: the Search & intelligence work above improves results for every user today, and it is also the content layer that Copilot answers from once the licenses arrive.

Search shows what permissions allow, and so does Copilot. If "salary" returns a spreadsheet from a site that was shared with Everyone except external users, the search is working and the permissions are wrong. Before you promote search or buy Copilot, run the SharePoint sharing and permissions review described in our Copilot oversharing guide: the Everyone-except-external-users links, anonymous sharing links, ownerless sites, and sites with broken inheritance on sensitive libraries. A read-only SharePoint Governance and Information Architecture Review produces that list with evidence.

1. Assign the Search editor role to the intranet owner (10 minutes).
2. Review what survived the 2025 retirements under Answers (30 minutes).
3. Publish the first 30 bookmarks from the help-desk and HR question list (half a day).
4. Add the internal acronyms and correct the system-curated ones (one hour).
5. Fix oversharing found in the permissions review before promoting search (one to two weeks, depending on findings).
6. Connect one external system through a Graph connector and pilot it (one to two weeks).
7. Add verticals and result types only where a filter earns its tab (half a day).
8. Decide on Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for the people who will use Copilot Search and chat over work data.

Is Microsoft Search in Bing still available?

No. Microsoft retired it in all regions on 31 March 2025. Work results are at M365.cloud.microsoft, in SharePoint, and through the Edge for Business address bar and the Windows search box, which route work queries to Microsoft Search.

Do Graph connectors cost extra?

Not for the index quota: Microsoft provides 50 million items per tenant at no extra cost, and any Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license can see the results. The costs are the time to configure the connector and any development for a custom one.

Do I need Microsoft 365 Copilot to use Microsoft Search?

No. Bookmarks, acronyms, verticals, result types and Graph connectors work with any Microsoft 365 license. The Copilot license at $30.00 per user per month (Microsoft list price, October 2026 price list) adds Copilot Search and chat grounded in your work data.

Can Copilot Chat search my company files without a license?

Only in a limited way. Without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Copilot Chat is web-grounded and cannot reach the user's enterprise data or connector content; the exception is a reduced set of organizational grounding in Outlook. Users can still paste text or upload a file into a prompt.

Who should own bookmarks and acronyms?

The person who owns the intranet content, holding the Search editor role. That role can manage bookmarks and acronyms and nothing else, so it is safe to give to a non-IT owner.

Why does a search return documents nobody should see?

Because the permissions allow it. Search is trimmed to what each user can open; a surprising result means a site or file is overshared. Fix the sharing, not the search.

• Guidance for retiring Microsoft Search in Bing for your organization — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• MC961557 Microsoft Search in Bing deprecation (Message Center mirror) — Microsoft 365 Message Center via mc.merill.net, checked 2026-10-11
• Manage floor plans — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Manage bookmarks — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Set up administrative search answers for users in an organization — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Create bookmark and Q&A answers (training) — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Manage search verticals — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Manage result types — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Microsoft Graph connectors gallery — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• License requirements and pricing for Microsoft Graph connectors — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Search overview — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Configure Copilot Search (training) — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11
• Microsoft 365 Copilot overview — Microsoft Learn, checked 2026-10-11