Management of Global Synonyms for all In Focus web parts

With the centralised management of synonyms for In Focus Search, administrators can now manage synonyms globally using taxonomy term sets. This feature enhances search functionality, allowing users to find information more intuitively across all data sources.​ The key benefits include:​

• Unified search experience: Consistent synonym recognition across SharePoint search, Microsoft search, and SmartHub search sources
• Administrative efficiency: Central management reduces the need for individual web part configurations
• Enhanced user experience: Users receive more relevant search results, improving productivity and satisfaction.​

We have introduced this feature partly because Microsoft stopped indexing synonyms for Term Store terms, and partly to allow management of synonyms across the 3 possible In Focus data sources at once.

Global vs Local Synonyms

This article is about the Global Synonyms feature. There is also a Local Synonyms feature to apply specific synonyms to specific In Focus web part. The Local Synonyms feature is documented here: Management of Local Synonyms for an In Focus web part

Please note that you can enable Global Synonyms for each web part, but also add Local Synonyms only for that web part. So different web parts can have different Local Synonyms but also use the Global ones.

Behaviour of the Global Synonyms feature

Synonyms are applied for In Focus searches whenever one of the words in your search query matches the label of a Term from one of the selected Term Sets. When this matches, the synonyms for that Term are added to the search query behind the scenes so that all synonyms for that Term are considered.

Be aware that this is an Atlas feature so it will not apply any synonyms when using the OOTB Microsoft search pages, but it will apply to In Focus web parts whichever data source you use.

Please bear in mind that this does not work with deprecated In Focus web parts. If you are unsure, edit the web part and if you see this message you need to change to use the new In Focus web parts:

If you are unsure how to swap over, please review this article: Swapping legacy In Focus guidance

Enable Term Sets to be used for Global Synonyms

To enable Term Sets to be used for Global Synonyms you need to be a member of the Atlas Enterprise Administrators group. You can find the settings by opening the My Atlas panel, then choosing Settings, then Search:

       >           

In the Search panel you can choose up to 6 term sets to use for synonyms:

You are not required to select Term Sets from Atlas - you can use custom term sets if you wish. The standard way to use this is to add synonyms to your existing Terms inside their existing Term Sets, however the Term IDs do not matter for the synonyms matching, just the label. Therefore if you need synonyms from more than 6 Term Sets you could create a new Term Set to house all synonyms even if the original Terms are in Atlas Term Sets.

To enable a Term Set for synonym matching...

• In Atlas 6.0, simply check the boxes next to the Term Sets you want to include. They will be enabled in the configuration at that moment - there is no Apply button.
• From Atlas 6.1, check the boxes next to the Term Sets you want to include, then click Apply to enable them in the configuration.
  
  

Enable or Disable Global Synonyms for a web part

By default Global Synonyms are enabled for In Focus web parts, but this can be turned on or off for each one. To change this, edit the page containing the In Focus web part, then edit the web part itself and open the Advanced Configurations section.

In this section you can toggle Apply global synonyms to ON or OFF:

Default and Recommended configurations

The default configuration for synonyms is that no Terms Sets are selected. This means that upon recieving this feature in the Atlas 6.0 update nothing will change about how search works so there is no need to prepare in advance.

Once you are ready to enable to feature, you can enable the Term Sets you want included. Our recommendation if you are unsure would be to enable the 5 Atlas Global Term Sets (if you are using all of them), and also Information Type:

However you can make whatever choices make the most sense for your organisation - for example if there are no alternatives for your Department names you may not need to include Department.

Technical details

Just to provide some further detail, the way that this feature works is that instead of submitting only the actual text of the user's search query, if synonyms exist for the query text that text is replaced with an OR statement including all the relevant synonyms. This includes both Local and Global synonyms if both are configured and enabled.

If we consider the example "Human Resources", first the system checks if there is a term with that label. If there is a synonym, in this case lets say "HR", then whichever the the user types it will be replaced with the OR statement: ("Human Resources" OR "HR").

If there are multiple synonyms they will all be included in that OR statement so content will be retrieved which includes any of those terms anywhere in the index - this is important to understand - the synonyms do not have to be in the same metadata field as the one related to the Term Set the synonyms were added to.

Still have questions?

If you're unsure how you want to set this up please get in touch with the support team.