Use the Microsoft Search API to index data

You can use Microsoft Graph to add custom items to search results in the Microsoft Search experience.

Requests to index data are performed on behalf of an application without the presence of a signed-in user, identified using an access token with application permission.

Common use cases

The use cases for the APIs in this section involve building Microsoft Graph connectors, which involves the following primary steps:

  1. Create a connection to an external data source.
  2. Create and register a schema that describes the type and how to index the external data.
  3. Index the data as an external item.
Use cases REST resources See also
Configuration actions
Create, update, or delete a connection externalConnection externalConnection methods
Register a schema for the external data schema schema methods
Indexing actions
Add, update or delete a custom item in the index externalItem externalItem methods

Known limitations

The following are current known limitations:

  • Organizations are limited to a maximum of 10 connections (reach out if you need more).
  • You can create up to 25 externalItem resources items per second.
  • An application is limited to 25 concurrent operations on a connection.
  • Connections have a capacity limit of 5,000,000 items or ~350 GB of data.
  • Maximum size of an externalItem entity is 4 MB.
  • Sorting results is not supported.

What's new

Find out about the latest new features and updates for this API set.

Next steps