Introduction
The Search web part (also referred to as the Content Search web part) is one of the most versatile components in Powell Intranet. It can be found on different pages across the intranet and takes many shapes and forms — news sliders, event tiles, document lists, people directories, and more are all powered by the same web part.
With the Search web part, you can display a wide variety of content types (events, news, pages, documents, people, etc.) and fully control how they are queried, filtered, and presented to your users.
Example rendering — News Tiles display with social features
Settings
The web part is configured through five dedicated panels, accessible from the edit mode (gear icon in the top-right corner of the web part):
- Content to display — define what content to fetch and how to query it
- How to display — choose the visual template and display options
- Displayed properties — map content fields to the template slots
- View's features — configure social, gamification, and personalization features
- Checks and documentation — review required permissions and access useful links
Edit mode — gear icon to access web part settings
Content to display
This panel is where you define the source and scope of the content shown in the web part.
Content to display — Tenant choice, content type filter, and source scope
Tenant choice
You can choose to display content from the current tenant or from an external tenant.
To use the external tenant option, the following prerequisites apply:
- user_impersonation permission must be granted on the Azure Management API
- Users must have access to the root site of the external tenant and to the selected site collection
When using an external tenant, specify the tenant identifier and the site collection URL from which to fetch content.
Filter by content type
Select the content type you want to display using the visual tile picker. Available content types include Alert, Document, Event, Link, and others defined in your environment. Click "See more" to browse all available types.
Select from where the content is coming
Define the scope of the query:
- Everywhere — searches across the entire tenant
- This site collection — limits results to the current site collection
- This site — limits results to the current site
Content to display — Fetch count, sort order, language filtering, and Graph settings
Select the number of contents you want to fetch
Set the maximum number of items to retrieve. Note that the current display may also impose its own limit (e.g., up to 500 results).
Select the number of contents you want to skip at the beginning
Set a number of results to bypass from the beginning of the query. For example, entering 2 will skip the first two results returned.
Select how your contents will be ordered
Define one or more sorting properties. For each property, choose ascending (A→Z) or descending (Z→A) order. Use the + button to add additional sort criteria and the bin icon to remove one.
Enable Language filtering
When enabled, results are filtered based on the linguistic context of the page. This is useful when working with SharePoint multilingual translation. Toggle off by default.
Graph Settings
Enable search via Microsoft Graph instead of the standard SharePoint search API. Toggle off by default.
Additional settings
Expand the "Additional settings" section to access advanced query behaviors:
Content to display — Additional settings
- Trim duplicates — when enabled, similar results are removed from the query output
- Use query rules — when enabled, the standard query rules defined for your site collection are applied as filters
- Deactivate the use of query strings — when enabled, URL parameters on the page will not affect the query results
- Enable audience targeting — when enabled, results are filtered based on audience targeting defined on each item
- Search people — when enabled, only people (users, rooms, etc.) are returned by the query
How to display
This panel controls the visual rendering of your web part.
How to display — Display type selector, text contrast, and background color
Choose a display type
Click the "Choose a display" button to open the template gallery. It contains 63 display templates organized by layout type and content category. Once a display is selected, it is previewed directly in the panel. Use "Choose another display" to switch.
Template gallery — browse and filter 63 display templates by layout, category, and features
You can browse and filter templates by:
- Layout type — Vertical tile, Horizontal tile, Detail (full page), List, Slider
- Content category — Event, News, Document, Ads, Job Offer, New Employee, FAQ, People
- User features — Set content as favorite, Display only favorite content, Must read, Share, User preferences
- Social features — Number of views, Number of likes, Number of comments
- Display features — Responsive number by device, Responsive height by device, Pagination, Autoslide
Set text contrast
Set the text color contrast for overlaid text: Dark or Light. Useful when displaying text on top of images.
Background color
Choose between the current theme color or a custom color. When using a custom color, you can also:
- Enable a blur effect
- Adjust the background opacity using the slider (0–10)
How to display — Background color, blur, borders, and shadows
Show borders around each element
Toggle on to add a visible border around each content card.
Show shadows around each element
Toggle on to add a drop shadow around each content card.
Select the number of contents you want to fetch
This field also appears in this panel and is synchronized with the one in "Content to display". The current display template may limit the maximum number of results (e.g., up to 500).
How to display — Responsive options and pagination
Responsive options
Define the number of items displayed per row depending on the device type (mobile, tablet, laptop, desktop). Use the sliders to set the value for each breakpoint. You can also set a fixed item height per device in pixels — leave at 0 to disable fixed height.
Pagination
Enable pagination to split results across multiple pages. When enabled, set the "Number to display before paginate" to define how many items appear per page.
How to display — See more button, no-result behavior, and container CSS class
See more button
Enable a "See more" button at the bottom of the web part to let users load additional results or navigate to a dedicated page.
Behavior if no result is found
Define what happens when the query returns no results:
- Hide the widget — the web part is not rendered on the page
- Empty widget — the web part renders but shows no content
- Display a message — show a custom message (which can be translated into multiple languages)
Replace the container CSS class
Add a custom CSS class to override the default container styling. Refer to the Powell design guide for available utility classes.
Displayed properties
This panel lets you map SharePoint managed properties to the fields used by the selected display template. For each field, you can select one or more properties to display.
Displayed properties — title, imageUrl, and url field mapping
Field mapping
For each template field (e.g., title, imageUrl, url, taxo, date, description, author), you can:
- Select one or more managed properties to display, shown as removable tags
- Configure field-specific options where available (see below)
Displayed properties — URL field options (link behavior, Angular redirect) and taxonomy field
Field options — URL
For URL fields, you can configure the behavior of the link when a user clicks on a content item:
- Same tab — opens the content in the current browser tab
- New tab — opens the content in a new browser tab
- Pop-in — opens the content in an overlay panel
- Yes/No field — uses a boolean property to determine the behavior
You can also redirect to a specific page with custom parameters using an Angular expression (e.g., {{item.SPWebURL}}/[SITEPAGES]/your-page.aspx?itemId={{item.ListItemID}}).
Displayed properties — Date format options, description, and author fields
Field options — Date
For date fields, choose among the following display formats:
- 03/31/2026 — short numeric format
- March 31, 2026 — long text format
- Mar 31, 2026 — abbreviated text format
- Custom — enter a custom format using Moment.js tokens (e.g., YYYY MM DD). Refer to the Moment.js documentation for available tokens.
Field options — Image
For image fields (e.g., imageUrl), you can define the image size: Small, Normal (max 750px), or Large.
View's features
This panel groups social, engagement, and personalization features that can be enabled on the web part.
Social features
Enable content sharing and interaction display for users:
Enable sharing — allows users to share content items via the following channels:
- Viva Engage
- Microsoft Teams
- X (formerly Twitter)
When email sharing is enabled, choose the email template to use from the dropdown (e.g., "Share - Send content with image to someone").
Display number of interactions — when enabled, choose which counters to show on each content card:
- Likes
- Viva Engage comments
- Views
Read items and gamification
Enable the monitoring of read items. When activated, the web part tracks which content items a user has opened, allowing gamification actions to be triggered upon reading.
Favorites
Two sub-options are available:
- Let the user define the content as favorite — adds a favorite toggle on each content card, allowing users to bookmark items
- Display only user's favorite content — filters the web part results to show only items the current user has marked as favorite
User preferences
Let the user filter on displayed content — when enabled, a filter icon appears on the web part allowing users to apply their own content filters. Configure the available refiners in the Displayed properties panel.
Display taxonomy properties in user's preferred language
Translate the displayed taxonomy terms into the user's preferred language. Note that this feature can impact performance.
Enable the cache
Enable caching to improve web part performance. When activated, set the cache duration in minutes (e.g., 15 minutes).
Disable Viva Engage Integration
Toggle on to disable Viva Engage integration on this web part. This prevents comments and reactions from being pulled from Viva Engage.
Enable API redirect
Toggle on to enable API redirect. This can be used in specific configurations where requests need to be routed through a different endpoint.
Checks and documentation
This panel surfaces contextual information to help administrators configure the web part correctly.
Graph permission(s) needed
Based on the options selected in the other panels, this section lists the Microsoft Graph permissions required for the web part to function correctly (e.g., Files.ReadWrite on https://graph.microsoft.com).
Useful documentations
Direct links to relevant Powell Software support articles for the configured web part.
Rendering and template management
Web part in edit mode — pagination, Save as template, and Choose another template options
When hovering over the web part in edit mode, two additional icons appear in the top-right corner:
- Save as template — save the current web part configuration (query + display + features) as a reusable template
- Choose another template — apply a previously saved configuration template to this web part
Choose a configuration gallery — reusable templates organized by category (News, Events, Documents, etc.)
The configuration gallery lets you browse and apply pre-built or saved configurations. Configurations are organized by category (News, Enjoy, Documents, Events) and can be searched by name.