Why is managed metadata 'suggestions' only working as “begins with” and not “contains”?

Question

We have managed metadata working for a field where we love the auto-complete\suggestions ability. We're currently using this to populate a form (calendar entry) and enter in contact names. The problem is that the auto-complete, or Suggestions, that show up as you type only work if you start typing the same way the data is entered. So I cannot type a person's last name and have it show up as a Suggestion, I have to type the first name. In the screen shot below:

• I can type Jon and find Jon C. Yoder
• I can type Jon C. and find Jon C. Yoder
• I cannot type Jon Yod and find who I want
• I cannot type Yoder and find who I want

Any ideas for how to make this work the way I want?

Answer 1

I believe that is default behavior. One way you could achieve what you are trying to do is add the last name as a synonym to the full name in the term store. That would allow you to search for last name as well. You could also add a synonym for the full name that excluded the middle initial.

As you can see, since safety is a synonym for Patient Safety, it returns Patient Safety. If Yoder was a synonym for Jon Yoder, your search on last name would work.

Depending on how you are populating the term store with Contacts, that may not be feasible.