SharePoint Jumpstart #2 Making Basic SharePoint Search Work

SharePoint Search & IA Jumpstart Series June 11, 2009 Call 2: Making Basic SharePoint Search Work Hosted by Earley & Associates in partnership with Consejo, Inc.

About the JumpStart call series
Began educational call series in 2005
Past topics have included Taxonomy and Metadata, Content Management, Search, Semantic Technologies
Have had several thousand attendees over the years. Today’s call has over 700 registrants
Calls will be recorded and available for download
Be sure to fill in evaluation to let us know what additional topics you would like to learn about

Community of Practice Calls
Taxonomy Group url: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP
Search Group url: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP
Upcoming calls:
July 15, 2009 – Metadata Maturity Model Survey Findings
August 5, 2009 – Conducting a Search Audit
September 2, 2009 – DITA
October 7, 2009 – Taxonomy Usability Testing
November 4, 2009 – Developing an Ontology
December 2, 2009 – Applications for Topic Maps

Housekeeping
Calls last from 60 – 90 minutes
Email questions during the call to [email_address] . Questions will be taken at the end of the session
You can also skype Rebecca.M.Allen
Questions will be queued through the operator. Press *1 to ask a question.
If you are on twitter, you can follow the discussion and make comments using the hash tag #spjs

Call 2: Making Basic SharePoint Search Work
Shawn Shell, Consejo Inc.
Improving Search through Tagging
Sadie Van Buren, Knowledge Management Associates
Usability Improvements Inside and Out

SharePoint Search & IA Series: Calls 3 – 4
Call 3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools
Thursday, June 18 th
Lars Farstrup, Farstrup Software
Paul Wlodarczyk, Earley & Associates
Call 4: SharePoint IA vs. The Real World
Toby Conrad & Jeremy Bentley, Smartlogic
Jeff Carr & Michael Shulha, Earley & Associates
As session recordings become available, you will receive notification at the email address used at the time of registration.

About Me
Richard Beatch
Senior Consultant at Earley & Associates, Inc.
Ph.D. in Ontology
Specialized in Taxonomy, Search, Metadata, and content architecture
Extensive industry experience leading the implementation and design of taxonomies and search solutions for a range of companies including Apple, McAfee, Allstate, Dell, and AT&T
Contact: richard@earley.com
Blog: http://sethearley.wordpress.com

Search Basics
We have to change our definition of search.
Search algorithms are getting better, but they cannot infer human context & intent.
Taxonomy, metadata and information architecture are key aspects of search.
Search is increasingly looking like navigation.
Search is messy.
A few things we have come to understand about search over the years:

Improving Search through Tagging Shawn Shell, Consejo

Shawn Shell, Principal Consultant
Founder and Principal Consultant for Consejo, Inc.
20 years technology experience with a concentration on content technologies for the last 10 years
Internationally recognized expert on SharePoint products and technologies
Multi-year speaker at national and international conferences on Microsoft technologies
Primary analyst and author of the CMS Watch SharePoint Report 2009 ( http://www.cmswatch.com/SharePoint/report )
Lead over three dozen SharePoint implementations since 2001
Co-wrote first connector between MCMS and SharePoint for Microsoft
Co-author Microsoft Content Management Server 2002: A Complete Guide (Addison-Wesley)

Agenda
Basic Problem Set
Tagging Content
OOTB Configuration Improvements
Practical Success Plan
Resources

Basic Problem Set

Metadata Entry
Users don’t like to enter it
Accuracy is generally suspect
Training is usually non-existent
“ Successful” patterns make everything “special”

Limitations in SharePoint
No cascading Columns (no hierarchy)
Columns do not propagate across Site Collections
Business data inaccessible in Content Types
No integrity in lookup values

Metadata Inconsistencies
Each content source has potentially different metadata
Vocabulary differences across sources
Challenge to leverage advanced search

Tagging Content

Columns = Metadata
There are many types of columns: e.g.
Date
Number
Free form Text
Column values can also be chosen from a list of controlled vocabulary terms

Content Types
Reusable collection of settings to
describes a specific kind of content
Metadata fields (columns)
Content Types can contain custom properties like:
Retention Policy
Workflows
Business processes

Standard Properties

Document Information Panel
Standard in Office 2007
Honors Content Types and Columns

Blog Entry Interface

Blog Post in Word Metadata for blog post also shown in Word

OOTB Configuration

Creating Managed Property
Add column to the index
Exposes the column in advanced search
Enables showing the column in search results views

Advanced Search Full text keywords Extended metadata properties

Metadata Mapping
Allows metadata to correlate between sources
Provides a way to surface in Advanced Search interface
Ensures consistency

Metadata Mapping

URL Removal
Removes URL from index
Prevents result from appearing in search results

Practical Success Plan

Improve metadata with…
Workflow to automate content tagging
Document Information Panel
User profiles and metadata profiles

Improve Search with…
Construct “canned” searches
Leverage Best Bets
Use RSS feeds to surface results “without search”
Experts to review results periodically
Create scopes for content sources

Other Resources

Notable Blogs
Consejo http://blog.consejoinc.com
Earley & Associates http://sethearley.wordpress.com
CMS Watch http://www.cmswatch.com/SharePoint/trends
SharePoint Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/

Other Resources & Downloads
CodePlex http://www.codeplex.com
SharePoint Search Portal http://sharepointsearch.com/default.aspx
SharePoint End User Content Team (MSFT) http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/default.aspx
WSS Demo (Metadata and Content Types) http://www.wssdemo.com/Pages/metadata.aspx

Other Resources & Downloads
Taxonomy Tagging Starter Kit http://cks.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2830
Popular Page Web Part http://popularpages.codeplex.com/

Questions? Shawn Shell Principal Consejo, Inc E: [email_address] P: 773-271-1474 W: www.consejoinc.com

Making Basic SharePoint Search Work – Usability Improvements Inside and Out SharePoint Search & IA Jumpstart Series 6/11/09

SharePoint Consultant with Knowledge Management Associates
Over 20 SharePoint implementations, all of which involved SP Search
About Me

Agenda
Improving usability of the search interface and results
Behind-the-scenes usability improvements
Advanced Search
Interesting things we’ve seen companies do with the SharePoint search interface
Frustrations and Gotchas
Conclusion / Resources

Improving usability of the search interface and results

Adding a title to document properties affects search results Filename only: Filename and Title:

Scopes can be used to serve content in different ways Global search box Tabs in Search Center

Global search results vs. Contextual search results Home Departments Projects Committees Training Reports Sales & Marketing Global Contextual

Global search results are different than Contextual search results Global Contextual

XML/XSL customizations can change the look and feel of Search Results

Behind-the-scenes usability improvements

Site structure impacts relevancy Home Departments Projects Committees Training Reports Sales & Marketing 1 st level 2 nd level

Leverage Best Bets to bring most relevant content to the top of results.

Measure results and make adjustments periodically

Advanced Search

Users don’t tend to use Advanced Search.

Advanced Search works differently from the Global Search on all pages

You can use custom managed properties in Advanced Search.

Interesting things we’ve seen companies do with the SharePoint search interface

No browse, search only

Custom image search

Phone reverse lookup

Faceting and Federating

Frustrations and Gotchas

People search can be ordered by social distance and relevance, but not alpha

Results paging is an estimate, not an absolute number.

Users need to be aware of the time interval between incremental indexes

Once you start serving up indexed content, you’ll find things that shouldn’t be out there

Search Usage analytics reflect pages, not individual items.

Recommendations
Review search usage reports monthly to determine which items need Best Bets, & create Keywords and Best Bets accordingly
If indexing file shares, spot-check for sensitive information and forbidden file types
Make users aware of indexing time
Expose Advanced Search to make it more usable

Resources
Tabular XML customization of search results – fixed query (seen on slide 9) – http://www.u2u.info/Blogs/Patrick/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1669
Tabular XML customization of search results – dynamic query (not shown) - http://blogs.pointbridge.com/Blogs/morse_matt/Pages/Post.aspx?_ID=51
SharePoint custom image search results (seen on Slide 20)- http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/matthew/archive/2008/08/28/sharepoint-image-search-part-1.aspx

Photo Credits Slide # Title & Author 1 “ Fishing by Pukot” by Lenareh 2 Untitled by Winslow Martin 4 “ curiosando…” by Lilith Ecate 9 “ Operating a hand drill at North American Aviation, Inc.” by the Library of Congress 13 “ Scorpion Variation” by Stanka Stoyanova 17 “ Parrot on Skateboard” by Todd Downey / chinatoddmd on Flickr 22 “ Venus Flytrap, Walsall 14/06/2008” by Gary S. Crutchley

Thank You!
Sadie Van Buren
svanburen[at]kmainc.com
Blog
http://amatterofdegree.typepad.com/a_matter_of_degree/
Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/sadalit
Twitter
http://twitter.com/Sadalit
LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?goback=%2Econ&viewProfile=&key=7793076&jsstate=.conbro_0_*51_false_*2_25027
SlideShare
http://www.slideshare.net/sadalit
Also Flickr, Blip, Facebook, MySpace…

Earley & Associates SharePoint Services (in Partnership with Consejo)
SharePoint Assessment
SharePoint Strategy
SharePoint Design (Information Architecture, Workflow, UI)
SharePoint Implementation
SharePoint Integration with Enterprise Search
We help organizations succeed from an enterprise-wide perspective, ensuring findability of content through effective document tagging, metadata management, and search http://www.earley.com/SharePointServices.asp

SharePoint Search & IA Series: Calls 3 – 4
Call 3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools
Lars Farstrup, Farstrup Software
Paul Wlodarczyk, Earley & Associates
Call 4: SharePoint IA vs. The Real World
Toby Conrad & Jeremy Bentley, Smartlogic
Jeff Carr & Michael Shulha, Earley & Associates
As session recordings become available, you will receive notification at the email address used at the time of registration.

Please fill out the survey that should be in your inbox.
Let us know what topics you are interested in and how we can improve the series.
Seth Earley [email_address] www.earley.com 781-820-8080

SharePoint Jumpstart #2 Making Basic SharePoint Search Work

by Earley on Jun 17, 2009

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SharePoint Jumpstart #2 Making Basic SharePoint Search Work — Presentation Transcript