SharePoint and FAST Search Tips and Tricks that Work

Scott JamisonMarch 6, 2012

Meet Scott Jamison Chief Architect at Jornata

Formerly a Director at Microsoft Microsoft partner w/Gold Competency in Portals & Collab

SharePoint MVP Microsoft Certified Architect for SharePoint Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint Author:

Essential SharePoint 2007 Essential SharePoint 2010 Five whitepapers on SharePoint 2010

Blog: www.scottjamison.com Twitter: @sjam

SharePoint Search SharePoint Foundation

Basic site search SharePoint Server Standard

Core SharePoint search, along with key tools for better results (keywords, best bests, refinement panel, etc.)

SharePoint Server Enterprise + FAST Server Scale, deep refinement, visual best bets,

document preview

SharePoint Search SharePoint Foundation

Basic site search SharePoint Server Standard

Core SharePoint search, along with key tools for better results (keywords, best bests, refinement panel, etc.)

SharePoint Server Enterprise + FAST Server Scale, deep refinement, visual best bets, document

preview

Common Search Complaints

Really…there’s one:

“I can’t find what I’m looking for!”

The Specifics… “There are too many results to sift through.” “But there’s an obvious result!” “It won’t find the files I want. And I *know* it’s there.” “Top search results don’t make sense.” “Search isn’t getting better.” “What does ‘SEWP’ mean? I can do single-word searches

like that on the Internet.” “How do I get better results?”

First: my $.02 SharePoint search can be *really* good SharePoint search doesn’t work well at all

First: my $.02 SharePoint search can be *really* good SharePoint search doesn’t work well at all To clarify: SharePoint Search will work at about

20% satisfaction with the typical “Turn it on” approach

But…you can get close to 100% You will need to do an additional 4 steps!

Each gives you another 20% of value

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

1. Improve search engine relevancy2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine3. Review search reports and end-user

feedback4. Improve the overall experience

9

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

1.Improve search engine relevancy2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine3. Review search reports and end-user

feedback4. Improve the overall experience

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

1. Improve search engine relevancy Name things well Don’t bury relevant content Use metadata (make sure Title is

correct!) Make sure people are tagged, too

Name Things Well The name of your file matters So does the URL

Which means document library names and folder names For example:

http://marketing/boston/Q2-2011-sales.docxis much better than http://mktg/bosq211sls.docx

Don’t Bury Relevant Content

Fewer slashes in a URL = better relevancyTherefore:http://sharepoint/thatfile.docxis more relevant thanhttp://sharepoint/hr/subsite/folder2/thatfile.docx

Get Things Tagged Better tagging will give you more things to

search on SharePoint searches full text, filename, and

other metadata properties Title is used for searching *and* is displayed in

results Copying an existing document leads to really, really wrong titles

Make Sure People are Tagged Get your user profiles in order Take the time to define properties that will be used,

along with governance and usage policies Things like:

About me Title Expertise Interests Projects

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

1. Improve search engine relevancy2.Enhance with stuff outside the

engine3. Review search reports and end-user

feedback4. Improve the overall experience

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine Define keywords Define 1-2 best bets per keyword Provide a definition for keywords and

acronyms

Define Keywords Manually define the top 20-30 items that users will

search on…things like: Product Names Industry Terms Office Locations Acronyms Common Terms (“company handbook”, “lunch menu”)

Provide synonyms (“lunch”, “menu”, “cafeteria”, etc.)

Add Best Bets Create 1-2 best bets for *each* keyword For example, if someone types in:

Product Names Provide a link to the publishing page for that product Provide a link to the external product catalog Provide a link to the product manager (user profile)

Office Locations Provide a link to directions or office manager

Common Terms Provide a link directly to the lunch menu or handbook

Use Definitions

Definitions are a great way to:Clarify what an acronym meansClarify what an industry term meansProvide actual data in the search result itself

Demo

What is going on?? Clean up your titles

The Title property is important And it’s often wrong SharePoint will use title property for searching and weights

it heavily But wait…there’s more! Since Title is often either wrong or

blank, SharePoint sometimes attempts to ‘fix’ this Actually a *feature* of SharePoint 2010! It’s called “Optimistic Title Override”

What is going on?? Optimistic Title Override takes the first sentence of the

document instead of the actual title property Don’t like it? Turn it off:

In registry, navigate to the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\14.0\Search\Global\Gathering Manager]

Change the hexadecimal value for EnableOptimisticTitleOverride to 0 (zero) on the right hand side. [Also one for EnableLastModifiedOverride]

Restart SharePoint Search service by typing the following commands in command prompt.net stop osearch14net start osearch14

Perform a full crawl

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps1. Improve search engine relevancy2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine3.Review search reports and end-user

feedback4. Improve the overall experience

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

3. Review search reports and end-user feedback Review the search reports on a regular

basis Put a survey link on the search results

page Based on feedback, go see steps 1 & 2

Review the Search Reports There are great search reports in SharePoint

2010 Make it part of your governance plan to review

them and act upon them Especially:

Queries with no results Queries with no best bets

26

Put a Survey on the Results Page The #1 way to improve SharePoint? Ask users what is working and what isn’t. Find out what people are searching on and

what they expected to find And fix it!

Demo

Book Giveaway!

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

1. Improve search engine relevancy2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine3. Review search reports and end-user

feedback4.Improve the overall experience

Improving Search in 4 Easy Steps

4. Improve the overall experience Configure search facets Configure Scopes and Tabs Make search a one-stop-shop with

federation Enable search from anywhere Train users

Configure Search Facets Change the properties that users can

filter with Step 1: Promote your crawled property to a managed one

Step 2: Change the XML to make sure the facets work

Configure Scopes and Tabs Scopes enable you to segment content into

easier-to-consume chunks Examples: file types, locations, departments

Tabs let you create great UX for displaying scoped content

Make search a one-stop-shop Using search Federation, enable users to

simultaneously search the Internet and the Enterprise

Enable Search from Anywhere Enable users to search SharePoint from

Office, Desktop, or Browser

Train Users Prefix & Postfix Inclusions & Exclusions Boolean Numeric Values Quotation marks & multi-word keywords

Summary: Improving Search1. Improve search engine relevancy

Name things well Don’t bury relevant content Use metadata [making sure people have metadata, too] Understand how the ‘Title’ property is used

2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine Define keywords Define 1-2 best bets per keyword Provide a definition for keywords and acronyms

3. Review search reports and end-user feedback Review the search reports on a regular basis Put a survey link on the search results page

4. Improve the overall experience Configure search facets Configure Scopes and Tabs Make search a one-stop-shop with federation Enable search from anywhere Train users

Thank you! Blog: www.scottjamison.com Twitter: @sjam Email: scott.jamison@jornata.com www.jornata.com