Search – Page 3 – Ben Prins

SharePoint 2013 Search Refinement panel

April 2, 2013 benjaminprins Office 365

In SharePoint the refinement panel is used to narrow down the search results. SharePoint provides a set of default refiners containing result type, author and modified date. Compared to previous version changing the refiners is simplified and very straight forward. Existing refinement options can be added through the user interface and options can be set per refinement.

Change the refinement panel

1. Edit the Search results page.
2. Edit the the refinement panel.

3. Click on Choose Refiners…

4. With the Refinement configuration available refiners can be added or removed and ordered.

5. The following setting can be changed for every selected refiner.

6. Apply the changes and publish the search results page.

Create new refinement options

1. Open Central administration and open the Manage service applications.
2. Select the Search Service Application and click on Manage in the ribbon.
3. Click on Search Schema under Queries and Results

4. If you are adding a newly created column make sure the column is available in the Crawled Properties
5. If the column is not available preform and crawl.
5. Click on New Managed Property

6. Enter the Property name and select the correct type.

7. Select the following options; Searchable, Queryble and Retrievable.

8. Select Yes – active by Refinable

9. Click on OK to save the changes.
10. Preform a crawl to make the new refinement available.
11. Add the refinement option in the refinement panel.

SharePoint 2013 Search tips and tricks

March 13, 2013 benjaminprins Office 365

Search is a very big part of almost every SharePoint site but searching through the content is not the goal, finding the correct content is. In this post I will give 8 tips to get better search results!

1 Refinement panel

Use the refinement panel on the search results page to narrow down the results. When SharePoint displays the search results you can filter the results by using the refinement panel. Common refinement options are result type, author and modified date.

2 Use Boolean operators

Boolean operators are used to narrow or expand the search results. Capitalization usually does not matter in search, except for operators. For Boolean operators to work correctly they need to be written in capitals.

AND	Use AND to narrow your search results. The returned search results include all of the free text expressions
NOT	Use NOT to narrow your search results. The returned search results don’t include the specified free text expressions or property restrictions.
OR	Use OR to expand your search to include more terms. The returned search results include one or more of the specified free text expressions or property restrictions.

Example: “Project plan” OR “Business Case”

3 Use wildcards

Use a wildcard * if you want to be sure to get variations of the term you are looking for or if you are not sure about the spelling.
Example: Project* to search for all item starting with the word project.

4 Use double quotes

Use double quotes “” to find exact phrases if you are sure about the phrases.
Example: “Progress report”

5 Use Search shortcuts

SharePoint search has a few handy shortcuts that make searching for specific types of content faster and easier. When using a shortcut SharePoint combines property filters to narrow down the search results. When searching for a document called Projectplan search for projectplan doc instead of projectplan. In the background SharePoint will change the search shortcut from doc into filetype:doc OR filetype:docx, filtering the results and displaying only Word documents.

Search shortcuts	Result
Deck or decks	Only PowerPoint presentations will be shown
Slide or slides	Only PowerPoint presentations will be shown
Doc	Only Word documents will be shown
Video	Only video files will be shown
Site	Only SharePoint sites will be shown
Blog or blogs	Blog sites will be shown
Post	Only shows the news feed activities
Conversation	Only conversations (discussions) will be shown

6 Use Specifying properties

The most easy way to explain what properties are is to use the less technical term SharePoint uses which is; metadata. Metadata is the data captured to describe the content. By default SharePoint captures a lot of metadata such as document title, document type, last modified date. The main purpose of using metadata is to make sure all the content stored in SharePoint can be found easily.

A basic property restriction consists of the following three parts: a property name a operator and a value.

Example: Author:John or Title:Projectplan

7 Use Property restrictions (operators)

When using properties to narrow down the search results it is possible to make the search query even more specific with the use of different property restrictions. The most used and best known is the : operator. When using the : operator the returned results will all be equal to the specified value . There are a lot more operators available a few examples are:

Operator	Description	Example
:	Returns results where the value is equal to the property value (short description)	Author:John
=	Returns results where the value is equal to the property value	Title=Projectplan
<	Returns results where the value is less then the property value	Created>9/20/2012
>	Returns results where the value is greater then the property value	Modified<10/10/2012

Search in SharePoint 2013 supports several new property operators. See the full list of the property operators on Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax referene table 2.

8 Try again

If you did not find the correct document, change the search query a bit. Add or remove terms, operators and properties. Not all documents will be found with the first attempt.

If you want to know more about the new search features check out the post SharePoint 2013 new search features.

Supporting links

Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax referene

Fast Query Lanquage (FQL) syntax reference

Add View folder link for document search results

September 2, 2012 benjaminprins Office 365

In the default document search results it is only possible to open the documents. It is not possible to navigate to the documents location.

Solution

1. Edit the Search Core Results Web part on the Search Center results page.
2. Click on XSL Editor under Display properties.
4. In the XSLT look for the following code.

<xsl:template name="ViewInBrowser">
        <xsl:param name="browserlink" />
        <xsl:param name="currentId" />
        <xsl:if test="string-length($browserlink) &gt; 0">
            <span class="srch-urllink">
                <a href="{$browserlink}" id="{concat($currentId,'_VBlink')}">
                    <xsl:value-of select="$ViewInBrowser" />
                </a>

3. Add the following code after the code for ViewInBrowser.

<!-- Toon View Folder link bij documenten -->    
<xsl:if test="isdocument = 'True'">
  <a>
    <xsl:attribute name="href">
      <xsl:value-of select="sitename"/>
    </xsl:attribute>
    View Folder
  </a>                         
</xsl:if>

4. Save the changes and enjoy the result.

Result

SharePoint 2013 new search features

August 24, 2012 benjaminprins Office 365

A lot of new features have been added to the Search site of SharePoint 2013. In this blog I will show a few of these new features.

Try out the new Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise Preview for yourself!

Author refinement

The refinement panel shows refinement options relative to the search results. For example it shows the authors. With SharePoint 2013 it possible to click on Show More and enter the name of the author you are looking for.

Modified date refinement

Another example of a refinement options is the modified date. With SharePoint 2013 it possible to select a period on the timeline. A very easy and powerful way to refine the search results.

Document search results

When hovering over a document in the search result the fancy new preview panel is loaded. Not only can you open the document itself, with the view library button you can open the library where the document is stored! In the preview panel it is possible to fully scroll through the document, a very fast way to ensure you found the correct document.

Per user search preferences

User can configure search preferences to make the search experience more personal.

1. Users can activate or deactivate search suggestions in the search box and suggestions and favorites based on personal query history.
2. Users can clear there Clear personal query history, resetting Personal Query Suggestions and Results You Have Clicked.
3. Users can select if a document will open in the client application or in the browser.
4. Users can select a preferred search language.
5. Users can view and edit there existing search alerts.

Display department members with people search

August 2, 2012 benjaminprins Office 365

Do you need a dynamic overview with all the members of a department? With the People Search Core Web Part this is easily accomplished, even without changing any XSLT!

Solution

1. Add a People Search Core Results Web Part to a page.
2. Edit the Web Part.
3. Select under Results Query Options, by Cross-Web Part query ID; Query 2
4. Enter the query in Fixed Keyword, for example department:IWS or Department:ICT.

5. Navigate to the Enterprise Search Centers default results page.
6. If needed create temporarily a Enterprise Search Center.
7. Edit the Results page (http://[root]/sites/search/pages/results.aspx) and set the People Matches Web Part in edit mode.
8. Open the Display properties of the People Matches Web Part.

9. Deselect Use Location Visualization.
10. Open the XSLT Editor.
11. Copy and save the XSLT in a local XSLT file.
12. Navigate to the People Search Core Results Web Part.
13. Open the Display properties of the People Matches Web Part.
14. Deselect Use Location Visualization.
15. Copy and save the XSLT from the local XSLT file.
16. Safe the changes and enjoy the result.

Result