--- title: "Smart Search. Solution Overview" description: "Vitextra Smart Search is a configurable search web part for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Learn how it works: search source tabs, a refinement panel with date filters, a customizable result layout with view analytics, document preview and video playback, and shareable search links." url: https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10222 language: en published: 2026-10-09 modified: 2026-10-13 products: - "Smart Search" author: "Roger Gagne" tags: ["Smart Search", "SharePoint Online search web part", "SharePoint search page", "custom search results", "search refiners", "search tabs", "Microsoft Teams search", "Vitextra Smart Search", "document preview", "SPFx search"] --- # Smart Search. Solution Overview Vitextra Smart Search is a configurable search web part for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Learn how it works: search source tabs, a refinement panel with date filters, a customizable result layout with view analytics, document preview and video playback, and shareable search links. ## What is Smart Search **Vitextra Smart Search** is a configurable search web part for SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. It puts a complete search experience on any page: a search box, tabs to switch between kinds of content, a refinement panel to narrow the results, and rich result cards that let people preview a document or play a video without leaving the page. The web part is built on the SharePoint Framework (SPFx) and works on top of the standard SharePoint search index. It sends queries on behalf of the current user, so every person sees only the content they already have access to — Smart Search doesn't copy, index or store your data anywhere else. ![Smart Search web part on a SharePoint page](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10222/overview-on-page-en.png) *Smart Search web part on a SharePoint page* Smart Search is built around three ideas: - **The right content in one place** — documents, pages, news, people and meeting recordings are available from a single search box, split into clear tabs. - **Flexible without code** — more than 30 settings in the web part property pane control where to search, what to show and how results look. - **Act without losing context** — preview, play or download a result right on the search page, then go back to the same result list. --- ## Search sources and tabs Smart Search supports two modes: - **Single Source** — the web part searches one kind of content only. It's handy for a focused block, such as *Latest documents* on a department site or *Meeting recordings* on a project page. - **Multiple Sources (Tabs)** — users switch between sources with tabs above the results. It's the natural choice for an intranet search center. Ten built-in sources are available: **Everything**, **Documents**, **Popular**, **News**, **People**, **Video**, **Meeting Recording**, **Pages**, **Recently Changed Items** and **Pictures**. In Tabs mode, the administrator decides which tabs are shown, how they are named and in which order they appear. ![Configuring search source tabs](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10222/sources-config-en.png) *Configuring search source tabs* The **News** tab shows news posts in the user's language when multilingual pages are used, and the **Meeting Recording** tab finds Teams meeting recordings stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. You also choose the **search scope**: the whole **tenant**, the **current site collection** or the **current site** only. A scope limited to one site turns Smart Search into a site search that never mixes in content from elsewhere. --- ## Refinement panel Long result lists are narrowed with the refinement panel above the results. Each refiner is a drop-down list of values found in the current results, with the number of matching items next to each value, so users see at once how many results a filter will leave. Out of the box, the panel offers **File type**, **Author**, **Modified** and **Tags**. **Created**, **Content Type**, **Department** and **Office Location** are ready to switch on. You can also add any other refinable managed property from your search schema. For each refiner, the administrator sets the display name, sorting of values (by name or by count), the maximum number of values, whether counts are shown, and the position in the panel. ![The Modified date refiner with quick periods and a custom range](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10222/refiner-date-en.png) *The Modified date refiner with quick periods and a custom range* Date refiners offer quick periods — **Last day**, **Last week**, **Last month**, **Last 3 Months**, **Last year** and **Older Than a Year** — as well as a custom range with **From** and **To** dates. 📝 **Note** The refinement panel isn't shown on the **Everything** tab. That tab mixes very different kinds of content, so filters become available after the user switches to a more specific tab such as Documents or Pages. Results can also be **sorted** by relevance (**Rank**), **Last Modified** or **Size**, in ascending or descending order. --- ## A result layout that fits your page Each search result is shown as a card, and you decide what goes on it. The layout can be as simple as an icon and a title, or a rich card with: - the file-type **icon** and the **title**, which opens the item in a new tab; - the **path** to the item's location — site and library; - the **date of the last change** and the editor, with a live Microsoft 365 profile card; - the **file size**, **views count** and **incoming links count**; - a **summary** with the search terms highlighted, from 100 to 300 characters long; - **tags** from the managed metadata; - a **thumbnail** of the document or picture. With **Show Analytics** turned on, each card also gets a small chart of daily views and unique viewers over the last seven days. It shows at a glance which documents colleagues actually use. ![Search results in the rich layout with view analytics](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10222/result-layout-en.png) *Search results in the rich layout with view analytics* People results are shown as profile cards with the photo, name, job title and office location. Use them together with the **Department** and **Office Location** refiners to turn the People tab into a simple employee search. 📝 **Note** On narrow columns (less than 320 pixels wide), the thumbnail and the analytics chart are hidden automatically so that the text of the result stays readable. --- ## Preview, play and download Action buttons under a result let users work with it right on the search page: - **Preview** opens a document that SharePoint can preview, such as a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, in a dialog for reading. - **Play** plays a video file (MP4, AVI, MOV or WMV), including a meeting recording, in a dialog. - **Download** downloads the document directly. When the dialog is closed, the user returns to the same result list with the same query, tab and filters — there's no need to open new browser tabs and search again. ![Previewing a document from the search results](https://static.vitextra.com/articles/10222/preview-dialog-en.png) *Previewing a document from the search results* 📝 **Note** Administrators can enable or disable each action independently, so you may not see all of the buttons above. --- ## Search that helps Smart Search includes small features that save time every day: - **Did you mean** — if a query contains a typo, the web part offers the corrected spelling, which can be applied with one click. - **Recent queries** — the last five queries are shown under the search box and can be repeated with one click. - **The last query is remembered** — when a user leaves the page and comes back in the same browser session, the last query is restored. - **Shareable links** — the query, the selected tab and the page number are kept in the page address (`?q=…&source=…&p=…`). Copy the link to send ready results to a colleague, or put a link to a ready-made query in a menu or a news post. - **The `/` key** — press it anywhere on the page to jump straight to the search box. For finer control over matching, the administrator can turn on **stemming** (finding other forms of a word), **nicknames** and **phonetic** matching for people names, and **trim duplicates** to hide identical documents stored in several places. A **default query** sets what users see before they type anything — for example, the most recent documents. 💡 **Tip** To build a dedicated search results page step by step, see [KB10058. Build a Custom Search Results Page with Smart Search](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10058). To set up a search for meeting recordings, see [KB10059. Search Recorded Teams Meetings with Smart Search](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10059). --- ## Localization and platform support Smart Search ships with **51 interface locales**, including English, German, French, Latvian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. The language is selected automatically from the SharePoint site or Teams client. The web part runs on **SharePoint Online** modern pages, including full-width sections and as a full-page app. It supports site and section themes and fonts from the **SharePoint Brand Center**. In **Microsoft Teams**, it can be added as a channel tab or used as a personal app. The layout adapts to the column width and works on desktop, tablet and phone. --- ## System requirements | | | |---|---| | Platform | SharePoint Online (Microsoft 365) | | Clients | SharePoint modern pages and full-page apps, Microsoft Teams (channel tab and personal app) | | Data source | The standard SharePoint search index; nothing is copied or stored separately | | Installation | SPFx package (`.sppkg`) via the tenant App Catalog | | Permissions | No additional API permissions required | 💡 **Tip** To deploy the web part in your environment, see the [KB10035. Installing Cloud-based Product](https://vitextra.com/en/support/kb/10035) article. Learn more about the product: