SharePoint 2013 Search Certification Overview

SharePoint 2013 Search
Overview for Certifications
A round the world review of search related topics in all
SharePoint certification exams for 2013

Matthew J. Bailey, MCTS
Twitter: @SPSChicago Hashtag #SPSChicago

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| SharePoint Saturday Chicago 2013

Me, me, me… e, me, me…
I consider myself a ―SharePoint All-Rounder‖. My job tasks vary including Administration,
Development, Training, Analysis, UAT and Project Management. My job changes daily
based on the crazy life of an IT fellow in corporate America, but it keeps things interesting!
I am have worked with SharePoint for almost six years. I do not consider myself an expert
but have a fair amount of knowledge with the technology and currently use it daily in my
career.
If I don’t know an answer to one of your questions, I will try to find it out or point you in the
right direction!

SharePoint Business Analyst &
Technical Project Manager
JDSU

Matthew J. Bailey, MCTS

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You, you, you!u, you, you!
What experience with
search in SharePoint 2013
do you have so far?
• Who has heard never heard of FAST/SP2013 search search and is not
familiar with what it is?
• Who has heard of FAST/SP2013 search, kind of knows what it is but has
not used it?
• Who has/is currently using/used FAST/SP2013 search already?
• Who uses FAST/SP2013 search almost daily as a part of their
environment, production, test or otherwise?
• Who does not fall into any of these categories ? Are you just trying to
be difficult and need to feel special? I know I do!


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Where Did You Find All This Stuff?
•

At time of this presentation, there are 2 official study guides available for
the 70-331 & 70-332 exams and highlights were referenced from these.

Objective 4.4: Manage search

•

For the 70-488 & 70-499, there are no study guides released yet (but
some are expected in a couple months). Information for these exams
was gathered from other’s in the SharePoint community & the Microsoft
certification website.

•

The 77-419 (MOS SharePoint) exam has been delayed until June of 2014,
criteria for this could change at any time.

* Remember, these are guidelines, not rules. Microsoft can alter
the content in their exams at any time, so overprepare (IMHO).

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Search in Exam 70-331 (MCSE)
Core Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
Exam 70-331 has 3 areas of study covering search:

1. Managing Search
2. Create and Configure Enterprise Search
3. Manage T
axonomy


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1. Managing Search
•
•
•
•
•
•

1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6

Manage result sources
Manage query rules
Manage display templates
Manage Search Engine Optimization (SEO) settings
Manage result types
Manage a search schema



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1.1 Result Sources
•
•

Used to scope search results to a certain type of content or subset of search results.
Used to federate queries with the local SharePoint index, a remote SharePoint index,
OpenSearch, or a Microsoft Exchange Server index.
Used to be called search scopes in prior versions
Unlike 2010, result sources can be created & configured by site collection administrators,
site owners, and site designers for use at the site collection and site levels. Search service
administration privileges are still required for creating farm-scoped result sources.
There are some preconfigured results sources that are included with a SharePoint install.


•
•
•

* EXAM TIP: Although search scopes are deprecated, they can still be viewed and used in
queries. They cannot, however, be edited in SharePoint 2013; if you need to change a scope,
you will instead need to replace it with a new result source that accomplishes the same
function

More Resources

http://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj683115.aspx

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1.2 Query Rules
•

Composed of 3 different components:
1. query conditions that cause the rule to fire
2. the actions that occur when the rule is fired
3. the ability to provide a time window for when the rule is available to fire. (optionally)
Promoted result (old best bet) is a component of this?
Used to promote certain search results, show blocks of additional results, or influence the
ranking of search results.
Available to search application administrator in Central Admin but also at the site collection
and site administration level.


•
•
•

* EXAM TIP: Be familiar with each of the query conditions and the potential effect they can
have on the query rules.

More Resources

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj871676.aspx


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1.3 Display T
emplates
•

Control formatting and display of results from search-specific web parts (display templates
are available only for search-driven web parts).
There are two major groupings of display templates:
1. Control templates control the organization and layout of search results as well as the
overall look of the web part
2. Item templates Provide the display characteristics of individual items displayed in
search results within the web part


•

* EXAM TIP: If you do not see the Design Manager link in the settings menu, you may not
have publishing features activated in this site collection (which are necessary to use display
templates).

More Resources

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj945138.aspx

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1.4 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) settings
•

There are three distinct levels of SEO configuration within SharePoint 2013:
• Publishing pages
• Site collection
• XML site mapping
A publishing page on a SharePoint site can be configured with a series of SEO properties:
• Name, Title, Browser Title, Meta Description, Keywords, Exclude From Internet Search
Engines
A site that has anonymous access can also enable the search engine Sitemap feature. This
feature by generating a sitemap that auto-regenerates. It will also add two additional fields
to the SEO properties page, Sitemap Priority and Sitemap Change Frequency.
• Sitemap Priority - indicates the weighting (0.0 - 1.0) of the importance of a page.
• Sitemap Change Frequency - tells how regularly you expect the pages to change


•
•

•

EXAM TIP: Be familiar with the structure of a meta tag and the way it can be added for
your Internet–facing SharePoint site.


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1.5 Manage Result Types
•
•

Evaluate queries, based on a sets of rules, then apply the appropriate display template.
When a query is made via search (for instance, a series of Word documents), the result set
that is returned is evaluated for the way the returned information should be presented. The
Result Type defines the fields for evaluating the result set in terms of conditions and actions:
• 1. Conditions: For the Microsoft Word result set, two conditions are evaluated:
• A. Which result source should the item match? (All sources)
• B. What types of content should match? (Microsoft Word)
• 2. Actions: One action is applied, consisting of two parts:
• A. What should these results look like? (Word item)
• B. What is the appropriate display template URL?
(~sitecollection/_catalogs/masterpage/Display Templates/Search/Item_Word.js)

•

EXAM TIP: Be familiar with the four different display templates folders and which affect the
result type functionality.



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1.6 Manage a Search Schema
•

Metadata is extracted as crawled properties from documents, items & pages during a
search crawl. This metadata can be structured content (columns such as title, author) or
unstructured (such as keywords extracted from the body of the document). In order for a
user to be able to search on a piece of metadata, this crawled property must be mapped to
a managed property. After this task is complete, queries can be performed against this
metadata (such as looking up an item’s order number, stored in a list column).

•

EXAM TIP: Be familiar with the configuration and process of converting a crawled property
to a managed property.



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2. Create and Configure Enterprise Search
•
•
•
•
•
•

2.1 Planning and configuring a search topology
2.2 Planning and configuring content sources
2.3 Planning and configuring crawl schedules
2.4 Planning and configuring crawl rules
2.5 Planning and configuring crawl performance
2.6 Planning and configuring security trimming



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2.1 Planning and configuring a search topology

There is a lot in this topic!
Elements of FAST + extinct Web Analytics service = SP 2013 search. Standard SP CAL has
Objective 4.4: FAST features in it
limited Manage search
• Search Components:
• Crawl component: crawls what you say, get metadata/crawled properties, moves to
next step; processing
• Content Processing component: transforms crawled items before index component,
maps crawled properties to managed properties, passes info to next step; analytics
processing component
• Analytics Processing component analysis & reporting, auto improves search
relevance based on user behavior, creates search reports and recommendations
• Index component receives items from the Content Processing component before
writing them to the search index, handles incoming & outgoing queries from the
Query Processing component, retrieves information & returns result sets to and from
the search index.
• Query Processing analyzes queries before passing to Index for result set retrieval.
• Search Administration component no active role in search requests, only runs
system processes pertaining to search and adds/initializes new search component
•
•


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2.1 Planning and configuring a search topology (cont…)

Databases:
• Crawl database This database stores tracking information and crawled items details;
also crawl metrics (such as the last crawl time/ID).
• Link database This database stores information about search clicks as well as
information extracted by the Content Processing component; both types of
information are analyzed by the Analytics Processing component
• Analytics Reporting database Reports are generated from the contents of this
database, which include analysis statistics as well as the results of usage analysis.
• Search Administration database Store settings
EXAM TIP: If you need more detail on the status of search in your farm, you can run the GetSPEnterpriseSearchStatus mdlet in Windows PowerShell.
EXAM TIP: now the differences between changing an active search topology (a topology with
an index requires cloning) and a no-content search topology (no cloning required).
•

*NOTE: IMPORTANT EMPTYING THE INDEX RENDERS SEARCH
TEMPORARILY UNUSABLE


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2.2 Planning and Configuring Content Sources

A content source specifies settings that define what types of content to crawl, what start
addresses are used, what priority the crawl has, and on what schedule the content is crawled.
Objective 4.4: Manage search eight types of content to be crawled in a content source:
SharePoint 2013 enables
• SharePoint Sites
• Web Sites
• File Shares
• Exchange Public Folders
• Lotus Notes
• Documentum
• Line of Business Data
• Custom Repository
EXAM TIP: Know which content sources are available for use in a default setting: SharePoint
Sites, Web Sites, File Shares, Exchange Public Folders, and (conditionally) Line of Business Data.
The Line of Business Data content source type requires that at least one Business Data
Connectivity (BDC) service application has been created.
•

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2.3 Planning and Configuring Crawl Schedules

• Crawl search schedules
• Authentication
Objective 4.4: Manage search / Manage crawl
• Rule execution order

EXAM TIP: Continuous crawls are available for use only with content sources that are
SharePoint sites.
EXAM TIP: If you ever need to reset the search index for your SharePoint farm, you have to do
a full crawl of all content sources that should be included within the newly created index.


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2.4 Planning and Configuring Crawl Rules
•
•

Rule path
Crawl configuration


EXAM TIP: Know which content sources are available for use in a default setting: SharePoint
Sites, Web Sites, File Shares, Exchange Public Folders, and (conditionally) Line of Business Data.
The Line of Business Data content source type requires that at least one Business Data
Connectivity (BDC) service application has been created.


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2.5 Planning and Configuring Crawl Performance

There are three facets of optimizing performance of the Crawl component within
SharePoint Server 2013:
Objective 4.4: Manage search much crawl interaction the content sources can handle
• Determining how
• Deciding how best to prepare and tune the servers that host the Crawl component
• Deciding how to monitor the Crawl component
• Consider coordinating crawls with the administrator(s) of the ―crawled‖ system for potential
configuration changes like these:
• Time crawled What time of the day is considered ―nonbusiness‖ but also does not
interfere with regular processes such as backup jobs?
• Crawl duration How long will the crawl take?
• Items that are crawled Perhaps it is only important to crawl certain folders or sites,
thus reducing the overall load on the content source and improving crawl metrics.
• Monitor Search Health Reports
• Monitor Crawl Log
•


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2.6 Planning and configuring security trimming
•
•

Content Access accounts
Content Access Default Account


IMPORTANT Unpublished items that are in draft mode, are not approved, or are not in a
published state are unavailable in search results.
EXAM TIP: Specific content access accounts are assigned as part of crawl rules within the
Specify Authentication section.


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3. Managing T
axonomy
•

Configuring search refinement


•

•

http://blog.ithinksharepoint.com/2013/09/27/building-a-sharepoint-2013search-refiner-with-custom-intervals/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/sharepoint_made_easy/archive/2013/03/19/stepby-step-configuration-to-add-custom-refiners-in-the-refinement-panel-ofsearch-results-page-for-sharepoint-online.aspx


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Advanced Solutions of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013
Plan and Configure a Search Workload
• Planning and configuring search result relevancy
• Planning and configuring index freshness
• Planning and configuring result sources
• Planning and configuring the end-user experience
• Planning and configuring a search schema
• Analyzing search analytics reports


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1. Planning and configuring search result relevancy
Objective 4.4: components can affect search results
• ManyManage search

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Building a thesaurus
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219579
Defining a custom entity extraction
Adding query rules and suggestions
Designating authoritative pages
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262796.aspx


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2. Planning and Configuring Index Freshness
Objective 4.4: Manage Changes made to SharePoint 2013 mean that the server
• IMPORTANT:search
responsible for handling search queries needs more resources. This was an
effort to move some of the work away from the SQL Server to improve
performance.
• Before continuous crawling can be used, it must be enabled according to
content-source level (applicable only to the SharePoint sites’ contentsource type). Default setting is running every 15 minutes.

EXAM TIP: New in SharePoint 2013, continuous crawling is the best way to keep
search content as fresh as possible. You can expect to see this concept on the exam in
some way, both among the multiple-choice questions as well as in the case studies.


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3. Planning and Configuring Result Sources
• Search verticals
• Search navigation
EXAM TIP SharePoint 2013 can no longer create scopes; result sources have
replaced them. The scopes of All Results and People exist as part of the
SharePoint installation. As part of the exam, knowing that creating a scope
wouldn’t be a step for anything is important. You should also be aware that
result sources can integrate different sources so that results appear in the same
set of search results.


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4. Planning and Configuring End-User Experience

SharePoint 2010 needed a lot of XSLT to modify the results. Now
designers can target individual types of items and have them display
differently, with specific metadata displayed and HTML that can be
modified to show links and/or graphics in addition to the content.
•
Manage query rules
•
Display templates
•
Result Types
•

EXAM TIP Display templates and result types are a totally new way to
modify the look and feel of search results. You probably won’t need to know
how to add HTML elements, but knowledge of the concepts and some
details—such how a result type is made up of a condition and an action—is
expected.

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5. Planning and Configuring Search Schema

A search schema is composed of managed property mappings and
managed property settings
IMPORTANT creating refiners, when creating a managed property to be used
as a refiner, it must be both Refinable and Queryable.
•

Overview of crawled and managed properties
Manage the search schema
EXAM TIP Several changes have been made to the categories for crawled
properties. These changes are significant enough that they might appear in
test questions. Be aware of which items, such as Searchable and Queryable,
can be set across all crawled properties within a category.

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6. Analyzing Search Analytics
• Search Analytics
• Search Clicks This type analyzes what a user clicks in the search results, used to
increase or decrease the relevancy of items in the search index.
• Click Distance This type analyzes the distance between an authoritative page
and the item by the number of clicks between the two.
• Social Tags This type analyzes searches by social tags (words or phrases). By
default, these aren’t used for refinement or rankings.
• Anchor Text Processing This type analyzes how items are interlinked. The text
associated with the link is also included in the analyses & help determine rank
and relevancy.
• Social Distance This type focuses only on users who follow people.
• Search Reports top queries, no results queries, and number of queries.
• Deep Links based on what people actually click in the search results.
• Click Distance This type analyzes the distance between an authoritative page
and the item by the number of clicks between the two.

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6. Analyzing Search Analytics (continued)
• Usage Analytics
• Usage Counts when a user clicks an item or views an item.
• Recommendations This type analyzes how users interact with an item.
• Activity Ranking This type uses the rate at which items are clicked to
determine relevancy.
• Popularity Trends This Excel report shows daily and monthly counts for a site
collection, site, or even a specific item.
• Most Popular Items


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Search in Exam 70-488 (MCSD)

Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Core Solutions

Exam 70-488 has listed very little study material regarding search:
• Create search-driven navigation

• No Code Solutions
• Display Templates
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj945138.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj944947.aspx


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Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Advanced Solutions

Exam 70-489 Has a Approximately Six Search Related
Compenents to Design & Implement Search

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Query search
Implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Customize search results
Customize content processing
Implement E-discovery
Create solutions by using MMS


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1. Query Search

This objective may include but is not limited to:
• Build search queries using FQL (FAST Query Language) & KQL (Keyword Query
Language)
• Execute search queries using client-side object model (CSOM)
• Web Services
• REST
•

•
•

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj163951.aspx new for search for devs
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/office/jj163300.aspx search in 2013

http://www.slideshare.net/sharepointbits/understanding-and-programmingthe-sharepoint-rest-api
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/office/dn423226.aspx using search query
APIs
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp142380.aspx


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Build Search Queries with KQL & FQL

SharePoint Server 2013 search supports Keyword Query Language (KQL) and FAST Query Language (FQL)
search syntax for building search queries.
• Keyword Query Language (KQL): KQL is the default query language for building search queries.
Using KQL, you specify the search terms or property restrictions that are passed to the SharePoint
search service.
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/office/ee558911.aspx
• FAST Query Language (FQL): FQL is a structured query language that supports advanced query
operators. You can use FQL when you want to create complex queries that you want to pass
programmatically to the SharePoint search service. FQL isn’t intended to be exposed to end users, and
is disabled by default.
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff394606.aspx

More Resources
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/office/ee558911.aspx


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2. Implement Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Unsure at this time how this differs from the SEO skills required for the
70-331 exam
•


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3. Customize Search Results
• From a programmatic view:
• Create custom result sources


• Create display templates

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/office/jj945138.aspx
• Create result type

• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/dn135239
• Create custom refiner definitions

• Implement query rules


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4. Customize Content Processing
•

Covers feed external content types, implement content processing extensions (entity
extraction), configure out-of-the box content processing, create content mappings


More Resources

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg512148(v=office.14).aspx
Custom Entity Extraction (Thank you Corey Roth)
http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2013/01/08/nometadata-no-problem-custom-entity-extraction-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj163968.aspx
Content Enrichment Service
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdev/archive/2012/11/13/customize-thesharepoint-2013-search-experience-with-a-content-enrichment-web-service.aspx

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5. Implement E-discovery

• Create a new hold
Objective 4.4: Manage searchMicrosoft Exchange Web Services
• Integrate with
• Specify content sources and search criteria
• Export discovery sets
• Manage permissions for hold
•


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6. Create Solutions by Using MMS

• Profile Pages
Objective 4.4: Manage search Catalog
• Use the Product
• Use cross-site publishing
• Integrate with Search
• Implement metadata-driven navigation
•


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More Resources for Certification Study
Vlad Catrinescu’s Ultimate Certification Study Guide for SharePoint 2013
http://sharepoint-community.net/page/the-ultimate-guide-to-sharepoint-server-2013-certifications-v2
Microsoft certification site
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-us/certification-overview.aspx
Books: Exam Prep: 70-331 & 70-332 - MCSE: SharePoint 2013
http://www.amazon.com/Exam-Ref-70-332-Solutions-SharePoint/dp/0735678103
http://www.amazon.com/Exam-Ref-70-331-Solutions-SharePoint/dp/0735678081
Videos
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/EXM10#fbid=
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePointConference/2012?sort=sequential&direction=desc&term=search#theSessions
Mahmoud Mahmoud’s slides on 70-488 & 70-489
http://www.slideshare.net/MahmoudMahmoud3/exam-70-489-developing-microsoft-share-point-server2013-advanced-solutions-learning-resources
http://www.slideshare.net/MahmoudMahmoud3/exam-70488-developing-microsoft-sharepoint-server2013-core-solutions-leraning-resources


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@matthewjbailey1
http://www.matthewjbailey.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjbailey1
sharepointmatthew@gmail.com
http://www.matthewjbailey.com/bestresources-for-search-in-sharepoint-2013/
Download my slides and get started at:

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SharePoint 2013 Search Certification Overview

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