An introduction to the key elements that helped us find success in using SharePoint Search to create a productive extranet environment for collaboration with external stakeholders. Video recording available on YouTube as well.

1. Utah SharePoint & Office 365 August Meeting
Our Key Elements to Search Success
Our approach to tagging
and organizing our data
Taxonomy
Adjusting settings to surface
the right content as if by magic
Search Settings
Bad data clutters search,
and it gets worse from there
Retention Policies
SharePoint Search is powerful
Small efforts make big impacts
Display Templates
Presentation by Greg McMurray, Special thanks to Lucidworks for sponsoring

2. Greg McMurray
• Experience in Aerospace, Branding & Marketing,
Energy, Healthcare, Software
• Currently Senior Software Engineer at WECC
• Co-Founder of Aritus Computer Services, L.L.C.
• President of SharePoint / Office 365
and Dynamics 365 User Groups #MUGUT
• Find me online:
- @goyuix
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/goyuix
- https://stackoverflow.com/cv/goyuix
( top 2% of users )

3. The IT Crowd – Searching with Google

4. Our Key Elements to Search Success
Our approach to tagging
and organizing our data
Taxonomy
Adjusting settings to surface
the right content as if by magic
Search Settings
Bad data clutters search,
and it gets worse from there
Retention Policies
SharePoint Search is powerful
Small efforts make big impacts
Display Templates

5. Our approach to tagging and
organizing our data
.
Taxonomy

6. Taxonomy Definition
• Give me a word. Any word.
• Two Greek words:
• taxis – arrangement
• nomia – method

7. Taxonomy Example
Han Solo
“Han is a monotypic genus of
agnostid trilobite, whose sole
member is Han solo.”
Domain
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species

8. SharePoint Taxonomy
Content Types Site Columns
Managed Metadata /
Termstore
Enterprise Keywords

9. Content Type - Hierarchy
Item
Folder Document
Report Page
Web Part
Page
Article
Page

10. Folders and
Taxonomy?
• “Folders are the new F-word”
• Reasons to avoid them
• Limiting
• Maintenance
• Nesting
• Reasons to use them
• Permissions
• Technical Limits
• Performance
• Same logic applies to Sites,
Libraries, etc.

11. Adjusting settings to surface the
right content as if by magic
Search Settings

12. Search Settings
• Search is a separate application
from SharePoint
• It allows you to index & search:
• SharePoint
• Team sites
• My Sites
• File Share
• Other web pages / sites

13. Promoted Search Results
• Certain results show up as the first results
• Match queries for keywords
• Exact matches
• Start / End (Action Terms)
• Dictionary (Term Store)
• Common in Result Source
• Use or Clicks
• Advanced
• Regex / Contains
• Manage Query Rules -> Result Source
* Usually Local SharePoint Results

14. Duplicate
Trimming
We ended up turning it off pretty much
everywhere
We tried using it with the default settings
figuring that Microsoft knew best and we
needed to make our content more unique
By default, this is set very aggressive

15. Crawled & Managed Properties
• The indexer will automatically pick up
metadata from your items and files
• These become crawled properties
• A managed property needs to be
configured to enable querying
• #ProTip: Site Columns automatically
get mapped to managed properties

16. Bad data clutters search, and it
only gets worse from there
Retention Policies

17. Why is Retention Important?

18. Retention Policies
Everything on our site is considered a
courtesy copy
Enabled at Site Content Types, or on
List/Library directly
The broader you can set it the better
#ProTip: Go big or go home

19. SharePoint Search is powerful
Small efforts make big impacts
Display Templates

20. SPFx /Display Templates
• For me, Search was the defining feature for
SharePoint 2013 and they nailed it
• The new Highlighted Content SPFx web part
for Modern sites
• Complete control? You don’t need to be a
SharePoint dev any longer. Just create a
custom SPFx web part using Vanilla JS, React
or whatever custom framework you like

21. Key Pieces to
Display Templates
In the master page gallery, under Display Templates
HTML file is automatically compiled to JS file
Two types of templates: Control & Item
ManagedPropertyMapping in header is used to define what
properties should be included
#ProTip: Remember that the Master Page Gallery typically has full
publishing enabled so you will need to both Check-In and Publish
your files to make them available
#ProTip: The F12 developer tools is a great way to inspect the ctx
object and see what is available

22. Additional Resources
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/administration/an-introduction-to-cross-site-publishing
• https://www.eliostruyf.com/10-sharepoint-display-template-tips-tricks/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/dev/general-development/sharepoint-design-manager-
display-templates

23. Questions?