Getting The Most Out Of SP Search SPSTC

Getting The Most Out Of SharePoint Search

Most search still sucks
You can be
a hero
with 2010
Also check out:
“Why Your SharePoint Search Sucks” by Michal Pisarek @1130am
Hike on over to CC111

Search 101
Search Experience
Content – Organizing Your Data
Customization
Practical Tips
Topics

John Ross
MVP SharePoint Server
Sr. SharePoint Consultant – SharePoint911
Author
Professional SharePoint 2010 Branding
Real World SharePoint 2010
Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration
Blog:
http://www.sharepoint911.com/blogs/john
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/johnrossjr
Orlando, FL

Companies often buy SharePoint, but search is an afterthought….but it shouldn’t be!
Search is often one of the most powerful sources of ROI in SharePoint
The best part is – it doesn’t take much to do great things with search in SharePoint!
What is this session all about?

Search 101
Concepts
Search centerUI for users to issue queries and interact with results
Query serversAccept queries from users and return results
Query Servers
Scale Points
IndexingExtract information from items to enable efficient matching
Indexes
CrawlingCollect content to be made searchable
Crawlers
Content sourcesWhere the content lives
Content
Content
Content

Search SKUS

Demo:
Tour of the SharePoint Search Experience

Search Center
Windows 7 connector
Related Searches
Launch in Office Web Apps
Refinement panel
Federated results

Can be used to perform broad or granular searching
Free-Text words and phrases
Boolean Operators*
Wildcard Operator*
Inclusion and Exclusion Operators*
Property Restrictions
* Means new for SP2010
Performing queries

Property Restriction:
Product:Gears
Filetype:pdf
Boolean Operator
Gears OR Sprockets
Wildcard (really just prefix matching)
Micro*
Support for complex queries
(“SharePoint Search” OR “Live Search”) AND (title:”Keyword Syntax” OR title:”Query Syntax”)
Sample Queries

Social / People search
Phonetic and nickname matching
Refine by focus, expertise, and other attributes
Sort by relevance, name or social distance
Recently authored content
Expertise identification

Desktop and SharePoint search
My Stuff
(Desktop Search)
Find files on your PC
Work with searchdirectly fromdesktopapplications
Our Stuff
(SharePoint Search)
Enterprise-wide content
People Search
Department content
Team and project info
Remote PCs
and servers
Local documents
and mail files
Enterprise content
Line of Business data
Together
Enterprise search experience integrated within Windows 7
Tie together siloed business applications

Federation
DEMO

Search Content Needs Gardeners

Metadata
Metadata is data about your data
Example: Think about your car…
Make, Model, Color, Other options

Top 4 Organization Tips
4. Encourage natural hierarchies
Nest less important sites
Discourage flat structures
3. Use natural language for meta-data
http://sales/emea/presentations/mercedes.doc
http://sales
http://products
http://china
http://japan
http://producta
http://productb
vs
vs
http://products/producta
http://sales/china
http://slsemea/p_mcds3.doc
http://products/productb
http://sales/japan

Top 2 Tips to Organize your Data
2. Supply copious meta-data
Authors, Dates, Titles
Tags
1. Encourage archiving and garbage collection
Archive obsolete data
Delete junk
Add expiration dates
Use the noindex tag

A Note on Indexing…
If it’s not indexed, you can’t find it!!
Crawl as much high-value data as you can afford
Users often confuse poor ranking with failure-to-index (ie. crawl).
You can index content from anywhere, not just SharePoint
May need to use 3rd-party connectors
(such as BA-Insight’s)
Mixed Security models can be tricky

Customizing the Search Experience
Out of the box search is like an off the rack suit
It works well for most
Many will custom tailoring
Common Examples
Customized results
Refiners
Search visualization
Improve usability
Search driven applications!

Customizing the Search Experience
Custom search web parts, search driven applications
….
Keyword searching, web part configuration, scopes…
Customize search results, custom refiners,
…..

Quick and high value customization!
Defined areas of content
Can be defined in the Service Application or at Site Collection
Web address
Property query
Content source
* Search scopes are not security
Search Scopes

Scopes

Demo:
Customizing the Search Center

Creating scopes is a little different
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jorgeni/archive/2010/02/26/search-scopes-in-fast-search-for-sharepoint-part-1.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jorgeni/archive/2010/03/11/search-scopes-in-fast-search-for-sharepoint-part-2.aspx
Follow these steps to ensure accuracy of results from scopes!
Have FAST Search for SharePoint?

Master Pages and Search
By Default the Search Centers use Minimal.Master which isn’t great for a number of reasons
No navigation – at all.
If you apply ANY other master page to it – it’ll break. Unless you take some extra steps…

Nice huh?

Tired of the search boxing showing in the breadcrumb when you try to get navigation in your search center?
Randy Drisgill has a blog post that talks about what is happening:
http://bit.ly/aXz3BG
Best option for a fix: SharePoint 2010 Custom Master Page Adapter for Search
http://sp2010searchadapters.codeplex.com/
Custom Search Center Master Page

Searching on custom metadata
Does anyone really wants to sit here while I run 40 minutes of crawls?
Adding your metadata and setting it up to be searched is easy – just not something we can do here.
http://www.sharepoint911.com/blogs/john/archive/2011/03/18/creating-custom-managed-properties.aspx

The Quality Improvement Cycle

Identifying the problem queries
Listen to your users
Discussions, email, …
Provide feedback web part that creates a SharePoint list
Look at the site analytics reports
Popular queries (which queries should work well)
Queries that failed (which queries didn’t work well)
Look at Best Bets
Hints at which queries need keyword management
Hints of possible crawl sources

Basics of search
Relevancy is key
Improving it is easy
SharePoint Search is a powerful tool but in the hands of a skilled ninja it can be a deadly business weapon….or maybe get you a raise?
There’s tons of ROI in search!!
What did we talk about?

Q&A
john@sharepoint911.com
jeff.fried@ba-insight.net
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Getting The Most Out Of SP Search SPSTC

by John Ross on Aug 15, 2011

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Getting The Most Out Of SP Search SPSTC — Presentation Transcript