Introduction to SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search

Corey RothBlog: www.dotnetmafia.comTwitter: twitter.com/coreyroth

Corey Roth

• Consultant for Stonebridge• Worked in Consumer Electronics, Travel, Advertising, and

Energy industries• Currently doing SharePoint development specializing in

Enterprise Search• Microsoft Award for Customer Excellence (ACE) Winner• MCTS: MOSS 2007 Configuring, Developer• Very active in SharePoint community• E-mail: coreyroth@gmail.com • Twitter: twitter.com/coreyroth• Blog: www.dotnetmafia.com

What is Enterprise Search?

It helps you find your stuff…

What is Enterprise Search?

• Enterprise Search is one of Microsoft’s current offerings to do search in the Enterprise

• Included in SharePoint 2010, MOSS 2007• Also available as a stand alone product (Search Server 2010/

2008 / Search Server Express)• Allows for indexing and querying of documents from

multiple sources (i.e.: documents, web sites, file shares, Active Directory (people), databases, web services, etc.)

Components of Enterprise Search

• Content Sources• Crawled Properties• Managed Properties• Scopes• File Types• Crawl Rules

Content Sources

• Defines what is being crawled• Configure a crawl for SharePoint, Web Sites, File Shares,

Active Directory, Line of Business Systems (using BCS) etc.• Specifies a full and incremental crawl schedule• Can manually start crawls here

Search Center

• Out of the box site and web parts for searching and displaying results

• Can be created using the Site Settings menu on the root web site by enabled certain features

• Search Results can be customized using XSLT• MOSS 2007 supports keyword search only for now (no

wildcard) – For wildcard search alternative see wildcardsearch.codeplex.com (no longer necessary in SharePoint 2010)

Metadata Properties

• After a full crawl, Crawled Properties are created for any metadata discovered (i.e.: Site Columns, Columns in a database, etc.)

• Properties can be of type text, integer, decimal, date / time, boolean

• Only text properties are included in the index by default• Managed Property - a property that can be queried on or

displayed on the results page• One or more Crawled Properties can be mapped to a

Managed Property• Managed Properties can be used to define scopes

Scopes

• Scopes allow you to predefine subsets of the search index using rules

• Rules can be created by web address, content source, or managed property query (i.e.: Color:”Red”)

• Scopes can be grouped together in Scope Display Groups for use in the Search Center

Querying Search

• Used to search by Managed Properties• Can specify Scopes (Scope:”MyScope”)• Can be passed via URL to CoreResultsWebPart (k Query

String parameter)• AND implied between each keyword (i.e.: Color:”Red”

Size:”M” is the same Color=“Red” AND Size=“M”)• OR implied when multiple keywords of the same managed

property used (i.e.: Color:”Red” Color:”Blue” translates to Color=“Red” OR Color=“Blue”)

• Asterisk can be used to do wildcard searches (SP2010)• Supports operators such as >, <, >=, <= etc (SP2010)

People Search in SharePoint 2010

• Great way to find people in your organization• Improved in SharePoint 2010• Support phonetic searching and synonyms• Gateway to new social features

Search Center – Web Parts

• SearchBoxEx• CoreResultsWebPart• BestBets• Paging• AdvancedSearch• PeopleCoreResultsWebPart – People Search• RefinementWebPart (new in SharePoint 2010)

Search Center - Customization

• CoreResultsWebPart displays search results• Columns property – XML specifying Managed Properties• XSL – Transform the HTML output of the search results• Column names are specified in lower case in XSL (i.e.: Color

will be color)

Indexing Other Sources

• File Shares• Database• People

Drawbacks of Enterprise Search

• No out of the box Wildcard Search (i.e.: docum*) – Use DotNetMafia WildcardSearchWebPart – http://wildcardsearch.codeplex.com (MOSS 2007)

• Search Center customizations limited to XSLT• Advanced Search web part is ugly and not very configurable• Cannot exclude sections of pages to not be indexed• Most search web parts are sealed and cannot be inherited

from

What’s new in 2010?

• Lots of things!• More Options – Search Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010,

FAST Search Server 2010• Refinement Web Part• Keyword Query Syntax Improvements – Wildcards!• Multiple Index Servers• Greatly improved People Search• Common API between SharePoint Search and FAST

Visual, Conversational Search

Thumbnails

Sorting on any property

Similarity Search

Visual Best Bets

Scrolling PowerPointPreviewsRefinement with

countson any property

FAST Search Results

Questions?

Corey RothBlog: www.dotnetmafia.comTwitter: twitter.com/coreyroth