Technical Class: Wednesday, March

1. SharePoint and FAST Search Tips and
Tricks that Work
Scott Jamison

2. 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

3.  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

4.  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

5. Really…there‟s one:
“I can’t find what I’m looking for!”

6.  “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?”

7.  SharePoint search can be *really* good
 SharePoint search doesn‟t work well at all

8.  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

9. 1. Improve search engine relevancy
2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine
3. Review search reports and end-user feedback
4. Improve the overall experience
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10. 1. Improve search engine relevancy
2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine
3. Review search reports and end-user feedback
4. Improve the overall experience

11. 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

12.  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.docx
is much better than
 http://mktg/bosq211sls.docx

13. Fewer slashes in a URL = better relevancy
Therefore:
http://sharepoint/thatfile.docx
is more relevant than
http://sharepoint/hr/subsite/folder2/thatfile.docx

14.  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

15.  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

16. 1. Improve search engine relevancy
2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine
3. Review search reports and end-user feedback
4. Improve the overall experience

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

18.  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.)

19.  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

20.  Definitions are a great way to:
 Clarify what an acronym means
 Clarify what an industry term means
 Provide actual data in the search result itself

22.  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”

23.  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_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice
Server14.0SearchGlobalGathering 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 osearch14
net start osearch14
 Perform a full crawl

24. 1. Improve search engine relevancy
2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine
3. Review search reports and end-user
feedback
4. Improve the overall experience

25. 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

26.  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
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27.  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!

30. 1. Improve search engine relevancy
2. Enhance with stuff outside the engine
3. Review search reports and end-user feedback
4. Improve the overall experience

31. 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

32.  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

33.  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

35.  Using search Federation, enable users to
simultaneously search the Internet and the
Enterprise

36.  Enable users to search SharePoint from Office,
Desktop, or Browser

37.  Prefix & Postfix
 Inclusions & Exclusions
 Boolean
 Numeric Values
 Quotation marks & multi-word keywords

38. 1. 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

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