Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog

Microsoft positioned in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2008 Information Access Magic Quadrant

2008-10-30T21:33:00Z

We’ve got great news to share! Last month, Gartner published the 2008 Magic Quadrant for Information Access Technology, and Microsoft was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant. Since the completion of the acquisition, we’ve worked incredibly hard to communicate and demonstrate a combined vision and strategy to our customers and partners. It’s good to know we’re heading in the right direction! When I talk with customers about search, it’s clear that organizations have very different needs. In fact, many...(read more)

Taking People Search on the Road….

2008-10-16T17:33:53Z

In another great blog post Matt McDermott walks you through the steps of enabling SharePoint’s people search capability on a mobile device with the end results looking something like this; The post is here; http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/matthew/archive/2008/09/27/mobile-people-search.aspx Richard Riley Senior Technical Product Manager Microsoft Corp. Del.icio.us | Digg It | Technorati | Blinklist | Furl | reddit | DotNetKicks...(read more)

Partner Post: One Stop Search from the Microsoft Office Research Task Pane

2008-09-26T20:04:59Z

Since the release of Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft desktop applications such as MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook and Internet Explorer have contained an internal federated or meta-search capability known as the ‘Research Pane’. To see this in action in office 2003 (see link for instructions for Office 2007), select (i.e. highlight) a word or phrase within MS Word or MS Outlook, and on PC’s right click on the highlighted word, pull down to the “Lookup Up” option and click. Another way to do...(read more)

How to: Customize the Thesaurus in SharePoint Search and Search Server

2008-09-23T21:49:04Z

The thesaurus is an xml file that provides users with a means of automatically expanding or rewriting their queries to include synonyms, acronyms, etc. For example, in a chemical company, product ID 1234, oxygen, O2 and LOX could all refer to the same item. A SharePoint Search administrator can modify the thesaurus file to substitute all these words at search query time. This document explains how to set up a thesaurus and where to find the relevant files. Supported Thesaurus Syntax: To use the sample...(read more)

SharePoint Image Search

2008-09-19T22:03:43Z

Matthew McDermott , a SharePoint MVP , has written a great 4 part blog post on how to make SharePoint 2007 search (and Search Server) render image results in a way that looks very similar to http://images.live.com . Not only does this make searching images much easier, it’s also a very thorough step-by-step tutorial on how to customize results using the built in Web Parts and XSL – it’s well worth a read. SharePoint Image Search (Part 1) SharePoint Image Search (Part 2) SharePoint Image Search (Part...(read more)

SQL File groups and Search

2008-09-16T22:17:00Z

This article has been a long time coming, but it is finally here. In the post below I will cover how to configure the Search database to span multiple filegroups. First I'll cover a little about the benefits of doing so: General references on what SQL file groups are: A basic description of Physical Database Files and Filegroups High level discussion on the benefits of Using Files and Filegroups The method that we have chosen to implement filegroups on the Search database is one of...(read more)

Partner Post: Announcing conceptClassifier for SharePoint – Automatic Classification within Office

2008-09-03T00:10:00Z

Enterprise customers are increasingly struggling with how to apply policy and governance at the desktop. End user adoption is cited as the single most critical barrier to success in ECM and Records Management initiatives. Using Concept Searching’s unique compound term processing concept Classifier for SharePoint can now be used to automatically classify content from Microsoft Office Applications, upload the documents directly to SharePoint, store the metadata in SharePoint properties and write back...(read more)

SQL Index defrag and maintenance tasks for Search

2008-09-02T23:47:00Z

Hi all, this topic is an area that has caused me much pain and work. My goal for this was to follow the recommended SQL guidelines while minimizing the impact that these maintenance jobs have on Crawling and Queries. We know from the SQL Monitoring an I/O post that Search is extremely I/O intensive . As it turns out so is all of the regular maintenance that SQL recommends, so finding the right balance between the two is an interesting scheduling task. As a starting point much information...(read more)

How to: Mine the ULS logs for query latency

2008-09-02T23:38:00Z

Tracking query latencies can be made easier through the use of the products ULS logs. Below you will find information on how to enable the specific ULS traces as well as information for how to parse the logs. The primary usage of this information is to monitor the ongoing health of your system. It is one tool in the toolbox to make sure that the system is running in a viable state. It is also necessary when you are making small changes to your environment so you can...(read more)

Search Server 2008 Express Redistribution Rights

2008-08-21T23:26:27Z

If you’re interested in using Search Server 2008 Express in your application or shipping it on hardware then take a look at the redistribution license page on the Enterprise Search site . This redistribution license agreement grants you the right to redistribute Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express with your software application or hardware. To obtain a Search Server 2008 Express redistribution license, you must: Review the Search Server 2008 Express Redistribution End-User License Agreement (EULA...(read more)

Announcing Faceted Search v2.5

2008-08-12T21:50:22Z

Starting Faceted Search 2.5, the solution relies on Microsoft Enterprise Library to address common software requirements in caching, logging, exception handling, policy injection etc., etc. More importantly, the 2.5 is a ground breaking release that is setting new targets for the Faceted Search. So, what’s new? New Features 1. Caching – dramatically improves performance and decreases the load on the search engine The solution uses 2 mechanisms for manageable cache: quick and long. I built the caching...(read more)

SharePoint Server 2007 Powers Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

2008-08-05T19:20:00Z

In light of the 2008 Olympics starting tomorrow in Beijing, we’re extremely excited to share that the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games is one of our newest SharePoint Server 2007 customers! After checking out a variety of different search solutions, such as the Google Search Appliance, the BOCOG is using SharePoint as a search platform to power their INFO 2008 database (which over 3,500 Olympics partners and members of the media will have access to.) This means that thousands of...(read more)

Announcing: Availability of Infrastructure Updates

2008-07-15T07:08:13Z

As announced on the SharePoint Team blog this morning we released to web three new important updates that affect SharePoint Server 2007 , Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 , Project Server 2007 , Search Server 2008 , Search Server 2008 Express and Project Professional 2007 . The Infrastructure Update for Microsoft Office Servers (KB951297) ( Download X86 , Download X64 ) is particularly important from a Search and SharePoint Server 2007 perspective as it contains the new Enterprise Search features...(read more)

Announcing: conceptClassifier for SharePoint

2008-07-07T21:41:07Z

conceptClassifier for SharePoint adds automatic document classification and taxonomy management to Microsoft SharePoint and works without the need to build another search index. It is installed as a set of Features that, when activated, cause new columns to be displayed in the document library listings and new menu options appear that allow authorised users to edit the automatically generated metadata, if required. Adding Taxonomy navigation to SharePoint Classification results are saved directly...(read more)

Announcing: SharePoint Web Parts for FAST ESP

2008-06-20T17:06:00Z

It’s been around 45 days since the acquisition of FAST Search and Transfer closed and we’re moving quickly to provide interoperability for Microsoft customers between FAST ESP and Microsoft SharePoint Server. The first deliverables from this work are a set of FAST ESP Search Web Parts for quickly integrating results from FAST ESP into SharePoint Server 2007 and a FAST ESP Search site template. Using these Web Parts and Site Template SharePoint administrators will be able to quickly and easily build...(read more)