Scenario

Nickname (or alias or moniker or hypocorism etc.) is some another name – usually shorter than original name and widely used in maybe all countries in the world. E.g. Bob is a nickname for Robert in the US and GB, Checo is the other name for Sergio in Mexico. There might be personal names also – e.g. Bapu (father) is an word that is usually associated with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as the Mahatma Gandhi. More examples: David “Noodles” Aaronson, Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett etc.

In Microsoft 365 we want to search for a person’s name we know – and in many cases it’s a nickname – e.g. Beth (Bethany) or Alex (Alexander). Can m365 search do that?

Unfortunately, not… At least at 19:38 on 2023-03-30
… though please check Microsoft 365 Search: built-in people search by nickname.

Solution

It takes a few steps to implement search by nickname:

• create a custom property under SharePoint Online User Profiles service
• fill this property with values
• configure Search Schema – map crawled property to managed property

Step-by-Step

Create a custom property under SharePoint Online User Profiles service

• Ensure you have a SharePoint Administrator role activated
• Navigate to SharePoint Admin Center – more features – User Profiles – Manage user properties – New Property
• Configure custom property according to your needs,
  – ensure “Policy Settings” “Default Privacy Setting:” Everyone is selected
  – ensure “Search Settings” “Indexed” is selected

Fill SharePoint Online User Profile Properties with values

That would be a custom solution – e.g. manual work from SPO Admin Center GUI or PowerShell script ( e.g. with some dictionary). This is required for search to pick it up, crawl the property and create crawled property – so you could proceed with search schema mapping.

Configure Search Schema – map crawled property to managed property

For the nickname to be generally available in full-text-search – i.e.
user simply enter value in a search bar and gets results – here are the steps:

• Ensure you have a SharePoint Administrator role activated
• Navigate to SharePoint Admin Center – More features – Search – Manage Search Schema
• Select Crawled Properties and ensure search picked up your custom property and crawled it – check your crawled property name under Category: People.
• Under Managed Properties – create a new managed property
  • select “Searchable”
  • under Advanced searchable settings – select Full-text index: PeopleIdx
• map this managed property to crawled property

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References

• Microsoft 365 Search: built-in people search by nickname.
  (Did Microsoft implement search by short name (nick) as built-in functionality?)
• Microsoft Search People Custom User Profile Property