SHAREPOINTSearch.com

Hi,
   I am configuring the enterprise search in using BDC.
BDC is exposing some managed properties to be searchable by user.
Search page is having built in search webpart with single textbox.
In my case the search should behave in this way.
When the user enters search input to search for, internally Search mechanism should identify the managed property for which the user is searching for based on the user input.
Then it should apply the relevance for the results.
Can we make search this intelligent to identify for which nmanaged property the user is searching for based on the user input.
Ex: I am exposing customer details using BDC.
These are the proprties:
Customer Name
Address
Primary Contact
Secondary Contact
Location
Frequent Items
Visits
Buying habits
Preferred vendor
Products

So if the user enters Microsoft as search input the search should behave in such a way that Preferred Vendor will be the Most relevant result, and then Products will be the next relevant, and return the results in that order.
Based on the user input internally by using some mechanism search should identify for which data the user is looking for and then return the search results.

Any information on this will be highly appreciated.

Regards,
Padmaja

You said "Based on the user input internally by using some mechanism search should identify for which data the user is looking for and then return the search results." now this is what search is all about!. You couldn't have described the definition of relevancy and the ranking algorithm any better. Tweaking the weighting of the managed properties as we were doing in the other thread is the most straight forward way to do that which I am sure you already tried. "PreferredVendor" = 10000, "Products" = "1000". Not sure why this isn't working for you though. Some other alternatives:

- You could create focused search pages which do managed property searching ( as if you did an advanced search against that one property) so you can have seperate search tabs, one for "Prefered Vendor", another for "Products" etc, but you won't have combined results.

- If you are using ontolica you could put multiple results webparts on the same page each doing the appropriate focused search for a different managed property. That way Prefered Vendor results would always be the top results because they are the topmost webpart.

- You could write you own search interface which would give you more control over the process, I have done this and don't recommend it unless you need to.

- Cheers

Hi,

Really it was amazing that the response is very quick, I appreciate your help.

If I am going with resetting the weights for the managed properties it is working for me.
But again there is another condition to get search results in my scenario.
The results should be in such a way that relevant fields for a managed property the user is searching for will be changing for each managed property.
The search UI should have only one Searchbox, as the one default in MOSS search center.
Ex:
If the user is searching for managedProperty1 then managedProperty1, managedProperty3, managedProperty4 are more relevant from the all managed properties.
If the user is searching for managedProperty2 then managedProperty2, managedProperty3, managedProperty5 are more relevant from the all managed properties.

Like this I have some relevancy sheet for all the managed properties that I am exposing for the search.

Is this possible from MOSS search? If I go with restting weights, it will be for once. But here the relevancy fields are changing based on the field for which the user is searching for.

Can this be done by using the third approach that is being mentioned, building the search interface.
I would like to know how can this be achieved using this approach.

Any help in this regard will be appreciated.

Regards,
Padmaja

Unfortunately the relevancy cannot be manipulated like you require on the fly. It was possible in 2003 as the weights were passed in with the query and as such we could have devised some solution.

The apprpach of writing your own search interface would allow you to write your own query, but this pretty much will only help you if you forgo the full text search and use only managed property searching to exclude out other results. This doen't feel like the solution you need though.

 I hate leaving a problem hanging though, so here is one more wild idea:

How big is your index? Are we talking 10s of millions of items? If the actual numbers are far less then I suppose you could override the relevancy manually ( let's call it "sort order" for this purpose). Basically you pull all the results into a dataset, makimg sure you include all those managed properties you were talking about in the result set. Now you can do whatever you want to the "sort order" to achieve your results. The issues with this will be that the real time security trimmer will cry if you are using it for BDC items, and now your time to results wlll probably be a bit slower.  But if you absolutely have to have absolute control over relevancy then you have to take charge of it. NOTE: I have done this for a client along the way, and it was ugly but worked. 

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the alternate solution.
I will look into it and try to implement for my scenario.

Regards,
Padmaja