Search: The Heart of

SharePoint 2013

David Tappan, IOAP, MCITP:EA; MCP: SharePoint

davidt@cdh.com

June 26, 2013

About C/D/H

C/D/H is a highly specialized consulting firm providing professional technology consulting services to clients throughout the Midwest from our offices in the Detroit area and Grand Rapids.

• Infrastructure • Collaboration • Project Management • Unified Communications • Mobility

Microsoft Gold Partner

SharePoint Planning Services (SDPS) Partner

About me

David Tappan Consultant MCITP:EA, MCTS: SharePoint, IOAp

DavidT@cdh.com

Key Messages

1. Search is at the heart of many new features of SharePoint 2013

2. Query and content processing features combine the power of FAST–

and then some – with the ease of administration of SharePoint

Search.

3. Administration of much of search can be delegated—more so than in

SharePoint 2010.

4. Given the centrality of search in 2013, high availability is no longer an

option.

SharePoint 2013 Search-Dependent Features

• Content Search web part

• Cross-site publishing

• Social features (Newsfeed)

• e-Discovery

• My Tasks, Popular Items, etc.

• Usage Analytics

• Traditional search pages

– Search Results web part

Query Rules and Result Sources

The essence of Search

Document Document

Representation

Information

Need Query

The essence of Search

Document Document

Representation

Information

Need Query

What does the document mean?

The essence of Search

Document Document

Representation

Information

Need Query

What does the document mean? What does the user want?

The essence of Search

Document Document

Representation

Information

Need Query Match!

Content Processing Query Processing

What does the document mean? What does the user want?

SharePoint 2013 Search Components

Content Sources

User Profile

HTTPOther

File Share

SharePoint

Content Processing

Component

CrawlComponent

CrawlDatabase(s)

Analytics Processing

Component

AnalyticsDatabase

Index Component

LinkDatabase

Query Processing

Component

Event Store

Index Partition(s)

End User QueryOr

Process Initiated Query

Content Query

Query Processing Enhancements

• Analytics provides information about common queries and clickthroughs.

• Result sources replace search scopes, and take full advantage of query transforms

based on site, user and analytics to provide dynamic scopes.

• Query rules provide guidance about how to:

– promote relevant results (formerly Best Bets)

– surface result blocks that present the right properties in a way that makes sense visually

– Enhance the relevance of certain results

• Dictionaries used in query rules are maintained in Managed Metadata term sets.

– MMS dictionaries are not used in entity extraction, unfortunately—but that seems a good bet for

the future.

Query Rules

• The primary purpose of query rules is to enable search to better

understand and respond to likely user intent.

Query Rules Scope

• Query rules can be

created in four scopes.

–On Premise or Online:

• Site Collection or Site

–On Premise only:

• Farm

–Online only:

• Tenant

Query Rules

• Query rules have three elements:

–Conditions: When should the rule be

applied?

–Actions: What to do when the rule is

matched?

–Publishing: When should the rule be

active?

Query Rule Actions

• Add Promoted Result

• Add Promoted Block

• Add Ranked Block

• Change Ranked Results

Query transforms and query variables

• Query transforms used in:

–In a Web Part

–In a query rule

–In the result source

Query rules can be cumulative

searchTerms: cameras contenttype:T site:S result source: Asset Results sort: rank

searchTerms: cameras result source: default sort: rank

searchTerms: cameras result source: Local SharePoint sort: date

searchTerms: cameras contenttype:T result source: Asset Results sort: date

Query transforms and query variables

• Query transforms can include static properties

(the old “Append text to query”)

• OR they can use query variables:

–Any site or site collection property for the current site

–URL query string parameters

–Any user profile profile property for the current user

Result Sources and Query Rules

Query Rules Demonstration

Content search web part

• Used mostly for “search solutions”—no

query needed.

• Solves a lot of problems rolling up

content in SharePoint 2010:

– Rolling up content across site collections

without needing custom code

– Dynamic queries based on any property

– Separate queries/result sources per web

part.

– Formatting with HTML rather than XSLT

• Many built in web parts are based on

Content Search

Content Search Web Part

Demonstration

Overview of Cross-Site Publishing

1. Content is created in libraries and lists that are shared as catalogs

in the authoring site collection.

2. The search system crawls the content and builds the search index.

3. A user views a page on

a publishing site, which

triggers queries from

Search Web Parts.

4. Results are returned

from the search index,

and shown in Content

Search Web Parts on

the page.

5. Pages have friendly

URLs based on

Managed Metadata

terms that drive the

queries.

Overview of cross-site publishing in SharePoint Server 2013, http://technet.Microsoft.com

Search Fault Tolerance

“Small” Search Farm Architectures (~10 M items)

Search architecture changes via PowerShell only!

#clone the Active search topology

$ssa = Get-SPServiceApplication -Name “Search Service

Applicatio

$active = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -

SearchApplication $ssa -Active;\

$clone = New-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Clone -

SearchApplication $ssa -SearchTopology $active;

#Start the EnterPrise Search Component on wfe

$WFE01 = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity

“WFE01″;

Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity $WFE01;

# wait for 5 mins to start the search services

sleep 5;

# Make sure the search service instance status online

before proceeding next steps

Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity $WFE01;

# wait untill the status online before proceeding next

steps, once the status online

# Add index replica on wfe

New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent -SearchTopology

$clone -SearchServiceInstance $WFE01 -IndexPartition 0;

#Activate the cloned search topology

Set-SPEnterpriseSearchTopology -Identity $clone;

#At this point PowerShell command prompt freezes until

the search topology active. once it is active you can

refresh the Search service application and see the

topology changes;

#Repeat the same process for WFE02.

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