Hello, I'm Ashley Hall, Principal Program Manager,
working on Search at Microsoft.
On behalf of the outstanding group of people
who work on search-related experiences in O365,
Windows, and Bing,
I'm excited to share with you in this video,
some of what we are working on
in the area of people-related experiences
at Microsoft Search.
In this session, we're going to look at
what people search experiences help people do,
why this part of our Microsoft Search experience
is more important than ever,
the key themes that are currently driving our vision
for people in search,
and look at some new experiences, coming soon,
that embody the way we want to empower our users.
So, let's get started.
When we are searching for a specific person,
or group of people,
finding them is just the beginning of the task.
There are a wide range of needs and goals
that searching through people helps us accomplish,
such as finding someone's email address, phone numbers,
messages, files, meetings and locations,
contextualizing and learning more
about a coworker or contact,
through their organization, projects,
skills, education, achievements, and interests.
Finding a person with needed knowledge
on a topic or a project.
Finding the right person in the company
to make a decision or unblock something.
Finding people as a core part of one's role,
such as in recruiting and selling.
Connecting with people within the company
to build your internal network,
and finding people who can make introductions
to a person of interest.
Traditionally, much of the way we get our work done
is by interacting directly
with people in the workplace every day,
whether it's in meetings, hallway conversations,
walking over to ask a colleague a question,
or those chance encounters where something is learned,
or a valuable opportunity arises
that was unplanned or unexpected.
However, in recent events have dramatically changed
the way many of us are working,
Interacting in person to ask a question, find information,
and get our tasks done are no longer possible.
Some of these changes in how we work may be long lasting,
if not permanent.
Therefore, search tools that find people,
their content, and their knowledge
become more essential than ever
in helping us get our work done, and stay more connected.
Here at Microsoft, we're factoring this in
to the next generation search tools
we're creating for our users.
Two of the key themes
that are currently driving our thinking
are one, helping people search naturally,
by expressing their search intent more specifically,
and in their own words.
And two, people centric experiences
that work with the way users naturally contextualize
what they're looking for,
through the lens of people and their connections to things.
Let's look a bit closer at these two themes.
Search users formulate their queries
and interact with search results
based on their previous experience,
and what they think search can do.
Typically, this would be to distill their intent
down to one term, submit that term, and hope for the best,
often requiring scrolling through results,
filtering and reformulating their query
before they find what they're looking for.
These search behaviors are deeply set in user's minds,
and are largely habitual, and also a lot of work.
However, Microsoft Search has made great advances
in our ability to recognize workplace entities
and the relationships between them.
Our ability to understand more specific
and nuanced query intents
has exceeded our user's expectation
of what search can do for them,
such as, "Q2 planning docs from product managers in London,"
or, "meeting with Adele's manager about rewards."
This capability unlocks and makes available
the vast range of information and relationship contexts
within the enterprises they work in.
Helping users discover and use these capabilities
will allow them to get to the specific people,
knowledge, and information they need more quickly,
and with less effort.
People in the modern workplace naturally contextualize
and access needed information and knowledge
through their coworkers.
This is usually done by reaching out directly,
or through word-of-mouth.
At Microsoft Search, we see an opportunity
to harness and amplify this value
by creating a search experience that leads with people.
We call this people centric search.
Some of the core needs this solves would be,
how do I find documents that I associate with a person?
How is this person connected to other people in the company?
What projects do they work on? And who do they work with?
People centric search shows how coworkers, projects,
and organizations are connected.
This is a very powerful way
to bring forth the knowledge graph within the enterprise.
We'll look at this concept in action
later in this session.
Well, you've heard enough of me
talking in the abstract about these ideas.
Let's look at some experiences that embody these concepts.
First, we'll start with some capabilities
related to people searching,
which are available in Microsoft products
that our users live and work in every day.
Some that you may not be aware of yet.
Adele is taking some time
to explore some recommended files from coworkers
on her Office.com homepage.
She's reading a presentation from Alan DeYoung
that relates to some work she's doing.
She'd like to reach out to Alan
to discuss the subject and share insights.
They haven't met formally, and before reaching out,
she'd like to learn a bit more about him.
In the search box on Office.com, Adele enters Alan's name.
She sees him appear in the dropdown,
and clicks on his result.
His work profile appears conveniently
right over the Office.com homepage.
Here, she can see Alan's contact information,
learn about his organization,
view topics he has knowledge in,
explore more of his content,
and even see his career experience
from his LinkedIn profile.
Susan now feels informed and ready to reach out to Alan
and establish a new collaboration.
Accessing a coworker's profile information through a search
can be done from most applications in O365,
and using Microsoft Search in Bing as well.
In the coming year,
Microsoft Search will add even richer capabilities
for users to search naturally.
Our advances in language understanding technology
is making it possible for users
to tell us exactly what they're looking for
when they formulate their search.
This will dramatically decrease
the amount of time and effort they must spend
filtering, scrolling and reformulating queries
to find what they're looking for.
Let's look at some examples that demonstrate
our directional thinking.
In this scenario, Christie had been in a kickoff meeting
during the previous week with multiple product PMs.
One of her action items
is to work with their legal PM counterpart
on privacy requirements for the project.
She wants to start an email thread with her collaborator,
but doesn't remember their name.
Christy enters "PMs I met with recently"
into her Outlook search box.
Product managers that she met with recently
appear in her search dropdown.
She quickly recognizes Joanie's picture and clicks on her,
and can initiate the conversation in Outlook.
By combining a job title,
a meeting context, and a timeframe in her query,
Joanie expressed specifically what she was looking for,
and Microsoft Search was able to deliver the right result.
In another example, Bruno was working on Q2 planning
and wants to see how his pricing targets align
with those of another product manager in his group.
He goes to his SharePoint search box
and enters, "decks about pricing shared by Adele."
In the search dropdown, he's instantly presented
with PowerPoint files
scoped to his natural language search.
His ability to formulate a query involving a file type,
a topic, and a specific person it was shared by,
delivers precisely the results
he was looking for, instantly.
This allows him to spend more of his time and energy
on completing his task.
At Microsoft Search, we understand the importance
of helping our users find people and information
where they are working, and when they need it.
For that reason, Microsoft Search can be found
throughout our product experiences
to provide convenient access
from whatever application and workflow they may be in.
This means less context switching and more productivity.
Here are some examples of how Microsoft Search does this.
Adele has been doing some research on the web
prior to a security meeting she's having with Alan
in his office soon.
It's about time to head over, and she needs to find out
what Alan's location is.
She has the Edge browser open,
and types in Alan's name into the Edge one box.
She gets results from Bing with a work profile card,
where at a glance, she can see Alan's building
and office number.
The Edge browser one box, and Microsoft Search in Bing,
make it quick and convenient
to find coworker profiles and information.
In another example,
Megan is sitting down after lunch,
and has some focus time set aside
to work on a document that one of her teammates, Adele,
asked her to help with.
She doesn't have SharePoint open at the moment,
so she quickly types "Adele's files"
into the Windows Search box
in the lower left corner of her task bar.
A results panel instantly comes up
in which she can see Adele's files.
She spots the file she's looking for,
and clicks on it to begin working.
The ever present Windows search box
makes it easy to search for virtually anything
related to your colleagues
without having to navigate to a particular application.
One of the most asked for capabilities from our customers
is the ability to find people within their company
with needed knowledge and expertise,
to ask questions, solve a problem, or unblock something.
In the coming year,
Microsoft Search will leverage
our knowledge mining technology
to make their colleagues' expertise and related content
more easily available than ever before.
Let's see an example of what this could look like.
Adele is working on a project
related to next-gen marketing techniques,
and needs some help from an expert on sales cycle control.
She enters "who knows about sales cycle control"
into her Outlook search box.
A person that Adele is acquainted with,
but didn't know had this knowledge, Megan,
appears in the search dropdown.
She clicks on the action
to view Megan's profile on the card,
and can see sales cycle control in her skills information.
She can also see other topics
she can ask Megan about as well,
in her Ask Me About profile section.
Adele then returns to Megan's Outlook search result,
where she clicks to start an email thread.
With one easy query,
Adele is able to find a familiar contact in the company
who has firsthand knowledge about her topic of interest,
and reach out to them, all within one application.
In our next example,
Alex is going to be joining a new marketing team,
and needs to get up to speed
on what the group is working on.
He wants to read the various docs and presentations
authored by those who are the most knowledgeable.
He goes to the SharePoint search box,
and types in marketing, and submits a search.
In the main search results,
he sees marketing-related documents from across the company.
He also notices on the right,
a list of authors who have written
some of the most well-read of these documents.
One of the contributors is his new teammate, Emily.
Wanting to focus on what his team is working on,
he clicks on her result.
Alex is then presented with search results
centered around Emily,
containing marketing related files
she and the team are working on.
Exploring these will help him get up to speed
and be productive more quickly in his new role.
Next, we will look at a new model
for searching through people
that will allow a user to zoom in on a colleague
and explore their enterprise graph around them.
We call this people centric search.
This has the dual value of enabling you
to find content and communications through people,
and to understand people
through their content and communications.
The pattern can be applied to everything
related to a person through global search
and the people card,
or scope too a specific type of content
within a productivity application,
such as email in Outlook, or files in SharePoint.
Let's see an example of what this looks like.
Alex has an idea that he wants to pitch to a colleague
in the marketing department, Adele.
However, he doesn't want to contact her
without a warm introduction.
He's curious if there's anyone who works with Adele
that they might know in common,
who'd be willing to help with a reference.
He types Adele's name into the SharePoint search box,
and sees her in the dropdown.
After clicking on her, he lands on a search results page
dedicated to content and information centered around Adele.
He goes to her organization tab,
where he can see her managers, peers, and direct reports,
all in one view.
As he scans her org, he sees that Megan Bowen,
a former close colleague of his, works with Adele.
He's confident that he has the connection he needs
to set up the warm introduction he's looking for.
People centric search makes it possible
to see and a colleague's context within the company graph,
The content they produce, their org and internal network,
their projects, skills, and areas of expertise.
The way users search is driven by
the way users expect search to work
based on their previous experience.
Their search behavior is deeply rooted,
and in many cases, automatic and hard to change.
Since we are creating new ways for searching naturally
they are not yet aware of,
we must help them discover these capabilities
in order to benefit from them.
We will do this by harnessing their current search behavior
and guiding them toward more natural search over time.
Microsoft Search's deep understanding
of the enterprise graph,
and advanced application of personal relevance,
enables us to infer the user's intent
as they enter their query,
and present an alternative natural language way
of expressing it.
Let's look at an example.
Lynette is working on a new promotional campaign,
and needs someone who can help her
with the narrative she's working on,
but she isn't sure who to reach out to.
So she goes to her SharePoint search box
and types in the skill she needs help with,
creative writing.
She's presented with a natural language query suggestion,
"Who knows about creative writing?"
Delighted that Microsoft Search understood her intent,
she clicks on the suggestion,
and is taken directly to people search,
where her results are scoped to people at her company
who have expertise in creative writing.
Microsoft Search also uses
its unique enterprise graph relevance capabilities
to present her with the people closest to her
in her company with that skill.
With repeated natural language suggestions,
like these, when Lynette types in project names,
skills, topics, and other common terms,
she will begin to discover the powerful ways
she can search her company graph
for the information she needs, and use them proactively.
And this brings us to the end of our look
into what's coming in Microsoft people search,
and what we'll be bringing to our users
in the coming months.
Just to recap what we've looked at,
the key tasks that involve
searching through people in the workplace every day,
why people in search is more important than ever,
because how we work with each other is changing,
and how people centric searching
and natural query formulation
will shape enterprise searching
and how people get things done.
Feedback from our customers and users
is extremely important to us
in creating high-value experiences
that will help you be more productive and successful.
Please let us know what thoughts and questions you have.
Also here are some related presentations from our team
that you might find interesting to view.
On behalf of the entire Microsoft Search team,
wishing you the best and successful searching.