The document discusses Microsoft's search offerings, primarily focusing on SharePoint and Fast Search, detailing differences for end-users, IT professionals, and developers. It addresses common concerns about search effectiveness, costs, and the importance of proper document organization and metadata. Additionally, it hints at future developments in search capabilities, emphasizing the need for continuous tuning and integration within the SharePoint ecosystem.

1. Microsoft Search offering
FOCUS ON SHAREPOINT
THIERRY JANSSENS – 8/12/2011
1.

2. Questions often asked …
What Search products does Microsoft offer?
What are the major differences for End-users?
What are the differences for IT Professionals?
Are there any differences for Developers?
Why don’t people use Search on our Intranet?
The results are poor and not clear, what are my options?
Why bother organizing my documents if I have “FAST”?
Does FAST have all the functionalities as Sharepoint Search?
What are the typical costs for both products?
What else can search do for me?
Are there other search products from Microsoft that could help me?
What about the future of the Microsoft search offering?
2.

3. Search products for Sharepoint
Sharepoint Foundation 2010
Sharepoint Server 2010
FAST Search Server for Sharepoint
Search Server 2010 Express
Search Server 2010 ?
30/11/2011
3.

4. Search Server 2010 (Express?)
4.

5. FAST?
Formerly FAST ESP
Norwegian
Since 1997
Bought by MS in 2008
Summer 2011, only Sharepoint FAST
www.fastsearch.com
5.

6. FAST: What does it look like?
FAST/Sharepoint result page:
Refiners
Results
View in browser
Thumbnail preview
Demo
6.

7. Major differences for end-users
Federated results Same capabilities, plus:
Metadata based refiners Thumbnails & Previews
Query Suggestions, Did You Visual Best Bets
Mean & Related Searches Deep refiners with counts
People search Sorting on any property
View in Browser Better language support
Richer query language
7.
© based on SPConference Rich

8. And for IT Professionals?
Enterprise Scale-out Same capabilities, plus:
Full Fault Tolerance Extreme scale-out
PowerShell support Content Processing pipeline
SCOM support Tunable relevance ranking
Full search reporting OOB JDBC connector
8.
© based on SPConference Rich

9. Major differences for developers
Public web parts Same capabilities, plus:
New connector framework Extend content processing
Integrated with BCS Include ext. data in relevance
Tooling in VS2010 Use advanced queries (FQL)
9.
© based on SPConference Rich

10. Pitfalls with FAST
FAST doesn’t have…
Alerting
Refinement & relevance on social tags
Index mirroring across data centers
OOB monitoring (FAST requires SCOM)
Points of attention
FAST requires quite some infrastructure
No upgrade path from ESP to FS4SP
Configuring FAST is not straightforward
It is a strange environment for .net people
10.

11. Why don’t people use search on our
Intranet?
Most vendors have decent search engines
There’s no search engine that can read users’ minds
Were stakeholders interviewed?
Was the engine monitored and adjusted on an ongoing basis?
Was there a POC and phased implementation?
Add other sources: File servers, business data, other websites
Use taxonomies, tagging, promote properties as facets
Exclude no longer relevant data (archive)
Configure best bets, visual clues, synonyms,…
Scope on certain content types
11.

12. Tuning the results
Why bother organizing my documents if I have “FAST”?
Metadata is “key” for search engines
But … then I need to tag all info ???
… with FAST you can interfere much more through the
pipeline model
Demo
12.

13. What are the typical costs?
• 3 for FAST • Servers
• 2 for SPSearch • CALs
• Standard
• Disksize • Enterprise
Hardware Licenses
• Install & Config • Measure
• Customizing results • Tune
• Reindex! • End-user follow-up
Configuration Search Team
13.

14. What else can search do for me?
Provide a navigation
Facilitate document roll-up
Reporting or overviews
Who-is-who
14.

15. Other search “things” ?
Desktop Search
SQL 2008 iFTS
Exchange 2010
LookingGlass
BING
OpenSearch
15.

16. What about the future?
Probably on the BI side of search
Search Based Applications
Visualization of results
What we (Sharepoint) hope for…
Better integration between SP / FAST
Where is FAST Home?
Search Business Center?
Converge to one product?
Should be for the Sharepoint ecosystem
Other technologies require other engines
16.

17. If Search is important for your company, than treat it that way
Tune,
measure,
repeat 17.