Customizing and Managing Search | Beginning SharePoint 2007: Building Team Solutions with MOSS 2007 (Programmer to Programmer)

Now that you know how to use a basic and advanced search, it’s time to see how you, the SharePoint administrator, can customize and manage the search service. For example, you can create content sources that search for documents across multiple websites or information systems, or create scopes in an existing content source to narrow search queries to a smaller set of data. This section details the process of creating new content sources and scopes to improve a user’s search experience. Before you design any customized search, you should query the people who will use it to determine the following:

What information storage locations do you want to search for using the SharePoint Search?
What file formats will you store in the environment that you want to include in the content index?
When you search for people in the organization, what properties do you use?
How soon after a document is added to the system should it be available via the search interface?

In this section of the chapter, you learn some of the search customization alternatives SharePoint offers, which in turn will give you tips on how to best address your user’s requirements. Because you want to make sure that your search goes to the right location, you learn about content sources, which are the locations that SharePoint looks to when you enter information into the SharePoint search interface. For accurate search results, you need to keep your information up-to-date, which you can do by scheduling regular index updates. Next, you learn how to manage file types so that your searches include the file types relevant to your organization. To allow users to refine searches, this section also explains how to create a search scope, how to use a search center, and how to define keywords so that a user’s search will pull up the right information. Finally, you learn how to find the people in your organization.

Create Content Sources

By default, SharePoint has a single content source for all sites on your server. However, SharePoint can index content in other locations, such as file shares, business data, exchange folders, or websites. By creating a content source, you can identify these alternate locations and specify rules, such as how often and when the index will update. You can create content sources from the following locations:

SharePoint sites
Websites (non-SharePoint)
File shares
Exchange public folders
Lotus Notes
Applications via the Business Data Catalog

Depending on your requirements, you may want to separate specific sites or web applications so you have more flexibility for how content is crawled. For example, you can create a separate content source for My Sites that is crawled more regularly than your collaborative team sites. To do this, you remove the MySites web application reference from the Local Office SharePoint Server sites content source and create a new one that points to My Sites. You can then set a unique content crawl schedule for full and incremental updates.

For situations where you have a website that is not based on SharePoint, but that still contains valuable information, you can use the SharePoint search service to crawl content. This is shown in the first Try It Out. The second Try It Out covers situations where an organization transitions from file shares to SharePoint sites, but elects not to move all documents to the SharePoint environment. For example, you may have a large number of documents on a share for historical reference, but the organization doesn’t intend to update the documents or control edits so sees no reason to migrate them to SharePoint. Rather than have users adopt a different method for locating these documents, you can index them via the SharePoint Server so that users can perform keyword searches regardless of location.

Try It Out-Create a Content Source Based on Non-SharePoint Websites

In this example, you create a new content source that will allow users of your SharePoint site to search for content contained in your company’s Internet-facing website that is not a SharePoint site.

Go to the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment.
Select Search Settings. The Configure Search Settings window appears, as shown in Figure 14-12.

Figure 14-12
Click the Content Sources and Crawl Schedules link. You are redirected to the Manage Content Sources page.

Click the New Content Source button from the toolbar. The Add Content Source window appears, as shown in Figure 14-13.

Figure 14-13
For the content source name, enter Corporate Website.
For the type of content to be crawled, select Websites.
Enter the web address of your organization’s corporate website for the start address.
For Crawl Settings, select Only Crawl Within the Server of Each Start Address.
Select the check box to start a Full Crawl of content source.
Click the OK button.

How It Works

Once you finish these steps, your users can search the company’s Internet-facing website. This creates a more unified content discovery experience for all your company’s information, both public and private. Other examples of external websites you can index include partner sites or informational sites that contain valuable information related to your line of business.

Try It Out-Create a Content Source Based on File Shares

In this example, you create a new content source that references a file share on the corporate network. This is useful when file shares coexist with a SharePoint environment. In order for the system to crawl the external system such as a file share, the default Content Access Account must have access to that location in order to create the index. This is part of the configuration that is completed when SharePoint is installed and the Search service is configured, which is outside the scope of this chapter.

Go to the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment.
Select Search Settings.
Select Content Sources and Crawl Schedules. The Manage Content Sources window appears, as shown in Figure 14-14.

Figure 14-14
Click the New Content Source button from the toolbar. The Add Content Source window appears, as shown in Figure 14-15.

Figure 14-15

For content source name, enter a name to reflect the file share you are about to reference, such as Policies and Procedures.
Enter the start address for the file server using the following format:
```
  \\fileservername\sharename 
```
For crawl settings, select the folder and all subfolders of each start address.
Select the check box to start a Full Crawl of the content source.
Click the OK button.

How It Works

By creating content sources that crawl the file shares, users can take advantage of the SharePoint Search interface to locate all important documents.

Schedule Content Source Updates

When you finished creating your content sources in the last couple of Try It Outs, you opted for a Full Crawl of the content source to start immediately. This process populates the SharePoint index with the appropriate references to the content in those locations. To continue to keep the content index up-to-date, it is important that you schedule regular crawls. This section discusses how to schedule the crawls and manually update the index when required.

SharePoint offers two schedule types:

Full: Acomplete crawl of all content in a content source independent of previous crawls. You should perform this on a content source at least once before an Incremental Crawl can run.
Incremental: Acrawl of a content source for information updated, changed, or added since the last crawl.

Tip

As the SharePoint administrator, you should carefully plan when to schedule crawls involving large content sources. Consult with business users to determine an appropriate time interval in which they expect updated content to be available. It is generally recommended that you run Full Crawls less frequently than Incremental Crawls and that where possible, both crawls should run when there is lower demand on the servers.

The Try It Outs in this section show you how to schedule content source updates. In the first Try It Out, you discover how to schedule an incremental and full update. Alternately, specific changes to the search configuration or content source properties may require you to initiate a manual Full or Incremental Crawl to update to the content index, which is the subject of the second Try It Out. In the third Try It Out, you learn how to reset all crawl content. You may chose to do this in situations where your index becomes corrupt or you make significant content changes at once because of a large migration. While this is not something performed often, it is helpful to know how if the need arises.

Try It Out-Create a Schedule for Updates to a Content Source

In this example, you edit your content source to a schedule for the incremental updates. You can use this same process to define a Full Crawl schedule as well. Both processes are managed from the same page.

From the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment, select Search Settings.
Select Content Sources and Crawl Schedules. The Manage Content Sources window appears, as shown in Figure 14-16.

Figure 14-16
Hover your cursor over the Local Office SharePoint Server Sites content source.
Select Edit. The Edit Content Source window appears, as shown in Figure 14-17.

Figure 14-17

Under the Incremental Crawl drop-down box, click the Create Schedule link. The Manage Schedules window appears.
Select Daily for Type.
For the settings, select to run every day at 4:00 AM, as shown in Figure 14-18.

Figure 14-18
If desired, select an interval to repeat the crawl process with each day, such as every 60 minutes.
Click the OK button on the Manage Schedules window.
Click the OK button to save your changes to the content source.

Try It Out-Initiate a Manual Update of a Content Source

Some content sources are very slow to change, which means there is no need to run regular crawls. In some cases, you need to make administrative changes to search settings and properties, and require a Full Crawl to properly implement these changes. An example of that was seen in the exercises related to adding properties to the advanced search. In that case, you had to manually update the content source before the next scheduled crawl. Ideally, you should plan to make any major search configurations at the same time and just before a regularly scheduled fill crawl; however, you do have the option of initiating a manual crawl of the content source.

From the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment, select Search Settings.
Select Content Sources and Crawl Schedules.
Hover your cursor over the Local Office SharePoint Server Sites content source.
Select Start Full Crawl, as shown in Figure 14-19.

Figure 14-19

Try It Out-Reset All Crawled Content

One major change in SharePoint 2007 is that now each Shared Service Provider (SSP) has a single content index. Now, all content stored across the various content sources is referenced from a single index. This improves administration functions when you work with multiple content sources. However, when you make major changes to content sources and search settings, or perhaps if you notice a large number of errors in search event logs, you may be required to reset the content index for your SharePoint environment. After this process is complete, you need to manually initiate Full Crawls of various content sources to repopulate the content index. If you do not rebuild the content index, search will be unable to work because the index will be empty. Follow these steps to reset all crawl content:

From the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment, select Search Settings.
Select Reset All Crawled Content.
Maintain the selection to deactivate all search alerts during the reset, as shown in Figure 14-20. This will avoid any unnecessary alerts being sent to users of the system during this administrative update.

Figure 14-20
Click the Reset Now button.

Manage File Types

You may want to index content that is stored in special file formats such as Adobe Acrobat (PDF) or Microsoft OneNote (ONE). To allow users to do this, you as the administrator must associate the file type with the index using the steps in the next Try It Out.

By default, certain file types are automatically crawled to be part of the content index when the application is installed. These are listed for your reference in the following table. Unless someone has made changes to your system’s search settings, these types of files automatically appear in the index.

ascx
asp
aspx
doc
docm
docx
dot
eml
exch
htm
html
jhtml
jsp
mht
mhtml
Msg
mspx
nsf
odc
pdf
php
ppt
pptm
pptx
pub
tif
tiff
txt
url
vdx vsd
vss
vst
vsx
vtx
xls
xlsm
xlsx
xml

Try It Out-Add a File Type to the Content Index

In this example, you add the file extension of PDF to the list of those that you want the system to index. In addition to this process, many file types require custom iFilters to complete indexing of content related to that file type. For example, to have PDFs indexed in your environment, you also need to download and install the PDF iFilter that is available from the Adobe website at www.adobe.com. It is recommended that you check with any vendors you may deal with to see if an iFilter exists for any content you may be storing in SharePoint that is not available in the default listing of file types.

From the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment, select Search Settings.
Select File Types.
Click the New File Type button from the toolbar. The Add File Type window appears, as shown in Figure 14-21.

Figure 14-21
Enter the extension of the file type you want to add to the index. For example, Figure 14-21 demonstrates adding the pdf extension, which adds Acrobat PDF files to the index.
Click the OK button.

How It Works

The next time a crawl occurs, the file type you specify in step 4 appears in the index assuming the SharePoint server has all appropriate iFilters installed.

Create Search Scopes

In a previous set of Try It Outs, you learned how to add content sources to a SharePoint environment so that information about the content location could be added to the master index. However, work on a master index is wasted if a user cannot narrow down content on a search, especially when the index encompasses a large amount of content. This is where a search scope comes in handy. A search scope is a subsection of the index based on some predetermined rules related to a specific content source, location, or property. You can create scopes that are available throughout all SharePoint site collections or you can instead opt to limit the scope to a single site collection. This section discusses the various scope types and gives some scenarios of how you can use each.

You create rules for search scopes by specifying whether items meeting the criteria of the rule should be included, required, or excluded from the search results. For example, you may create a rule that excludes items that have a published status of expired. Similarly you may create a rule that only includes items stored on the Human Resources site.

To give you an idea of how you can use a search scope, the following list reflects some basic usage scenarios:

Web content: The graphics department needs to quickly locate images and logos for ads and creative materials. Graphic assets are in a private team site that the communications group manages. The terms the graphic designers use to search for content are very generic (“red car” or “ski slope”), so a query of the entire index may not retrieve relevant results. Aspecial scope is created called “creative assets” so graphic designers can find objects with ease by searching only their area instead of the entire content index. Because the scope is limited to the graphics department, it is created on the site level (the graphics department team site).
Property query: Your company is a multinational organization with operations in different regions. It has a site column that tracks all documents and content based on the region. This site column appears in the crawled SharePoint properties list as a metadata value once it is associated with a document and is then mapped as a managed property in the same way that you mapped the client property when you made it appear in the Advanced Search interface in a previous Try It Out. When completing this mapping, you made the property available for use in scopes. You can create a scope as either a global or site collection level property so users can search for results based on a region. You can also create regional search pages.
Content source: Your company’s policies and procedures are stored in a file share, which was not moved to SharePoint because content rarely changes and editing access is limited to a small group of people. All employees have read access to the documents. To make the information easy to find, you add the file share as a content source to the SharePoint search index. Although this allows users to search through it, some users will recognize that documents are on the file share. To support these users, you create a custom scope that points specifically at the file share content source. Scopes based on content sources can only be created from the Shared Services Administration site as a global scope.

You can put some of the concepts from these scenarios in the next three Try It Outs. In the next Try It Out, you create a search scope that any site collection in a server farm may use. In the second Try It Out, you help users quickly access a scope by placing it in the site collection’s search scope drop-down list. In the last Try It Out, you learn how to narrow a scope to a specific site level.

Try It Out-Global Search Scopes

In this example, you create a custom search scope from the central administration area so you can search via the Shared Service Provider administrative site. This site is where all global search configurations are made.

In the Try It Out “Create a Content Source Based on File Shares,” you created a custom content source that pointed to policies and procedures in a file share so that users could easily access them from the central search interface. The scope you are about to create is based on that content source. If you did not create that custom content source, you should create one so you can complete this exercise.

From the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment, select Search Settings.
From the scopes section, select View Scopes.
Click the New Scope link. The Create Scope window appears, as shown in Figure 14-22.

Figure 14-22
Enter a name and description of the scope. In this example, enter Policies for the name of your search scope and the following text for description.

Important
Use this search scope to locate information stored within the policies and procedures file share.
Select the Use the Default Search Results Page option.
Click the OK button.
Click the Add Rules link that appears to the right of the scope name under the Update Status column. The Add Scope Rule window appears, as shown in Figure 14-23.

Figure 14-23

For scope rule type, select content source and then select the file share you specified in a previous example for a custom content source.

Tip

If you did not complete the exercise related to creating a custom content source earlier in this chapter, select web content instead and enter the address of a SharePoint site that might contain information on policies and procedures in the folder field.

For Behavior, select the Include–Any Item that Matches This Rule Will Be Included, Unless the Item is Excluded by Another Rule option.
Click the OK button.

How It Works

Once your scope is created, it automatically updates during the next scheduled scope update process which is an automatic system process. However, you may also choose to force an update immediately. To do this you click the Start Update Now link, as shown in Figure 14-24 from the Scopes section of the Search Settings page. Once this happens, users can drill into the content stored only in that content source, thereby eliminating unrelated results from the other content sources or SharePoint sites. You can now add this scope as a tab to a Search Center site (using a process similar to one you will see the in the section “Using the Search Center” later in the chapter), as a selection item in the advanced search interface (see the section “Using the Advanced Search”), or as a value in the Scopes drop-down list of a site collection (discussed in the next Try It Out).

image from book
Figure 14-24

Try It Out-Add a Search Scope to a Site Collection’s Search Scope Drop-Down List

When you create a scope from the Shared Services Administration site of your SharePoint environment, it automatically appears under the Unused Scopes group in each site collection. For users to access it, you must add it either to the Search drop-down list or Advanced Search Display groups using the fol-lowing method. You must complete this process for all site collections in the farm where the scope will be used. In this example, you see how to add a scope to a site collection’s Search Scope drop-down list.

From the top-level site of your Corporate Intranet Portal site collection, select Site Settings Modify All Site Settings.
Select Search Scopes from the Site Collection Administration links. The View Scopes window appears, as shown in Figure 14-25.

Figure 14-25
Click the Search Dropdown link to the right of the Display Group text. You can also alternatively select the Advanced Search display group to have the scope appear there as well. The Edit Scope Display Group window appears, as shown in Figure 14-26.

Figure 14-26
Select the check box associated with the Policies scope.
Click the OK button.

Try It Out-Site Level Search Scopes

In this example, you create a search scope that is limited to a single site collection. You’re creating this for a graphics team, which only needs a subset of the content index that’s on a single SharePoint site.

You can add this scope to either the scope’s drop-down list or advanced search interface as you are creating it. This is different from the last Try It Out because you had to manually go in afterward and associate the scope with these locations on a per-site collection basis.

From the top-level site of your Corporate Intranet Portal site collection, select Site Actions Site Settings Modify All Site Settings.
Select Search Scopes from the Site Collection Administration links.
Click the New Scope link from the toolbar. The Create Scope window appears, as shown in Figure 14-27.

Figure 14-27
Enter a name and descriptive for your scope. In this example, enter Creative Assets for the name of your scope and the following for scope description:

Important
Use this search scope to locate images, logos, and other creative materials from the communications managed SharePoint site.

Select the check boxes to display the scope in the Search Dropdown and Advanced Search locations of the site.
Click the OK button.
Click the Add Rules link associated with the scope.
Select Web Address as the Scope Rule Type.
Enter the URL of the Advertising Materials site you created in Chapter 5 in the folder field. If you followed the example suggestion used in that exercise, it will be http://yourservername/ sitedirectory/advertising. If you did not complete that exercise, enter the URL of a site containing creative documents and images.
For Behavior, select Require – Every Item in the Scope Must Match This Rule.
Click the OK button.

Using the Search Center

SharePoint 2007 has built-in page and site templates to aid you in creating an optimal search experience for your users. The Search Center, one of many built-in templates, gives you a rich and intuitive search interface, and includes the All Sites and People Search tabs, which search those two default scopes of a site collection. Using tabs, you can separate content sources and scopes so users can drill down to specific subsets of content depending on their needs. You can also create your own tabs so that a page only searches specific scopes. This gives users an interface where they can conduct searches based on predetermined criteria.

Tip

For more on the People Search scope, see the section “Finding People in your Organization” later in this chapter.

The Search Center is created automatically as part of the Collaboration Portal publishing template, shown in Figure 14-28. It can also be created as a subsite for other sites from the Enterprise tab of site templates. In the next example, you create a custom tab that will contain the Advanced Search Web Part.

image from book
Figure 14-28

Try It Out-Add a Custom Tab to the Search Center

In the following example, you create a new page that becomes an Advanced Search page in your Search Center. From there you can customize the search interface to conduct searches based on properties relevant to that portion of the site. You can then add a new tab to the tabbed navigation; so rather than click an Advanced Search link to the right of the standard search box, users can select the tab. You commonly create tabs to narrow the results page to specific content. For example, you can create a scope that only shows content from a file share or Exchange public folder.

From the home page of your Corporate Intranet Portal, select the Search tab from the global navigation.
Select Site Actions Create Page. The Create Page window appears, as shown in Figure 14-29.

Figure 14-29
Specify the following for the page creation details:

Open table as spreadsheet

Property

Value

Title

Advanced Search Page

Description

Custom Advanced Search Page

URL Name

Customadvanced

Page Layout

(Welcome Page) Advanced Search

Property	Value
Title	Advanced Search Page
Description	Custom Advanced Search Page
URL Name	Customadvanced
Page Layout	(Welcome Page) Advanced Search

Click the Create button. Anew page is created containing Web Parts appropriate for an advanced search page.
From the Bottom Zone, select Add a Web Part.
Select Advanced Search Box from the suggested Web Parts listing.
Click the Add button.
Click the Add New Tab link as shown in Figure 14-30.

Figure 14-30
Enter a name for your tab. For this example, enter Advanced Search.
Specify customadvanced.aspx for the page.
Enter the following for the tooltip:

Important
Search using advanced settings.
Click the OK button.
Publish your page by clicking the Publish button.

How It Works

Figure 14-31 shows what the new interface looks like to users visiting the search center.

image from book
Figure 14-31

Create Custom Keywords

When you perform an Internet or site search, you type a keyword in the search box and press Enter to receive your results (as in the “Perform a Basic Search for Content” Try It Out at the beginning of the chapter). A keyword is a word that summarizes the topic for which you are searching. Most search engines have ways of determining which words to treat as keywords, and you can do the same thing with SharePoint. You can define words that are strongly related to your business, business practices, or documentation and identify these as keywords within your environment so that when a user types a keyword to perform a search, she receives best bets for the returned results.

The next two Try It Outs show you how to use keywords to help your user get the information he needs. In the first Try It Out, you create a new keyword that your organization uses to describe collaboration and content sharing. You also identify synonyms for the keyword in case users type those instead of your keyword. Identifying synonyms increases the user’s chances of pulling up the information you want them to receive. In the second Try It Out, you go one step further and use best bets to rank the results of a search. Abest bet is the top returned values for a specific keyword and when you use them, users receive the most likely results at the top of their search. Best bet results are highlighted at the top of the returned results, and they display with a keyword and description to give users guidance and context. Figure 14-32 shows an example of best bet results.

image from book
Figure 14-32

Try It Out-Create a Keyword

In this example, you create a new keyword to represent the technology that your organization is using for the collaboration and sharing of content. When you create a keyword phrase, you can also identify synonyms that are words users may also use to refer to the same object or content. For example, if your keyword phrase is “SharePoint 2007,” you define synonyms as WSS, MOSS, or OSS, because a user may type these words into the search box instead of SharePoint 2007.

You can assign expiration dates to your keyword to limit how long they are available in the system. This is helpful when you anticipate that a product, document, or program name may change. For example, you can define an expiration date if you think the name SharePoint 2007 will change to something else in a certain time frame. In addition, you can set a review date. For example, if SharePoint 2007 will change in three years, you can send an alert to a contact that will review the keyword’s validity and determine whether it should be updated to a newer version.

From the top-level site of your Corporate Intranet Portal site collection, select Site Settings Modify All Site Settings.
Select Search Keywords from the Site Collection Administration links.
Click the Add Keyword button from the toolbar. The Add Keyword window appears, as shown in Figure 14-33.

Figure 14-33

Enter the following values for the various properties that need to be defined for the keyword:

Open table as spreadsheet

Property	Value
Keyword Phrase	SharePoint 2007.
Synonyms	WSS; MOSS; SharePoint; OSS.
Keyword Definition	Technology used for collaboration and information sharing.
Contact	Enter your own name.
Start Date	Enter the current date.
End Date	Leave blank.
Review Date	Enter a date three years from the current date.

Click the OK button.

Try It Out-Associate Best Bets Results with Specific Keywords

In this example, you create some best bet results for the custom keyword phrase created in the previous exercise. For the keyword SharePoint, you enter sites that you consider most likely to give the user relevant and useful information related to the application. Other best bets for this type of keyword might include links to specific user manuals or how-to videos.

From the top-level site of your Corporate Intranet Portal site collection, select Site Settings Modify All Site Settings.
Select Search Keywords from the Site Collection Administration links.
Click your SharePoint keyword.
Click the Add Best Bet link. The Add Best Bet window appears, as shown in Figure 14-34.

Figure 14-34
For URL, enter the URL of a weblog you created in Chapter 8 to help share knowledge on what you and your team have learned about using SharePoint effectively for your organization.
Enter a title for your best bet. For this example, type SharePoint Weblog.
Enter a description for your best bet. For this example, enter the following:

Important
SharePoint focused weblog designed to share information on how it can be used to improve how content is shared within our organization.
Click the OK button.
Select Add Best Bet.

Enter the following information for the best bet:

Open table as spreadsheet

URL	http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
Title	Official SharePoint Website
Description	Microsoft’s official product website featuring links to white papers and documentation related to managing and using the application

Click the OK button. The Add Best Bet window closes.
Click OK to save changes to your keyword.

Finding People in Your Organization

Searches aren’t all about locating documents and content; they’re also important for locating information about the key people in the organization. Chapter 9 discussed how user profiles are an important element in SharePoint for sharing information related to members of an organization. Therefore it is important that the search support this type of information in addition to more standard content, such as documents and lists. To help users easily conduct a search on this type of information, a scope exists that points to the user profile database in SharePoint. In addition, specific tools and interface elements exist such as Web Parts, tabs and pages to facilitate the use of this scope. As mentioned in the section “Using the Search Center,” you can use the People Search tab or scope to find details about a col-league’s skills, business contact information, and other details in their user profile. For example, if you have Event Management as a skills property in your personal profile, when a co-worker performs a search for those keywords, in the People Search your name will appear in the results. The People Search scope helps you find the experts in your organization that will help resolve daily problems or whom you can use as resources for projects.

You can include a People Search Web Part to any standard team site or a portal sub site, in one of two ways. These two methods are covered in the next two Try It Outs.

Add the People Search Box Web Part to your site so that users can directly enter a name into the Web Part to return results that are limited to the People scope.
Have users use the standard search interface and select the People Search scope when performing their search.

In the third Try It Out of this section, you learn how you can use the People Search scope to perform a search for people in your organization. This can be done by either using the Search drop-down box on the primary search box or by selecting the People tab in the Search Center.

Try It Out-Add the People Search Box Web Part to a Site

In this example, you find out how to add the People Search box to a page and create a custom people search results page on the site to display the results of a search query. By default, SharePoint includes a People Search Box Web Part on the main page of a site created from the Collaboration Portal template. The title of the Web Part has been set to “Employee Finder,” but it is the same Web Part you will use in this Try it Out. In most cases, an employee can go to the main page of the portal or People tab of the Search Center to conduct a people-specific search, but some circumstances warrant adding the Web Part to your own collaborative site or portal page. Following this exercise will help you understand how you can create your own people search interface.

From the main page of your Research and Development website, select Site Actions Create. You are redirected to the Content Creation page.
Select Web Part Page from the Web Pages section of the page. You are redirected to a Web Part Page Creation page.
Enter peopleresults.aspx for the page name and select Full Page, Vertical from the layout templates.
Select the Shared Documents library for the storage location of the page.
Click the Create button. Your new Web Part page is created.
Once the page is created, click the Add a Web Part button. The Add Web Parts selection window appears, as shown in Figure 14-35.

Figure 14-35
Select the People Search Core Results from the Search group and click the Add button.
Click Exit Edit Mode.
Return to the home page of the site.
Select Site Actions Edit Page.
From the Web Part zone on the left-hand side of the page, select Add a Web Part. The Add Web Parts selection window appears, as shown in Figure 14-36.

Figure 14-36

From the search group of Web Parts, select People Search Box and click the Add button.
Select Edit Modify Shared Web Part on the People Search Web Part.
Expand the Miscellaneous group of properties.
Specify “Shared%20Documents/peopleresults.aspx” for the Target search results page URL.
Click the Apply, and then OK buttons on the Web Part.
Click Exit Edit Mode.

Try It Out-Use the People Search Box Web Part

For the next example, you see how to use the People Search Box Web Part to find users in an organization. You conduct a very basic search using the search box and then use the more advanced search options to find users based on details outlined in their user profiles. To prepare for this example, you should visit your own personal site and update your user profile to include “SharePoint Management” as a skill. You will need to run an incremental update of the SharePoint Sites content source before completing the next example. The process for doing this was covered in this chapter in a Try it Out called “Initiate a Manual Update of a Content Source.”

From the home page of your Research and Development site, enter your own first name into the Search Box Web Part, as shown in Figure 14-37.

Figure 14-37
Click the Search icon to the right of the search box. Notice that your name appears in the search results on the custom page you created with a name of “me.”
Click the Back button in your browser to return to the home page of the site.
Remove your name from the search box and click the Search Options link to the right of the search box.
Enter SharePoint Management in the Skills box.
Click the Search icon to the right of the search box. You receive results for any user who has SharePoint Management listed in their user profile property for skills. In Chapter 9, you added that value as a property in your skills so if you completed that exercise, you should see your own name listed.

How It Works

When you add the People Search Box Web Part to the main page of your site, users can search for people on your site with just a couple of quick clicks. When you ran the first query in this exercise, a link to your own personal profile appeared in the results. The system recognized that you were the user being displayed, which is why the results were shown as “me.”

In your second query, you used the search options on the Web Part to perform a more advanced search to find people who had certain skills. This query helps when a user is looking for a specific field of expertise but doesn’t know the exact name of the user they are looking for.

Try It Out-Use the People Search Scope

In this example, you perform a search using the term “SharePoint” limited to only the People scope. This eliminates links to documentation or training materials stored in the system and displays any users who have “SharePoint” featured in a property within their user profile.

From the main page of your portal site, select the People Search scope from the Scope drop-down list, as shown in Figure 14-38. You can also select the People Search tab from the Search Center.

Figure 14-38
Enter SharePoint into the search box.
Click the Search icon to the right of the search box. You are redirected to a page listing all users that have SharePoint associated with their user profile.