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What's new in Azure Cognitive Search

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Learn about the latest updates to Azure Cognitive Search functionality, docs, and samples.

Note

Looking for preview features? Previews are announced here, but we also maintain a preview features list so you can find them in one place.

May 2023

Item                         Type Description
Azure RBAC (role-based access control) Feature Announcing general availability.
2022-09-01 Management REST API API New stable version of the Management REST APIs, with support for configuring search to use Azure RBAC. The Az.Search module of Azure PowerShell and Az search module of the Azure CLI are updated to support search service authentication options. You can also use the Terraform provider to configure authentication options (see this Terraform quickstart for details).

April 2023

Item                         Type Description
Multi-region deployment of Azure Cognitive Search for business continuity and disaster recovery Sample Deployment scripts that fully configure a multi-regional solution for Azure Cognitive Search, with options for synchronizing content and request redirection if an endpoint fails.

March 2023

Item                         Type Description
ChatGPT + Enterprise data with Azure OpenAI and Cognitive Search (GitHub) Sample Python code and a template for combining Cognitive Search with the large language models in OpenAI. For background, see this Tech Community blog post: Revolutionize your Enterprise Data with ChatGPT.

Key points:

Use Cognitive Search to consolidate and index searchable content.

Query the index for initial search results.

Assemble prompts from those results and send to the gpt-35-turbo (preview) model in Azure OpenAI.

Return a cross-document answer and provide citations and transparency in your customer-facing app so that users can assess the response.

2022 announcements

Month Item
November Add search to websites series, updated versions of React and Azure SDK client libraries: "Add search to websites" is a tutorial series with sample code available in three languages. If you're integrating client code with a search index, these samples demonstrate an end-to-end approach to integration.
November Retired - Visual Studio Code extension for Azure Cognitive Search.
November Query performance dashboard. This Application Insights sample demonstrates an approach for deep monitoring of query usage and performance of an Azure Cognitive Search index. It includes a JSON template that creates a workbook and dashboard in Application Insights and a Jupyter Notebook that populates the dashboard with simulated data.
October Compliance risk analysis using Azure Cognitive Search. Published on Azure Architecture Center, this guide covers the implementation of a compliance risk analysis solution that uses Azure Cognitive Search.
October Beiersdorf customer story using Azure Cognitive Search. This customer story showcases semantic search and document summarization to provide researchers with ready access to institutional knowledge.
September Azure Cognitive Search Lab. This C# sample provides the source code for building a web front-end that accesses all of the REST API calls against an index. This tool is used by support engineers to investigate customer support issues. You can try this demo site before building your own copy.
September Event-driven indexing for Cognitive Search. This C# sample is an Azure Function app that demonstrates event-driven indexing in Azure Cognitive Search. If you've used indexers and skillsets before, you know that indexers can run on demand or on a schedule, but not in response to events. This demo shows you how to set up an indexing pipeline that responds to data update events.
August Tutorial: Index large data from Apache Spark. This tutorial explains how to use the SynapseML open-source library to push data from Apache Spark into a search index. It also shows you how to make calls to Cognitive Services to get AI enrichment without skillsets and indexers.
June Semantic search (preview). New support for Storage Optimized tiers (L1, L2).
June General availability - Debug Sessions.
May Retired - Power Query connector preview.
February Index aliases. An index alias is a secondary name that can be used to refer to an index for querying, indexing, and other operations. When index names change, for example if you version the index, instead of updating the references to an index name in your application, you can just update the mapping for your alias.

Previous year's announcements

Service re-brand

Azure Search was renamed to Azure Cognitive Search in October 2019 to reflect the expanded (yet optional) use of cognitive skills and AI processing in service operations.

Service updates

Service update announcements for Azure Cognitive Search can be found on the Azure web site.