{"id":8846,"date":"2022-11-07T07:13:01","date_gmt":"2022-11-07T15:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=8846"},"modified":"2025-12-12T09:20:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T17:20:25","slug":"making-content-more-accessible-and-searches-more-efficient-at-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/making-content-more-accessible-and-searches-more-efficient-at-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"Making content more accessible and searches more efficient at Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"

We periodically update our stories, but we can\u2019t verify that they represent the full picture of our current situation at Microsoft. We leave them on the site so you can see what our thinking and experience was at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Microsoft<\/p>\n

Microsoft has more than 220,000 employees working around the globe. Collectively, they conduct 1 billion searches annually across many petabytes of content. Helping our employees find that information quickly and accurately can be a challenge, but our team is improving the employee knowledge-finding experience through Microsoft Search, Microsoft\u2019s modern enterprise search experience.<\/p>\n

\"Willingham
Dodd Willingham (left) and Anishkumar Ramakrishnan work on the Digitally Assisted Workday team in Microsoft Digital Employee Experience. Their job is to enhance the internal search experience for employees across Microsoft.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our employee base breaks out into countless personas that have vastly different search interests and need a wide range of content sources to power their work. Those content sources can be file shares, Microsoft SharePoint sites, documents or other files, and internal websites. Our employees also frequently access external sources like Human Resources partner sites.<\/p>\n

Seven years ago, Microsoft made it a priority to optimize the search experience, both to support employees in their work and reclaim time lost to inefficient searches. According to one study at the time<\/a>, employees spent an average of more than nine hours each week searching and gathering information. So we began a program to deliver a successful search experience to employees organization-wide using Microsoft Search<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enhancing search for a better employee experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Our ongoing work to achieve successful search relies on three interconnected pillars.<\/p>\n

\"An
Successful internal search relies on three interconnected pillars: Content quality, relevance, and completeness.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n