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I am working on a sharepoint online office 365 project. and i added a new enterprise wiki publishing site collection. now i want to add a new Content Search webpart, but seems it is not available:-

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now i read many confusing articles on the web. for example on this link http://www.chrisjohnson.io/2013/10/17/content-by-search-webpart-in-office-365/ it mentioned that i need to enable those 2 features:-

Site Collection Feature: SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure

Site : SharePoint Server Publishing

now inside my enterprise wiki site collection the Site Collection Feature: SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure will already be enabled. and i do not think i need to enable the Site : SharePoint Server Publishing because i worked on another sharepoint online project and i was able to add a Content Search web part inside an enterprise wiki site collection without having to enable Site : SharePoint Server Publishing ?? so can anyone adivce how i can enable the Content Search web part inside my site collection?

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    What is the license being used for the tenant? The "other" project you mentioned, was it the same tenant?
    – Ransher Singh
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 16:33
  • @RansherSingh now the 2 tenants i am talking about is different and for different customers, i mention this to say that even if the publishing site feature is disabled i can add the content search web part.. now how i can get which license is being used ?
    – John John
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 16:53
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    Firstly, you're right, you don't need Sharepoint Server Publishing feature at Site Level to use Content Search WP. Second, Enterprise Search and Content Search Web part is only available with certain plans (E3 and above for e.g). You can get your license type from your tenant admin (O365 owner)
    – Ransher Singh
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 17:43
  • @RansherSingh now i have the admin credential for both tenants, but i am not sure from where i can get the license type.. to check if the problem i am facing is regarding the license or it is a configuration/setting issue?
    – John John
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 17:49
  • @RansherSingh now i checked the following "Office 365 admin >> Billing >> Licenses" i can see that the license name is "Office 365 Business Essentials".. while for the other tenant which have the "Content search web part" available the license name is "Office 365 Enterprise E3" ... so could this explain my case? or with "Office 365 Business Essentials" i should still have Content Search web part available also ?
    – John John
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 17:57

1 Answer 1

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The Content Search Webpart is only available to E3 and above Enterprise plans (or Sharepoint Plan 2 among SharePoint Online Plan 1 (Business) and SharePoint Online Plan 2 (Enterprise)).

In fact, comparing Plan 1 to Plan 2:

  • No Enterprise Search with Plan 1
  • No Excel Services with Plan 1
  • No Visio Services with Plan 1

Business Essentials does not qualify to have the web part enabled for the tenant.

There is a Uservoice here to get Content Search Web Part added for all tenants.

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  • thanks for your reply. i will accept your answer since it cover my question.thanks. but i am not sure how i need to appraoch this from business perspective ? as it will not be reasonable to inform our custom that if they want to have a cross-site query then they need to upgrade their current license and pay additional cost.. now our customer asked us to have a dashboard which shows all the tracking items which are assigned to the login user from different site collections..
    – John John
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 22:59
  • now i implemented this before for other customers by using the content search web part.. but now since i can not use to Content Search web-part in the current project .. so the only way i can think of to query the content from different site collections, is to use the list rest api.. but i will need to query each list separately and combine the results inside one table .. which seems a huge work compared to using content search web part!!!
    – John John
    Commented Jul 27, 2017 at 22:59
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    Agree..that's why the user voice..But however if you are comfortable with Display Templates and KQL you can achieve almost everything (with more effort) using Search Results WP.
    – Ransher Singh
    Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 13:13
  • now i did not use Search Results WP before.. but what are the main differences between CSWP and SRWP ?? as when any one in sharepoint area talks about cross site content query they always refer to using CSWP ... which is very powerful as you can define what ever properties you need to display and you can use a display template to control the content display.. so does SRWP offers these capabilities also ? and in general why CSWP are always preferred over SRWP ??
    – John John
    Commented Jul 30, 2017 at 23:58
  • .. for example i always use this display template to github.com/SPCSR/DisplayTemplates/tree/master/… to create a tabular results and build a dash-board page, which show results from all the site collections and show them using CSWP .. so can i achieve the same using SRWP ??
    – John John
    Commented Jul 31, 2017 at 0:00

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