Microsoft has provided its cloud-based platform Azure with an updated “cognitive search” facility.
Cognitive search widens the range of file-types users are able to explore. This allows them to search more effectively than a standard search, with a selection including spreadsheets, PDFs, audio files and images, as well as many other types of information. Cognitive search also differs from regular searches as it does not simply find information, it understands it too. This leap in searching is made possible via computer vision, natural language processing and the latest advances from machine learning tech.
Azure Cognitive Search capabilities
To simplify the process, Microsoft has designed the cognitive search facility to give developers the ability to craft search solutions with three important steps: ingest, enrich and explore.
Azure Cognitive Search offers the scope to ingest a wide variety of data media. No longer limited to text in web pages and documents, it can also manage less traditional company data such as video and audio files, along with images.
Artificial Intelligence is used to enrich the user experience, the quality of the search and how the data found is managed. Structured data can be extracted from content that is unstructured and in-built cognitive skills can be applied, like entity extraction or printed text recognition. Users can also enrich their content with their own customising skills supported by Azure Cognitive Services and Azure Machine Learning.
Azure Cognitive Search builds a search index that powers user search experiences to explore. It also allows them to store an information tree in their knowledge store to use later to power a customised experience of their own.
New skills available
The updated search option in Azure also makes a range of news skills available to users.
Custom Entity Lookup is a cognitive skill built in to find entities defined by the user within a selected text. The Entity Lookup skill allows enterprise users to list a series of entities important to them and make the cognitive search locate and tag every entity over all company content.
Along with cognitive skills, users will have access to power skills, a range of helpful functions that can be utilised by one click into their Azure subscription. Subsequently, they can then be deployed in Azure Cognitive Search as cognitive skills. Code-free skillsets have also been upgraded, letting users edit directly from the Azure portal, and an improved error warning experience to make debugging skillsets easier. Developers who have experienced problems when they needed to alter skillset definition and were forced to re-index their content, and then run the skills again, will be pleased to note the presence of an upgrade for re-indexing. Incremental indexing is now supported with smart reprocessing capacity.
Finally, a custom builder for web apps has been added. This new capability enables users to create an interface for end-users search index of their own seamlessly inside the Azure Portal.
If your enterprise uses cutting-edge technology from Microsoft, you can consult our professional team for advice and support. At WM Reply, we’re experts at creating solutions to business problems with the latest Microsoft options available.