Troubleshoot Search Results in SharePoint Online (SPO)-Connected Content Sources

If you're working in your QorusDocs Add-ins or QorusDocs Hub in the browser, and you’re not seeing the results you expect when running a Search, here are some troubleshooting tips for testing search results in your SharePoint Online (SPO) instance and SPO-connected Content Sources.

In this article we’ll explain how to:

1. Test and compare search results
2. Check why the search results are not appearing

1. Test and compare search results

To test the search results in your add-ins or Hub, you can try performing the same search in SharePoint Online directly and compare the results. 

The results are the same in QorusDocs and SharePoint Online, with the following exceptions:

• If there are several copies of a document stored in multiple locations, and you search SharePoint Online for it, SharePoint Online will typically only return just one instance, or one copy of that document, as it assumes that the other copies are duplicates. QorusDocs will return all the copies it finds and will list each one as a separate search result.

TIP: In Search results, QorusDocs displays the name of the library and folder where the content item was found in SPO.

Alternatively, open the preview window to view the direct document link:

• If the URL or name of an SPO-connected library or list has changed, a QorusDocs Admin will need to re-establish and fix any broken connections. To do this, the Admin can edit the Content Source.

In the left navigation of the QorusDocs Hub, under Manage, click on “Content Sources”, and click the gear icon next to the Content Source, and then click “Edit”:

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2. Check why the search results are not appearing

If the results are the same in SharePoint Online and in QorusDocs, but you know there are files that should be returned by the search, and they are not appearing - the following might help: 

• As part of configuring SharePoint Online, the person(s) responsible for the administration of your SharePoint environment would need to make sure that the content on your SharePoint Online site is searchable. 
• You may need to wait for the SharePoint crawl to run if you have recently made changes to your SharePoint Online environment. The crawl picks up on any changes in both the structure and the contents of your site(s) and adds this information to the search index. Once it's been added to the search index, it becomes searchable. The SharePoint Online crawl runs on a scheduled basis and can take anything between 15 minutes to six hours to run according to Microsoft. In our experience, it has sometimes taken up to a few days. Unfortunately, the crawl schedule is not something that your SharePoint Online administrator can directly control or predict, and so often it's just a case of waiting a while and trying again later. Here are examples of some of the changes that need to be crawled, before they can come into effect: 
  • changes to file names, titles or other content properties
  • changes to the SharePoint Online permissions

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