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DocVault — Search & Discovery

The Search screen answers three different kinds of question, and it picks the right engine for each.

Copilot grounded answers​

With the Copilot AI toggle on, your question goes to the Microsoft 365 Copilot Retrieval API, which searches the semantic index of the documents in this site — the words inside the files, not just their titles. DocVault composes a short answer from the strongest passages, streams it into view, then lists each source document with a relevance percentage and a two-line extract. Every source respects your own permissions.

Required

Copilot answers require the Files.Read.All and Sites.Read.All Microsoft Graph permissions to be approved in the SharePoint admin centre (API access), and a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence for the signed-in user. Without them the screen explains what is missing.

📸 Screenshot: Copilot grounded answer with cited sources

Capture: Search screen after asking a content question such as "what is our document control policy?". Wait for the answer to finish streaming so the citation list is fully rendered.
Suggested callouts: (1) Question in the search bar (2) Copilot AI toggle (on) (3) Streamed grounded answer (4) "Grounded in N sources" header (5) Numbered source with % match (6) Extract snippet
Recommended size: 1600 × 1100 px

Screenshot to be added.

Full-text content search​

Turn Copilot AI off and the same box runs a SharePoint full-text search across document bodies. Results merge content matches (with highlighted snippets) and metadata matches into one list, de-duplicated. If you prefer them separated, switch on Group by source in the left panel.

tip

Newly uploaded files can take a few minutes to appear — the SharePoint index has to catch up.

Expiry and review questions​

Questions about dates are answered from the metadata, not from document text, because no content index can reason about an expiry column. DocVault recognises phrasings such as:

  • documents expiring this quarter
  • what has already expired
  • due for review in the next 30 days
  • contracts expiring next year

The answer names how many documents fall in the window, lists the first few with their expiry dates and statuses, and offers a clickable chip for each.

📸 Screenshot: Expiry & review answer

Capture: Search screen after asking "documents expiring this quarter", fully streamed, with the citation chips showing document numbers and expiry dates.
Suggested callouts: (1) Expiry & review answer header (2) Streamed metadata answer (3) Clickable expiry chips
Recommended size: 1600 × 900 px

Screenshot to be added.

Advanced metadata filters​

The left panel narrows any result set by Document type, Department, Status and Classification. Each dropdown lists only values that exist in the data. Selected filters show a live match count, and Clear resets them all.

📸 Screenshot: Advanced metadata panel

Capture: Left-hand Advanced metadata panel with one dropdown open and two facets already applied, so the "N documents match these filters" line and the Clear link are both visible.
Recommended size: 700 × 900 px (panel crop)

Screenshot to be added.

For questions or support, contact SharePoint Designs at sharepointdesigns.com.