What's new in Azure Cognitive Search

Learn what's new in the service. Bookmark this page to keep up to date with service updates.

• Preview features is a list of current features that haven't been approved for production workloads.
• Previous versions is an archive of earlier feature announcements.

June 2022

Feature	Description	Availability
Semantic search	New support for Storage Optimized tiers (L1, L2)	Public preview.
Debug Sessions	Debug sessions, a built-in editor that runs in Azure portal, is now generally available.	Generally available.

May 2022

Feature	Description	Availability
Power Query connector preview	This indexer data source was introduced in May 2021 but will not be moving forward. Please migrate your data ingestion code by November 2022. See the feature documentation for migration guidance.	Retired

February 2022

Feature	Description	Availability
Index aliases	An index alias is a secondary name that can be used to refer to an index for querying, indexing, and other operations. You can create an alias that maps to a search index and substitute the alias name in places where you would otherwise reference an index name. This gives you added flexibility if you ever need to change which index your application is pointing to. Instead of updating the references to the index name in your application, you can just update the mapping for your alias.	Public preview REST APIs (no portal support at this time).

2021 Archive

Month	Feature	Description
December	Enhanced configuration for semantic search	This is a new addition to the 2021-04-30-Preview API, and are now required for semantic queries. Public preview in the portal and preview REST APIs.
November	Azure Files indexer (preview)	Public preview in the portal and preview REST APIs.
July	Search REST API 2021-04-30-Preview	Public preview announcement.
July	Role-based access control for data plane (preview)	Public preview announcement.
July	Management REST API 2021-04-01-Preview	Modifies Create or Update Service to support new DataPlaneAuthOptions. Public preview announcement.
May	Power Query connector support (preview)	Public preview announcement.
May	Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 indexer	Generally available, using REST api-version=2020-06-30 and Azure portal.
May	Azure MySQL indexer (preview)	Public preview, REST api-version=2020-06-30-Preview, .NET SDK 11.2.1, and Azure portal.
May	More queryLanguages for spell check and semantic results	See Announcement (techcommunity blog). Public preview (by request). Use Search Documents (REST) api-version=2020-06-30-Preview, Azure.Search.Documents 11.3.0-beta.2, or Search explorer in Azure portal.
May	More regions for double encryption	Generally available in all regions, subject to service creation dates.
April	Gremlin API support (preview)	Public preview (by request), using api-version=2020-06-30-Preview.
March	Semantic search (preview)	Search results relevance scoring based on semantic models. Public preview (by request). Use Search Documents (REST) api-version=2020-06-30-Preview or Search explorer in Azure portal. Region and tier restrictions apply.
March	Spell check query terms (preview)	The speller option works with any query type (simple, full, or semantic). Public preview, REST only, api-version=2020-06-30-Preview
March	SharePoint indexer (preview)	Public preview, REST only, api-version=2020-06-30-Preview
March	Normalizers (preview)	Public preview, REST only, api-version=2020-06-30-Preview
March	Custom Entity Lookup skill	Scans for strings specified in a custom, user-defined list of words and phrases. Generally available.
February	Reset Documents (preview)	Available in the Search REST API 2020-06-30-Preview.
February	Availability Zones	Search services with two or more replicas in certain regions, as listed in Scale for performance, gain resiliency by having replicas in two or more distinct physical locations. The region and date of search service creation determine availability.
February	Azure CLI Azure PowerShell	New revisions now provide the full range of operations in the Management REST API 2020-08-01, including support for IP firewall rules and private endpoint. Generally available.
January	Solution accelerator for Azure Cognitive Search and QnA Maker	Pulls questions and answers out of the document and suggest the most relevant answers. A live demo app can be found at https://aka.ms/qnaWithAzureSearchDemo. This feature is an open-source project (no SLA).

Service re-brand

Azure Search was renamed to Azure Cognitive Search in October 2019 to reflect the expanded (yet optional) use of cognitive skills and AI processing in service operations. API versions, NuGet packages, namespaces, and endpoints are unchanged. New and existing search solutions are unaffected by the service name change.

Service updates

Service update announcements for Azure Cognitive Search can be found on the Azure web site.