- Built-in search finds files. You still have to open them, read them and work out the answer.
- It searches email, files and chats separately, while the answer is often spread across all three.
- It cannot tell you which version is current, or count across hundreds of reports.
- For finding a file you already know exists, built-in search is fine. For answering questions, you need something that reads.
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both have search built in, and it has improved a great deal. So it is a fair question: if staff can already search, why add anything?
The short answer is that search and answers are different things. Search gives you a list of places to look. An answer tells you what you wanted to know, and shows where it came from.
An example
Sara needs to know how much notice to give to cancel the Northwind contract.
- She asks: "how much notice do we need to give Northwind?"
- She gets: "14 days, in writing", from clause 7.2
- Plus the email in which Northwind confirmed the same reading
- One click opens each. Two minutes in total.
- She types "Northwind notice" and gets 23 results
- She opens four files with similar names
- She finds the clause, under "termination"
- She searches her email separately, in case something changed. Twenty minutes, if she knows where to look.
Search did its job: it found files containing the words she typed. But the work of answering the question was still hers.
What built-in search does well
To be fair to it, built-in search is good at several things:
- Finding a file you know exists, when you remember part of its name.
- Finding an email from a particular person, or about a particular subject.
- Respecting permissions, so people only see results they are allowed to open.
If most of your team's questions are "where is the file called...", search may be enough.
Where built-in search falls short
It finds documents, not answers. You still open each result, read it and decide which one answers your question. With dozens of results, that takes time, and people give up and ask a colleague.
It searches one place at a time. Files in one search, email in another, chat in a third. But decisions are often made across all three: the contract on the drive, the change agreed by email, the reason explained in a chat.
It matches words, not meaning. A question asked in Polish will not find a procedure written in Dutch, because the two share no words. In a company that works in more than one language, the answer is often written in a different language from the question.
It cannot tell you which version is current. Search will happily return "Prices_FINAL_v3" and "Prices_FINAL_v3_new" side by side. Which one to trust is left to you.
It cannot count. "How many complaints did we get in March?" Search can find the complaint forms. It cannot count them, total them or compare months.
When to use which
Most companies need both. Search for the quick "where is that file" moments, and an answer for everything else: what was agreed, what the procedure says, which price is current, how many reports were filed.
In short
Built-in search is good at finding a file you already know exists. It does not read the files for you, combine email and documents into one answer, tell you which version is current, or count. For those, you need something that answers the question, and shows you where the answer came from.