Microsoft announces updates to Bing at Ignite 2019

At Ignite 2019, Microsoft has announced new features to Bing. The new features are mostly geared towards enterprise users and provide a better browsing experience. During the event, Microsoft talked a lot about Search and how it uses AI to offer results across Microsoft 365, Bing, Windows and Edge.

The Bing and Microsoft Search related announcements were geared towards the enterprise customers and were in-line with the Edge for Enterprise announcements. Microsoft broadly classified the new features into three parts: generally available, public preview, and private preview. You can head down to take a look at all the new Bing related announcements at Ignite 2019.

Generally Available:

• People search with attributes. This makes it easy for people to query a name, title, or other individual attributes for that person, such as building locations and more, without knowing their entire name and correct spelling. This experience is available across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Search in Bing.
• Acronym search. These results are mined using Al as well as being editorially generated. users will be able to view acronyms that currently live in their email, SharePoint, OneDrive, and publicly shared documents within their company. This experience is available across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Search in Bing.
• Floorplan search. Floorplan search allows you to pinpoint a person’s office location or search across building maps. This experience is available across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Search in Bing.
• Bing mobile (iOS & Android). Enables organizations to sign into the Bing mobile app with the Azure AD
  credentials and discover content within Microsoft 365.

Public Preview:

• Content connectors, which allow customers to discover information across disparate systems with Microsoft Search to include File Shares, Structured Data, SewiceNow, Media Wikis, Salesforce, and more. This experience is available across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Search in Bing.
• Bing Enterprise Homepage & Industry News — Public Preview: The enterprise-focused Bing Homepage experience offers company branding, Office content, quick links to top queries, and company updates.
  Industry news gives users news search results specific to their company and industry.

Private Preview:

• Find expertise in your organization based on individual skills derived from insights available in the Microsoft Graph. user profiles are generally out of date and do not provide enough detail; and there is no consistent construct for reputation—implicit, attributed, or certified skills, expertise, and experience. using signals, relationships and how individuals work together—as well as what they’re working on—Microsoft Search delivers recommendations for who has particular skills.
• Use the search bar in Microsoft Edge to find workplace information with Microsoft Search in Bing.
  There’s nothing to learn—search like you’re used to in the browser and get workplace results with the quality you expect from the worldwide web. Get quick results, including people, acronyms, and floorplans.
• Semantic search. With intelligent, natural language search capabilities in Microsoft Search, users can now type out their search as if they were having a normal conversation and the engine can better understand the semantic meaning or user intent of this search, bringing back the most relevant documents and information. This experience is available across Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Search in Bing.
• Microsoft Graph API for Microsoft Search allows customers and partners to build and monetize (if desired) search-driven applications built on Microsoft Search.

With the new announcements at Ignite 2019, Microsoft has made it clear that they plan to take on Google which has been dominating the industry for quite some time. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft moves forward with regards to developments related to Bing.