Microsoft 365 Community Adaptive Cards, 9 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: Microsoft Search and Adaptive Cards

Description

During this 25-minute Search Admin and developer focused demo, Jyoti Pal shows viewers that Microsoft search delivers a consistent experience across products and content types – internal and external data using Microsoft Graph connectors (to bring in external data) and Adaptive Cards (present data). Search Admins define presentation of external data in Search Layout Designer tool templates - (map data to properties of the search result). Search schema properties (injected data) are tied to Adaptive Card json. Informative Q&A to wrap up this presentation. This demo is taken from the Adaptive Cards community call – September 2021, recorded on September 9, 2021.

Demo Presenter: Jyoti Pal (Microsoft)

Supporting materials:
• Website - Microsoft 365 roadmap (Microsoft Search)| https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/roadmap?filters=&searchterms=81952
• Documentation - Dynamics 365 federation search (preview) | https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoftsearch/manage-dynamics365
• Documentation - Adaptive Cards Templating | https://docs.microsoft.com/adaptive-cards/templating/

Learn more:
• Learn more about the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community at: http://aka.ms/m365pnp
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community YouTube channel: https://aka.ms/m365pnp/videos

A

Hi everyone, my name, is jyoti, I'm with the microsoft search team, I'm a pm uh in the microsoft search team and today I'll be talking to you about how we uh in the search product are using adaptive cards. So to begin with, uh you know, before we get started into how exactly adaptive cards are used.

A

I wanted to talk to all of you about uh microsoft, search set up a little bit of context over here in case you know some folks are not aware of it and that will essentially help you understand um more about how adaptive cards are really being helpful. So to start with, uh microsoft search is an intelligent search for modern workplace.

A

The idea over here is that, for our microsoft users and by microsoft users, I mean our microsoft 365 users, which encompasses a variety of products.

A

On your left hand, side you can see, there's a gamut of products like bing, office.com, sharepoint, outlook themes, and so many more and the idea over here is um how do we have one simple search across all of these microsoft, 365 products and for the enterprise? Also, what microsoft search does is uh it gives you search? That's consistent and familiar from within any app that you're using it also is intelligent search that personalizes results to you and your work and also gives the ability to search from any device anywhere.

A

So in terms of experiences, um you know we have microsoft, search powering the experience for um all.

B

Of these different.

A

Microsoft, 365 products, um one of the ideas over here being the uh the essential idea over here, like I called out being that we have a consistent and coherent search experience with all the goodness of search across all of these different products.

A

Now, with this particular context, another important thing to focus on is um you know your search. The users are searching from all of these different places, but the type of content that they are able to search is also of key importance.

A

So traditionally any of the customers or any of our users will be able to um search over typical microsoft content. So I'll, not uh I'll urge you not to get lost in the diagram ignore the top uh first half of it, because that's what we I spoke about earlier and focus on the second half of the uh slide, which essentially talks about all the different type of content that a user is able to search for now.

A

Typically, uh uh what microsoft search used to um support was the fact that, because you know, sharepoint teams chat outlook is something which is native to microsoft. All of this content was easily searchable, but we know that users are not just using microsoft products and it's an entire ecosystem of products which are being used by users, and we want microsoft search to be that one single place.

A

We are able to search not just microsoft content, but also external content, with applications and other type of organization data that users are actually using, and that is where this concept of external data sources comes into picture and external data sources are essentially, you know, other products that you're using- and this is where the concept of microsoft graph connectors comes in, and the reason that this is important is that microsoft, graph connectors, is essentially the product which is helping bring organizations bring in your external content into microsoft, uh so that that can also now be searched by um our user by the organization's users, so that microsoft search becomes that one single place where the users can go and look for um everything that they require instead of having a fragmented search experience.

A

So this is the mechanism of bringing in external sort of content inside of microsoft, search and making it searchable, and this is essentially more of the part of bringing in the content and the place where adaptive card comes in is on powering the user experience, and that is where we today are using adaptive cards. So when the content is external content in a way is brought inside of microsoft.

A

The question of how this particular content starts, showing up on um the various search endpoints, is answered by adaptive cards, so we are using uh adaptive cards to show our search results on all of these different kind of experiences.

A

Now now this provides us the capability um to essentially allow customers to customize information and layout as per their content, and it lets us essentially allow organizations to tailor the search results as per their needs. So this is where we are essentially are using adaptive cards now. Looking at this particular um image, one may wonder why um adaptive cards is even necessary, because this looks like a very typical search result.

A

Experience where uh which consists of primarily you know, just key um some important information like a title, a link and some kind of a description which is associated with it, and that's where I think that's where it's important to sort of keep in mind and understand all the gamut of different types of um you know, content sources that we were looking at in the previous slide.

A

Where, in that you know we, depending on the nature of the content that is being brought in the way the data is presented and the way the uh and the type of information that is presented becomes, starts becoming key to each and every content that is being brought in, and this in itself also varies sometimes from organization to organization, and essentially that is where adaptive card sort of shines for us, because it allows us to provide an easy mechanism that is used by our customers to customize.

A

You know the information that is shown and the layouts that are shown as per their needs.

A

So uh this is essentially how in search we are today using adaptive cards in terms of the tools and capabilities.

A

This is something which is used by, in our case, the search administrators, primarily wherein once they set up a graph connector and they start bringing in data inside of their organization. They have this ability to go ahead and design their search results as per their needs.

A

This is an optional step, wherein some kind of a basic layout which was shown to you earlier is provided to them out of box, but as per their needs, the search administrators can go ahead and start. um You know changing the result layout and the information shown um according to so that it suits the customer's need the best any questions so far.

C

It looks like we have some questions here in the chat, I'll just go ahead and read them off and jody that's okay. um One of the questions was, is the whole search out of the box, or is this dependent on an organization bracing search and knowledge management.

A

A search is out of box with a set of you know: microsoft, 365 products, so, for example, if you have your m365 license, the search automatically is available on endpoints like sharepoint, office.com, microsoft, search and bing outlook, themes, etc. So this is the out of box search that we're talking about now the capability of adding connectors and um you know bringing in external content that is more something which is which starts depending on the type of licenses that you have. I hope that answers the question.

C

Thanks jodi, and it looks like mike- has his hands up.

B

Yeah, thank you um I was curious is, is the use of adaptive cards for search results? Is that restricted just to external data, or can this be used to customize certain data types that live native to sharepoint online as well.

A

Okay, that's that's a great question so, to start with um today, I'm focusing more on what is available um too broadly to all the customers, and this is more a starting point of uh you know allowing search customization for external content. However, we are working on uh making the existing search results, also customizable, if needed.

A

I can share more details on in the chat as well about the microsoft search roadmap item that we have, but to start with, we are looking at certain type of content like sharepoint list items, sharepoint pages in some cases where we have seen the need where additional information actually needs to be shown on the search result which is currently not present with the default or out of box search results which are shown and the same adaptive cards in the same configuration setup that we are exposing for external content can be leveraged for designing the sharepoint native uh this specific type of sharepoint native content as well.

C

All right, I think we can go ahead and move on and save some questions for the end of the presentation. Sure.

A

So I think, okay, so uh post this, I, what I wanted to do was actually do a short demo which can help you understand how exactly we are using this and also walk you through the designer tool that we have at present.

A

So let me switch over so in this case uh I am showing you the microsoft 365 administration center. Now this is just to help. You understand, I will not be going over it in full detail, but then the um you know, the concept of how we are bringing in external sources is sort of something which can be explained over here. So within uh microsoft, 365 admin center we have settings and under that we have the search and intelligence tab and within the search and intelligence tab.

A

We have data sources, and this is essentially the mechanism through which today, if you want to configure um your microsoft provided connectors, the add button is helpful for that as well as any um you know, partner, created connections, etc. All of it will show up over here, so this um space is mainly for management. So over here, what I have already done is created two connections. One is for media wiki, which is contoso wiki, and the second one is for azure devops, which is uh essentially indexing.

A

Some azure devops project test project that I had created if we go under the customization tab over here, we have this concept of result types. So essentially this is the configuration or the search configuration which is uh which needs to be created by the search administrator to define the type of layout that they want to use. So in this case, I have already created um one for the azure devops connection, so this is a default one that I have created over here.

A

um So some of the basic and it's it's a simple, straightforward type of a setup. The basic information which is essentially required over here is tying the content source or the data source in this case, which is the azure devop connection of the connection id along with the result layout. So, if you see over here, this is where the search administration search administrator is providing the search layout, which is essentially the adaptive card json.

A

Now, uh in this particular case, what we have done is that whenever the search administrator is um trying to define a search layout, we have provided a layout designer, which is essentially built on top of the typical, the usual adaptive card designer, which is already available. But in this case, because we are tailoring this experience for such administrators and for search, there are some additional things that we have done so to start off with.

A

What we do is provide the search admins with a list of templates so that uh they can actually go ahead and pick one which suits their needs and, as you can see over here, um you know the, depending on the type of content that you have. The search layouts can vary.

A

So in some cases we see that um information that needs to be shown is more metadata, driven where it's more of fact, value pairs that need to be actually shown over here, but as in some cases, the results could be pretty simple, with just a title: some additional information and description.

A

So these are the different types of templates which are offered out of box to search admins, and apart from this, once they select a search template. All they need to do is get started, and this is a layout which essentially needs to then be mapped to the you know the properties of the search result.

A

So this type of a mapping is something that the search administrators need to do and once all of the mapping is done, the uh you know, let me just do uh just uh which generic one so once all of the mapping is done, the submit button gets enabled and I think I've yeah I've missed out something. So this submit button gets enabled, and this the the json of the layout, is essentially generated.

A

So it's a pretty straightforward um and simple setup for search admins who are looking to use uh the provided templates, as is in some cases. If the search admins actually want to go ahead and make some modifications, then we provide them the option of editing the layout and in which case we actually sort of um we have done some kind of uh uh we take the adaptive card uh designer which is present and uh we are showing it so.

A

It's the same adaptive card designer with slight design changes which can be used by the search administrator to go ahead and make changes as they require and complete the creation of layout json.

A

So once this is done, this entire step is done, and this search result layout is created. The end users will see the exp can see the experience today on um sharepoint. So what happens is in this case? I have already done a query for uh like in this case mark, and what we start seeing over here is. This, is these are the results that are coming from sharepoint?

A

Apart from that, uh you start seeing results which are coming from the media, wiki media wiki content source, so a media wiki vertical has been created over here, which is this one. On top and the search results from there starts showing up and users can just go ahead and click on this, and it will take them to the corresponding wiki page.

A

Now the same experience automatically gets enabled for office.com as well, so you can see over here it's the same set of experience which comes in as well as for microsoft, search in bing. So, essentially, um you know, with one single sort of you know simple configuration. The search admin is able to enable these experiences in different types of places, and another important uh you know point that I wanted to bring out was the one which, where I was talking about, why adaptive card essentially is needed.

A

So in this case this is a wiki result where it's pretty straightforward, the type of information that is being shown. Let me switch to the work items tab over here, which is showing results from um just showing uh results from uh azure devops now over here we see that the type of information that is being shown is slightly different, so we want to show much more information to the search. Users, in this case show things important metadata related to each and every work item, so that helps the um you know.

A

The users gather more information about what they're searching for- and this essentially is, you know possible through the use of the you know, different types of features which are available in adaptive cards, I'll stop here and see if there are any further questions.

C

Thanks a lot jody and I encourage anyone if anyone has any questions here for jody regarding microsoft, search or the demo that was presented, please go ahead and ask them now, instead of at the end of the call jody's actually in ist time, so it's very late for her. So we want to be respectful of time and ask any questions. If we have them now looks like we have one here in the chat from gao, it says: can we design the results of 365 search with adaptive cards.

A

I don't fully understand what 365 search refers to today, essentially, like I showed over here. There are, um you know, different types of I would say, search endpoints, which are powered as a part of microsoft, 365 products, so in a way yes, search results which are being shown on these different search. Endpoints can be designed using adaptive cards. So maybe, if you can elaborate more on what 365 search exactly means, I can help with that and is dynamics 365 crm, considered external so similar to, I would say the way I'm showing azure devops over here.

A

It's not truly external from a microsoft perspective, but from the perspective of microsoft, 365 products, it is in a way considered external, and that is why, today, um by default, you do not see the search results showing up automatically. There are some plans underway for showing dynamics. 365 results as well I'll have to look at the roadmap, and I can share the roadmap details with you on chat, and I see another question from mike. Is there a way to have people show up in default?

A

All section people who have keywords listed in the ask me about section of their profile are not displayed in the oil section and only visible in the people section. Let me try to see this is a test one. So I'm look at me so generally, okay, I think I think I get what you're talking about. Perhaps this okay, so today people do show up in the all section.

A

uh It's just, I would say the information which is shown on the all section is not what um you show completely on the people, but that's a great feedback mike I'll. Take that back to the respective team to let them know that um the other information which is generally provided and ask me about also should surface on the oil vertical, because that's what users are looking for. Thanks for the feedback.

A

Okay, I think if there are no other questions, then I'll hand it back to you jp. That's all from my side.

C

I think we had one more, um it was next, can a power user set this up or is it mainly I.t driven? I think that was in regards to the search provider out out-of-the-box question.

A

So this sort of depends on the context that you're looking at. If we are talking about this context, for example, sharepoint, office.com or microsoft, search and bing there, it is primarily the search administrators who can design the search result experience because it is something which is managed at an organization level. However, if you are on a given site and if users essentially are the owners of those sites, then they also get the site administrator role, and in that case they can actually go ahead and design the search results.

A

I think that brings up another important point over here that this is not just limited to search admins. This is search admin first, but from a developer perspective, anybody who is developing or building a graph connector is also someone who will be able to define the search result. Experience for the associated graph connector. So there are apis and works which will expose the capability for a developer to be able to build a graph connector to index the content, as well as define the corresponding search result layout for that as well.

A

So that's also an area where we are expanding into.

C

Perfect, it looks like we have one last question here jody. Thank you. So much for your time. Kyle wants to know. Does an external data source need to provide data formatted in adaptive card format to plug into the search service, or does the graph connector ingestion service, slash microsoft, search accept any data format that is then manipulated into an adaptive card format.

A

So, okay, so there are two pieces to this. I think, if I understand the question correctly right, which are two separate pieces, so the data ingestion happens uh with the help of graph connectors and there there is a certain schema or a format that is actually defined by the developer, so that the data when it is being indexed is not actually coming in using the adaptive cards once the data has been indexed, which is pretty much like a flat schema in case of contoso wiki.

A

You can imagine, let me actually sorry um try to just quickly pull the schema up, because I think this will really make it much more easier to understand. So here you go, so this is the schema which has been defined so the media wiki content, which is being indexed by the media, wiki connector, contains the flat schema of title url tag, state, priority, etc, and that is how the data is actually being ingested into microsoft.

A

Once the data is ingested, this result type search configuration is what ties the data with the adaptive card json and in the adaptive card json. Essentially, the tying of uh you know the layout is happening with the properties or the schema that has been defined. So, if you see over here, I'm sure, um let me just scroll down so yeah over here. You see things like assigned to area path.

A

All of these are actually schema properties that are being tied with the adaptive card json and that's how the time of the adaptive card with the the data which is being ingested, is happening.

C

Perfect, thank you so much jody for any other questions we can follow up offline. This demo is great. We really appreciate your time and thank you for joining us in this community call.

A

Thanks everyone.