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Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Post Author: Joe D365 |

Have you ever conducted a search (whether it be in a database, a document, a website, or the internet as a whole), only to find that the results are either mind-numbingly voluminous or annoyingly irrelevant to your needs? If you answered "no," congratulations: you're apparently the smartest, most efficient person on the planet! For the rest of you, keep reading…

In today's blog, we'll discuss "Relevance Search" – Dynamics 365's answer to the frustrating results of too many search attempts. It allows you to search data within CRM and drill into it, and we'll show you how to enable it, set it up, and use several of its features. Enjoy!

1. Navigate to Settings > Administration > System Settings > General tab, as shown below:

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

2. Under Set up Search, select the "Enable Relevance Search" checkbox. You will then need to accept the Terms.

3. *Note – Relevance Search uses Azure Search hosted in the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform. Relevance Search scoring is the same as the default Azure Search scoring.

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

4. Next you will need to select the entities that can be used in the Relevance Search. To do this, navigate to the Default SolutionSettings > Customizations > Customize the System, then select the Option to "Configure Relevance Search," as shown below:

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

5. Then, add or remove entities as needed:

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

6. The next thing to be done is to identify which fields can be searched. To do this, navigate to the "Customization" entity and make sure the fields you wish to be searched are included in the "Quick Find" View.

*Note – there is a maximum of 1,000 searchable fields for an organization. Additionally, Look Up fields utilize 3 fields and Option Sets utilize 2 fields.

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

7. Select the fields to be searched. In the example below, we've selected the Contact and Customer columns to be searchable. Then click OK.

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

8. Click Publish All to ensure that the changes made are saved.

Now, with the Relevance Search enabled, the additional features can be explored. Notice the left side of the search results page offers options to refine and narrow the search results without needing to change the searched term(s). This is called the "Facets and Filters."

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

The ability to toggle between Relevance Search and Categorized Search (shown below) is also an option on the left panel:

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

From the Relevance Search results, a filter can be selected, as shown:

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

In the example shown below, the Cases filter is on and the Related Notes & Activities checkbox is selected, so we are only seeing search results related to Cases, as well as any related notes and activities. Also shown is the Modified On filter, which further reduces our results to only those records modified in the past week.

Searching Relevantly in Microsoft Dynamics 365

Now that Relevance Search is enabled and you are familiar with how to utilize some of its features, you will be able to more efficiently and effectively drill into your CRM data to find what you need when you need it.

For information related to this blog, please see Relevance Search Preview and Top 10 New Features.

Happy CRM'ing!

Joe CRM
By Joe D365
Joe D365 is a Microsoft Dynamics 365 superhero who runs on pure Dynamics adrenaline. As the face of PowerObjects, Joe D365’s mission is to reveal innovative ways to use Dynamics 365 and bring the application to more businesses and organizations around the world.

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