I am using Examine to Search a list of Microsoft Graph Users. I’m having trouble with returning the expected results for phrase searches. A search for “Project Controller” returns all records containing “Project” or “Controller”. When I want only records containing “Project Controller”.

My existing Query:

public async Task<List<User>> Search(string query = "")
{
    string[] terms = query.Split(' ');

    _allUsers = await GetAllUsers();

    List<User> matchingUsers = new List<User>();

    if (_examineManager.TryGetIndex("ColleaguesIndex", out _colleaguesIndex))
    {

        var results = _colleaguesIndex.Searcher.CreateQuery(defaultOperation: BooleanOperation.Or)
                    .GroupedOr(searchFields, query.MultipleCharacterWildcard()).Or()
                    .GroupedOr(searchFields, query.Escape()).Or()                   
                    .GroupedOr(searchFields, terms)
                    .Execute();

        var resultsID = results.Select(r => r.Id);

        matchingUsers = _allUsers.Where(u => resultsID.Contains(u.OnPremisesSamAccountName)).ToList();
    }

    return matchingUsers;
}

When searching for “Project Controller” I get 68 results. There are 14 Users with the Job Title = “Project Controllers”.

I tried changing .GroupedOr(searchFields, terms) to .GroupedAnd(searchFields, terms).

I tried changing .GroupedOr(searchFields, query.Escape()) to .GroupedAnd(searchFields, query.Escape())

In both cases I end up with 0 results. The problem with changing these to GroupedAnd is I think it’s checking to see if ALL fields in my searchFields = “Project Controller”.

I simplified my query for testing purposes and I ran this:

var results = _colleaguesIndex.Searcher.CreateQuery().GroupedOr(searchFields, query.Escape()).Execute();

…and got 0 results. That I can’t explain. I would have expected 14 results there. Needless to say I’m befuddled by how to achieve a phrase search on a group of fields.