Yesterday, Wednesday April 25th, I gave an InTrack presentation about SharePoint Search in the Microsoft Innovation Center in Barneveld in The Netherlands. There were about 50 people, that got to see a presentation about:
- Enterprise Search Challenges
Enterprise Search is not just about searching, it's mainly about empowering employees to find the data and expertise they need to do their jobs.
- Microsoft Search Vision
Microsoft's search solutions should make it possible for people to easily find, use and share information. To support this Microsoft has search solutions on the Internet, the desktop and the intranet.
- SharePoint End-User Improvements
Search functionality in MOSS 2007 has been improved in many ways compared to the one in SPS 2003. Search results have become more relevant, the user interface has been improved with query correction ("Did you mean?"), hit highlighting, security-trimmed search results and viewing your search results as an RSS feed. The Search Center has also got a lot of improved functionality.
- Knowledge Network
Knowledge Network in MOSS 2007 is a tool for social networking that helps users to collaborate more effectively by automating the discovery and sharing of undocumented knowledge and relationships. This knowledge can than be search for in MOSS.
- Administration Improvements
The MOSS Search Administration has been greatly improved compared to the one in SPS 2003. The maintenance of Content Sources and Scopes has been simplified and using the extensive query logging you can determine whether the relevance of the search results can be improved by making some configuration changes like for instance using Best Bets and Authorative Sites.
- Performance and Capacity Planning
When using a good infrastructure a MOSS Search index can contain up to 50 million items and still perform well.
- Customizing the Search UI
The user interface of the search center can be adjusted in several ways. You can add, delete or change web parts and new tabs can be added, for instance based on scopes. You can also adjust the way results are displayed by changing the XSLT.
- Developing Search Solutions
Like all MOSS functionality the search functionality can be accessed through the object model. By using the object model you can build your own custom web parts that use for instance query or results properties. You can use a custom web part to search for a specific query and display the results in a highly customized manner.
On Wednesday May 2nd I will give the same presentation again at Microsoft at Schiphol-Rijk. If you would like to register for this you can do here (note that the presentation will be in Dutch).
The presentation can be downloaded here. The slides are in English.
