PnP modern search is a powerful open-source solution that lets SharePoint power users build tailored search experiences that go far beyond typical out-of-the-box options. Using PnP’s modern web parts, you can configure advanced filters and design custom results layouts where third-party extensions (like PointFire Search Summarizer) can then add AI-driven summaries.
In this conversational guide, we explore how these techniques transform ordinary SharePoint search results into a faster, more relevant information discovery experience while leveraging PointFire’s product features for proof.
Empowering Power Users with PnP Modern Search
The PnP Modern Search solution consists of flexible SharePoint Online web parts that allow super users (site owners and power users) to create personalized search pages. It bridges the gap left by Microsoft’s standard search, restoring much of the customization flexibility that classic search offered. With PnP, you can drop in a Search Box, Search Results, and Search Filters web part to build a bespoke search page without writing code. The PnP modern search web parts are open-source and highly configurable, supporting custom query scopes, and it supports multilingual content insofar as the underlying SharePoint Search engine does. In short, PnP gives power users the kind of control that traditionally required developer involvement. PointFire’s Search Summarizer is built as an extension to this popular framework, integrating seamlessly with your SharePoint environment.
Advanced Filter Configuration in SharePoint Search
One of the biggest advantages of PnP for a power user is the Search Filters component. The Filters web part is highly configurable to refine the current results, and it works with the data provided by the connected PnP Search Results web part(s), which can pull from SharePoint Search, Microsoft Graph, or other configured external data sources. You can connect it in a two-way sync with one or multiple Search Results web parts, so refiners dynamically reflect the results and vice versa. Configuring filters goes far beyond the basic out-of-the-box refiners – you have a high level of control over which properties to filter on and how the options are presented. Key capabilities include:
1. Rich filter types and templates:
Choose from checkboxes, dropdowns (combo boxes), date range pickers, or people pickers to refine results. You can show item counts next to values and allow multi-select with an AND/OR operator for complex filtering logic.
2. Refiners and static filters:
Use Refiner filters to automatically populate values from the result set (e.g. file types, tags) or define Static filters with fixed choices (for example, a predetermined date range) not tied to the results. This means you can typically add custom filter options, even when the result set is empty.
3. Combined refiners across sources:
PnP allows refiners to be unified when multiple PnP Search Results web parts are configured to share the same PnP Search Filters web part. For instance, if two result web parts both provide a “FileType” refiner, the filter panel can unify them into one with aggregated counts. This can enable a unified search experience.
4. Deep linking of filters:
The Search Filters web part supports deep linking, meaning you can pre-select filter values via the page URL. When users apply filters, the current filter state is added to the URL, which you can copy and share. This is great for power users who want to send colleagues a link that opens a pre-filtered results view – no manual clicking needed to drill down.
These advanced filter configurations save users time by narrowing results to what matters most. Rather than sifting through a broad set of hits, a well-tuned filter panel allows users to slice results by metadata, content type, author, date, or any managed property important to your organization. The result is a more guided search experience that gets people to the right content faster.
Custom Search Result Layouts with AI-Powered Summaries
PnP Modern Search’s flexibility extends to how results are displayed. Power users can choose from built-in layouts or create custom layouts to tailor the appearance of results. This is where PointFire’s Search Summarizer comes into play, by enriching the result layout with an intelligent summary for each item. By default, SharePoint’s results show only a title and a short snippet from the document – often just a few words that may be trivial. For example, searching “law of the sea” returned a list of documents with snippets merely highlighting the phrase “of” and “the,” which is not very useful. Such basic snippets and thumbnail previews don’t provide enough context to decide which document is relevant, forcing you to open files and hunt for the information yourself.
PointFire Search Summarizer addresses this by replacing vague snippets. As soon as a query’s results come in, the Summarizer extension kicks in to generate a short but comprehensive summary of what that document says about your query. This works better than a generic overview of the whole file like some tools produce; it’s a focused synopsis of the content that directly answers your search terms. In fact, if a result has little or no information relevant to your query, the summary can explicitly note that, saving you the trouble of clicking it. With this enhancement, users can instantly gauge which documents are actually useful without having to open each one.
The custom layout with summaries also provides deeper insight on hover. When you hover over a search result, the Summarizer can display the exact sentences from the document that best match your query. These highlighted sentences in context show you the precise words in the file around your query terms, even if the wording is a bit different. For instance, you might search a regulation name and the document uses a synonymous phrase – the Summarizer will still surface that relevant excerpt, so you know the content hits the mark. Often, this preview alone gives you the answer you need or confirms relevance, meaning you might not even need to open the document at all.
Behind the scenes, the Summarizer uses AI in a very targeted way to enhance search rather than replace it. All summarization respects the user’s own permissions, ensuring it only summarizes content the user is allowed to see. While the data is processed within Microsoft’s secure cloud environment (such as Azure OpenAI), no data is sent to external, public services, and it remains protected under your organization’s Microsoft infrastructure– preserving your security and privacy standards. The summaries are generated on-the-fly for each query, so they’re always contextually relevant to what you asked and update instantly with each new search. Unlike many AI tools, it is designed to handle long documents without losing key context. It’s also multilingual: true to PointFire’s roots in multilingual SharePoint solutions, the summarizer works across languages (English, French, Dutch, and more) both in the source content and the user’s query language. This means global teams can benefit from concise summaries in their language of choice, even when searching a multilingual knowledge base.
For SharePoint power users looking to supercharge their enterprise search, combining PnP Modern Search with advanced filters and PointFire’s AI summarization is a game-changer. You get a highly tuned search page where users can refine results with ease and see rich context for every item at a glance. The result is that SharePoint search results become more actionable – people find what they need faster and with greater confidence. By leveraging the configurable filters of PnP and the relevance-based summaries of PointFire Search Summarizer, your team will spend less time digging through documents and more time actually using the information they find. This approach delivers a modern, efficient search experience in SharePoint that truly meets the needs of today’s information workers.
