Mindbreeze InSpire Search Applications in Microsoft SharePoint Online

Introduction

This document describes the use of Mindbreeze InSpire search applications in Microsoft SharePoint Online.

Software Prerequisites

The descriptions and instructions contained in this document are based on Microsoft SharePoint Online.

Embedding a Search Application

Search applications are stored as text documents in Microsoft SharePoint and embedded in pages with the Content Editor Web Part. Thus, a search application can be used on multiple pages and still remain easy to maintain.

Saving a search application in a text document

Copy the snippet from the Mindbreeze InSpire Designer into a text document. Click here for more information: Development of Search Apps.

Uploading the text document

Upload the document to a document library:

Copy the address of the document to the clipboard:

Note: The link copied above is the URL of the document preview page. Hence, the URL should be changed to the following URL:

       https:<your-tenant>.sharepoint.com/<your-site>/Shared%20Documents/searchapp.txt

Make sure the above link is working after adjusting it with your tenant and site names.

Creating a new Web Part page

Navigate to “Site Contents“ > “Site Pages“:

Create a new “Web Part Page”:

Choose a name and design. Create the page:

Add a new “Content Editor“ Web Part:

Note: The ‘Content Editor’ web part is not supported for modern pages (or Sites) according to Microsoft’s official documentation:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/content-editor-web-part-c1350ff6-934c-4c2e-8e53-1ec3b548a0dc

Edit the Web Part settings:

Insert the address (adjusted URL) of the text document in “Content Link“, then click “Apply”:

Click “Stop Editing” to finish editing a page: Click

Changing the search results page

Under the setting "Site Settings", the search results page can be modified for a site collection and a site:

Under “Which search results page should queries be sent to“, choose the option “Send queries to a custom results page URL“.

Enter the address of the results page under "Results page URL":

In addition, the search application must be adapted in order to use the query parameters of Microsoft SharePoint:

new Application({ queryURLParameter: "k" });

The above changes are applied to the classic sites or pages. To apply the same on modern sites or pages, you need to deploy and configure the Mindbreeze Sharepoint Extension (SPFx) as shown in the following section.

Mindbreeze Sharepoint Extension (SPFx)

Download the (.sppkg)

From the Mindbreeze update center (https://www.mindbreeze.com/de/updates-spi.html), download the File Mindbreeze Microsoft SharePoint Online Search Extension Plugin.zip and extract the sppkg: MicrosoftSharePointOnline-SearchExtensionPlugin-<version>.sppkg.

Deploy the (.sppkg)

Now need to deploy the downloaded (.sppkg) to the app catalog. To do this, go to your tenant's app catalog and open the Apps for SharePoint library.

Then upload or drag and drop the (.sppkg) file.

Make the solution available to all sites in the organization by selecting the checkbox.

Make sure the extension is valid and deployed without errors

Adjust the search result landing page

The search result landing page can be adjusted through a configured parameter. The default page is: (/search/pages/results.aspx).

From the site contents page of the app catalog site, select Tenant Wide Extensions.

Select the Mindbreeze-Search item and click on Edit Item.

In Component Properties, change the value of “resultPageUrl” to your search results landing page and click save.

Test the changes

For any modern site or page where the extension is deployed, Mindbreeze search bar should be shown.

Type a query in this new search bar and hit enter. You should be routed to the configured landing page of search results.