Use Search Banner to help employees find Forms and Templates right at the top of the page.
Immersive mode:
File search mode:
AI-assisted search:
Look for this web part to add it to your page (we recommend adding the web part into the Full-Width section for best look):
Configuring search
When you first add the Search Banner, go to web part properties and click on the button titled Add/Remove Source Libraries as shown below:
Now, you can set one or more libraries from current or another site, like this
Example URL format: https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/Intranet/Shared%20Documents
Users must have access to the site which you’ve picked to pull data from.
📁 Using the “Only show files from this folder” Option
What this option does
The “Only show files from this folder (optional)” field allows you to filter results to just one folder inside the document library.
For example:
- Document Library URL:
https://sharemuch.sharepoint.com/sites/testSandbox/Shared Documents - Only show files from this folder:
Photos
With this setup, the web part will only display files located inside the “Photos” folder, and ignore files elsewhere in the “Shared Documents” library.
If your libraries have folders, they will show up below the search box like this:
You can add files directly to the root of the chosen document library or to the corresponding folder.
Search Banner will automatically pick up files for your employees to find.
Group documents by a metadata or a view
Available in Search Banner version Jan 6, 2025
Not only you can group documents by folder, you can group them by library views:
This means you can create a regular SharePoint view with any filters you desire and use URL of that view as a data source.
Here is a 2-min video showing how you can create a custom view to filter documents based on a defined metadata tag.
Configuring Library Views - Watch Video
Styling your banner
You can chose what welcome message shows up in the banner by setting Banner Heading web part property:
To set the searchbox placeholder text, change the Searchbox Prompt web part property:
To change the background color or a gradient, update the properties below:
You can resize the height of the banner by changing the Banner Height web part property:
You can change the background and the height of the banner along with colors of category buttons like this:
Immersive mode
Immersive mode lets you expand your search banner image all the way to Origami Top Navigation creating beautiful magazine-like page cover like this:
Prerequisites needed to make this work:
- You need to use Origami Top Navigation (this effect doesn’t work with out of the box SharePoint navigation)
- Turn off SharePoint out-of-the-box navigation, so it doesn’t interrupt the page flow.
- Have Search Banner version dated at least Jan 21, 2026
Set up Immersive Mode
- Go to your Search Banner web part properties and turn on Immersive mode as shown below
- Pick a color for your top navigation menu items so they look visible over your Search Banner background image (white color for most cases). This color will override color setting in Origami Top Navigation.
- You can also optionally change the logo that is used in Immersive mode, for example while logo on transparent background PNG will look better on images:
Here is how to upload alt logo in web part properties:
NOTE: As soon as the user scrolls down the page even a little bit, the Origami Top Navigation color and default logo settings will used so navigation retains prominence:
NOTE: As author or someone who can edit the page, you will still be able to see Microsoft page author tools. This is not an error. Users who have read-only permissions will not see this toolbar.
AI Search (BETA)
Available in Search Banner version Feb 2, 2026
Search Banner goes beyond keyword search: users can now ask natural language questions and receive intelligent answers based on the contents of documents from libraries you chose to target.
How it works:
- Users type a question (e.g., “What is the leave request process?”).
- Copilot analyzes indexed content from the libraries the Search Banner is permitted to read.
- The feature returns contextual, clear answers instead of or alongside traditional list results.
You can enable this capability in Search Banner web part properties here:
NOTE: Users will need to have Copilot license enabled on their account in M365 to be able to use this capability. If some users have Copilot and other don’t, not to worry - the Search Banner will check if the user has a valid license and if not, it will load a regular file search.
This capability relies on BETA API from Microsoft.
When installing the Search Banner solution you will be prompted to give access to the following APIs:
- Microsoft Graph, Sites.Read.All;
- Microsoft Graph, People.Read.All;
- Microsoft Graph, Mail.Read;
- Microsoft Graph, OnlineMeetingTranscript.Read.All;
- Microsoft Graph, Chat.Read;
- Microsoft Graph, ChannelMessage.Read.All;
- Microsoft Graph, ExternalItem.Read.All
- Microsoft Graph, Files.Read.All;
If you’re not planning to use AI Summaries in Search Banner you can skip giving these permissions and Search Banner will continue working for File Searching as it does currently.
Known issues
Do you have more than 5,000 documents in your library?
Due to limits in SharePoint Online, if you have more than 5,000 items in your document library you’ll have to split them in separate libraries for the Search Banner to pick them up.
What image resolution is best for carousel images?
See this guidance on what images are best for the carousel: Why images in carousels look different depending on screen resolution?