Category Archives: Crawl

A Look At : The New Search Functionality in SharePoint Online and how Developers can make use of it

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Search functionality in SharePoint 2013 includes several enhancements, custom content processing and a new framework for presenting search result types. SharePoint Server 2013 presents a new search architecture that includes substantial changes and additions to the search components and databases.

Also, there have been significant enhancements made to the Keyword Query Language (KQL).

Some of the features and functionalities have been depreciated from the previous version of SharePoint 2013. There has been a more search user interface improvement which brings the user more interactive with search results. For example, users can rest the pointer over a search result to see the content preview in the hover panel to the right of the result.

Now you can see Office 365 SharePoint 2013 and its admin features of Search Service Application. It’s a breakthrough advancing; nearly all the new features listed here are missed in Office 365 – SharePoint 2010. The following screen capture shows the SharePoint central administrator view for the Search section.

Manage all aspects of the Search experience for your end users improving the relevancy of your results per your content and metadata.

Search helps users quickly return to important sites and documents by remembering what they have previously searched and clicked. The results of previously searched and clicked items are displayed as query suggestions at the top of the results page.

In addition to the default manner in which search results are differentiated, site collection administrators and site owners can create and use result types to customize how results are displayed for important documents. A result type is a rule that identifies a type of result and a way to display it.

 

Manage Search Schema

Managed properties are used to restrict search results, and present the content of the properties in search results. Crawled properties are automatically extracted from crawled content. All the changes to properties will take effect only after the next full crawl.

Under the search schema section, administrator can:

  • View, create, or modify Managed Properties and map crawled properties to managed properties
  • View or modify Crawled Properties, or to view crawled properties in a particular category
  • View or modify Categories, or view crawled properties in a particular category.

While creating a new managed property, the ‘Mappings to crawled properties’ is one of the key attributes for the configuration set in our new property.

 

 

Manage Search Dictionaries

  Taxonomy Term Store  
People Search Dictionaries System
Department Company Exclusions Hashtags
Job Title Company Inclusions Keywords
Location Query Spelling Exclusions Orphaned terms
  Query Spelling Includings  

 

Manage Authoritative Pages

Search in SharePoint 2013 will analyze the collection of authoritative and non-authoritative pages to determine the ranking of search results. The authoritative sites are of two kinds:

  • Authoritative Site Pages
  • Non-authoritative Site Pages

Authoritative site pages are the links, which administrator authorized to be the most relevant information. There can be multiple authoritative pages in each environment. There is an option for specifying second and third-level authorities for search ranking. Non-authoritative site pages are the content from certain sites can be ranked lower than the rest of the content in the site.

 

Query Suggestion Settings

SharePoint Search comprises various features that you can leverage for building productivity solutions. One of the interesting and useful competencies are Query Suggestions. The query suggestions are administrated by two options as follows:

  • Always Suggest Phrases
  • Never Suggest Phrases

Manage Result Sources

Result Sources are used to frame the search results and confederate queries to external sources, such as internet search engines, etc. Once the result source are defined, we can configure search web parts and query rule actions to use the result source.

How the Result Source is managed? A SharePoint Online administrator of SharePoint Online Tenant can manage result sources for all site collections and sites reside under the same tenant. A site collection administrator or a site owner can manage result sources for a site collection or a site, respectively.

SharePoint 2013 provides 16 pre-defined result sources. The pre-configured default result source is Local SharePoint Results. We can state a different result source as the default as per our requirement

.

While creating a new Result Source, there is Protocol and Query transform are the two important parameters which tells the Result Source what to do in the SharePoint.

Protocol – Local SharePoint for results from the index of this Search Service. OpenSearch 1.0/1.1 for results from a search engine that uses that protocol. Exchange for results from an exchange source. Remote SharePoint for results from the index of a search service hosted in another farm.

Query Transform – Change incoming queries to use this new query text instead. Include the incoming query in the new text by using the query variable “{searchTerms}“.

Use this to scope results. For example, to only return OneNote items, set the new text to “{searchTerms} fileextension=one“. Then, an incoming query “sharepoint” becomes “sharepoint fileextension=one“. Launch the Query Builder for additional options.

 

Manage Query Rules

Query rules are to conditionally stimulate the search results and show hunks of supplementary results based on the rules created in the SharePoint. In a query rule, you can specify conditions and correlated actions without any help of code. The user with Site Collection, Site owner permission level can create and manage the query rules.

 

Manage Query Client Types

Query Client Types are one of the new search features in SharePoint 2013. Client Type identifies an application where a search query is sent from. Applications are prioritized by tiers. Top tier has the highest priority. When resource limit is reached, query throttling becomes ON, and search system will process the queries from top tier to bottom tier.

System Client Types are available out-of-the box, and cannot be deleted. We can add a new custom Client Type by clicking on New Client Type.

 

Remove Search Results

To remove data from the search results, type the URLs which needed to remove from it. All the URLs listed in the textbox will be removed from search results immediately, once after the Remove Now button is clicked.

View Usage Reports

Here the administrator will be able to see the usage reports and search related report, example Query Rules usage by day, Top Queries by Day, etc.

Search Center Settings

In this setting, the default search system will be mapped. Usually the Enterprise Search Center site that has been created for search entire SharePoint sites in the organization.

Export Search Configuration

Create a file that includes all customized query rules, result sources, result types, ranking models and site search settings but not any that shipped with SharePoint, in the current tenant that can be imported to other tenants.

Import Search Configuration

If you have a search configuration you’d like to import, browse for it below. Settings imported from the file will be created and activated as part of the site. You can modify any of the settings after import.

Crawl Log Permissions

Grant users read access to crawl log information for this tenant.

Search Client Object Model

SharePoint 2013 Search includes a client object model (CSOM) that enables access to most of the Query object model functionality for online, on-premises, and mobile development. You can use the Search CSOM to create client applications that run on a machine that does not have SharePoint 2013 installed to return SharePoint 2013 Preview search results.

The Search CSOM includes a Microsoft .NET Framework managed client object model and JavaScript object model, and it is built on SharePoint 2013. First, client code accesses the SharePoint CSOM. Then, client code accesses the Search CSOM.

NOTE: Custom search solutions in SharePoint Server 2013 do not support SQL syntax. Search in SharePoint 2013 supports FQL syntax and KQL syntax for custom search solutions.

We can configure crawled and managed properties. Configure Result Sources which were Federated Result / Scopes in SharePoint Search 2010.

 

Introduction to Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

BCS has the ability to connect and query the data sources and returns the results to the user through an external list, or app for SharePoint, or Office 2013. The Microsoft Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 include Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS).

The SharePoint 2013 and the Office 2013 suites include Microsoft Business Connectivity Services. With Business Connectivity Services, you can use SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 clients as an interface into data that doesn’t live in SharePoint 2013 itself. It does this by making a connection to the data source, running a query, and returning the results.

Business Connectivity Services returns the results to the user through an external list, or app for SharePoint, or Office 2013 where you can perform different operations against them, such as Create, Read, Update, Delete, and Query (CRUDQ). Business Connectivity Services can access external data sources through Open Data (OData), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) endpoints, web services, cloud-based services, and .NET assemblies, or through custom connectors.

Business Connectivity Services can access external data sources through Open Data (OData), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) endpoints, web services, cloud-based services, and .NET assemblies, or through custom connectors. The Open Data Protocol is known as OData. It is an open web protocol for querying and updating data.

Business Connectivity Services uses SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 as a client interface for data which doesn’t reside SharePoint 2013 environment.

The following screen capture is the BCS features and configuration options available under the SharePoint Administration Center in the Office 365.

Create a new Search Service Application in SharePoint 2013 using PowerShell

The search architecture in SharePoint 2013 has changed quite a bit when compared to SharePoint 2010. In fact the Search Service in SharePoint 2013 is completely overhauled. It is a combination of FAST Search and SharePoint Search components.

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As you can see the query and crawl topologies are merged into a single topology, simply called “Search topology”. Provisioning of the search service application creates 4 databases:

  • SP2013_Enterprise_Search – This is a search administration database. It contains configuration and topology information
  • SP2013_Enterprise_Search_AnalyticsReportingStore – This database stores the result of usage analysis
  • SP2013_Enterprise_Search_CrawlStore – The crawl database contains detailed tracking and historical information about crawled items
  • SP2013_Enterprise_Search_LinksStore – Stores the information extracted by the content processing component and also stores click-through information

# Create a new Search Service Application in SharePoint 2013

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Settings    $IndexLocation = “C:\Data\Search15Index” #Location must be empty, will be deleted during the process!     $SearchAppPoolName = “Search App Pool”     $SearchAppPoolAccountName = “Contoso\administrator”     $SearchServerName = (Get-ChildItem env:computername).value     $SearchServiceName = “Search15”     $SearchServiceProxyName = “Search15 Proxy”     $DatabaseName = “Search15_ADminDB”     Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow “Checking if Search Application Pool exists”     $SPAppPool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool -Identity $SearchAppPoolName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if (!$SPAppPool)    {         Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Creating Search Application Pool”         $spAppPool = New-SPServiceApplicationPool -Name $SearchAppPoolName -Account $SearchAppPoolAccountName -Verbose     }

Start Services search service instance    Write-host “Start Search Service instances….”     Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance $SearchServerName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue     Start-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServiceInstance $SearchServerName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow “Checking if Search Service Application exists”    $ServiceApplication = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Identity $SearchServiceName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if (!$ServiceApplication)    {         Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Creating Search Service Application”         $ServiceApplication = New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Partitioned -Name $SearchServiceName -ApplicationPool $spAppPool.Name  -DatabaseName $DatabaseName     }

Write-Host -ForegroundColor Yellow “Checking if Search Service Application Proxy exists”    $Proxy = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy -Identity $SearchServiceProxyName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

if (!$Proxy)    {         Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green “Creating Search Service Application Proxy”         New-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplicationProxy -Partitioned -Name $SearchServiceProxyName -SearchApplication $ServiceApplication     }

$ServiceApplication.ActiveTopology     Write-Host $ServiceApplication.ActiveTopology

Clone the default Topology (which is empty) and create a new one and then activate it    Write-Host “Configuring Search Component Topology….”     $clone = $ServiceApplication.ActiveTopology.Clone()     $SSI = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local     New-SPEnterpriseSearchAdminComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     New-SPEnterpriseSearchContentProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     New-SPEnterpriseSearchAnalyticsProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     New-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI

Remove-Item -Recurse -Force -LiteralPath $IndexLocation -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue    mkdir -Path $IndexLocation -Force

New-SPEnterpriseSearchIndexComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI -RootDirectory $IndexLocation    New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryProcessingComponent –SearchTopology $clone -SearchServiceInstance $SSI     $clone.Activate()

Write-host “Your search service application $SearchServiceName is now ready”

Update

To configure failover server(s) for Search DBs, use the following PowerShell:

Thanks to Marcel Jeanneau for sharing this!

#Admin Database   $ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication “Search Service Application”    Set-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication –Identity $ssa –FailoverDatabaseServer <failoverserveralias\instance>

#Crawl Database   $CrawlDatabase0 = ([array]($ssa | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlDatabase))[0]    Set-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlDatabase -Identity $CrawlDatabase0 -SearchApplication $ssa -FailoverDatabaseServer <failoverserveralias\instance>

#Links Database   $LinksDatabase0 = ([array]($ssa | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchLinksDatabase))[0]     Set-SPEnterpriseSearchLinksDatabase -Identity $LinksDatabase0 -SearchApplication $ssa -FailoverDatabaseServer <failoverserveralias\instance>

#Analytics database   $AnalyticsDB = Get-SPDatabase –Identity     $AnalyticsDB.AddFailOverInstance(“failover alias\instance”)    $AnalyticsDB.Update()

You can always change the default content access account using the following command:

$password = Read-Host –AsSecureString**********Set-SPEnterpriseSearchService -id “SSA name” –DefaultContentAccessAccountName Contoso\account –DefaultContentAccessAccountPassword $password

Look out for my Powershell Web Part and Google Analytics Web Part and App that is under Development and available soon for purchase!!

Image

Troubleshoot and Fix Slow SharePoint 2013 Performance

You may have notice that SharePoint 2013 has some pretty hefty requirements. If a new server is not in the cards for you anytime soon, there are several things you can do to mitigate the effects of lacking resources according to several blogs:

  • Increase the amount of RAM
  • Stop any unused SharePoint 2013 services
  • Limit Noderunner’s memory utilization
  • Reduce the Search crawl interval

In all honestly, the above steps will yield marginal performance boosts. I have only found two ways of effectively increasing SharePoint’s performance:

  1. Disable SharePoint Search permanently-> http://www.falconitservices.com/support/KB/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=182
  2. Have at leat 24 GB of RAM and meet the minimum hardware requirements-> http://www.falconitservices.com/support/KB/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=168

You can try other things but in my experience: Resistance is futile; you need the corrct amount of RAM or you need to disable search.

SharePoint 2013 Online Search Administrator – An update from SharePoint 2010

Search functionality in SharePoint 2013 includes several enhancements, custom content processing and a new framework for presenting search result types. SharePoint Server 2013 presents a new search architecture that includes substantial changes and additions to the search components and databases. Also, there have been significant enhancements made to the Keyword Query Language (KQL).

Some of the features and functionalities have been depreciated from the previous version of SharePoint 2013. There has been a more search user interface improvement which brings the user more interactive with search results. For example, users can rest the pointer over a search result to see the content preview in the hover panel to the right of the result.

Now you can see Office 365 SharePoint 2013 and its admin features of Search Service Application. It’s a breakthrough advancing; nearly all the new features listed here are missed in Office 365 – SharePoint 2010. The following screen capture shows the SharePoint central administrator view for the Search section.

Manage all aspects of the Search experience for your end users improving the relevancy of your results per your content and metadata.

Search helps users quickly return to important sites and documents by remembering what they have previously searched and clicked. The results of previously searched and clicked items are displayed as query suggestions at the top of the results page.

In addition to the default manner in which search results are differentiated, site collection administrators and site owners can create and use result types to customize how results are displayed for important documents. A result type is a rule that identifies a type of result and a way to display it.

Manage Search Schema

Managed properties are used to restrict search results, and present the content of the properties in search results. Crawled properties are automatically extracted from crawled content. All the changes to properties will take effect only after the next full crawl.

Under the search schema section, administrator can:

  • View, create, or modify Managed Properties and map crawled properties to managed properties
  • View or modify Crawled Properties, or to view crawled properties in a particular category
  • View or modify Categories, or view crawled properties in a particular category.

While creating a new managed property, the ‘Mappings to crawled properties’ is one of the key attributes for the configuration set in our new property.

Manage Search Dictionaries

  Taxonomy Term Store  
People Search Dictionaries System
Department Company Exclusions Hashtags
Job Title Company Inclusions Keywords
Location Query Spelling Exclusions Orphaned terms
  Query Spelling Includings  

Manage Authoritative Pages

Search in SharePoint 2013 will analyze the collection of authoritative and non-authoritative pages to determine the ranking of search results. The authoritative sites are of two kinds:

  • Authoritative Site Pages
  • Non-authoritative Site Pages

Authoritative site pages are the links, which administrator authorized to be the most relevant information. There can be multiple authoritative pages in each environment. There is an option for specifying second and third-level authorities for search ranking. Non-authoritative site pages are the content from certain sites can be ranked lower than the rest of the content in the site.

Query Suggestion Settings

SharePoint Search comprises various features that you can leverage for building productivity solutions. One of the interesting and useful competencies are Query Suggestions. The query suggestions are administrated by two options as follows:

  • Always Suggest Phrases
  • Never Suggest Phrases

Manage Result Sources

Result Sources are used to frame the search results and confederate queries to external sources, such as internet search engines, etc. Once the result source are defined, we can configure search web parts and query rule actions to use the result source.

How the Result Source is managed? A SharePoint Online administrator of SharePoint Online Tenant can manage result sources for all site collections and sites reside under the same tenant. A site collection administrator or a site owner can manage result sources for a site collection or a site, respectively.

SharePoint 2013 provides 16 pre-defined result sources. The pre-configured default result source is Local SharePoint Results. We can state a different result source as the default as per our requirement.

While creating a new Result Source, there is Protocol and Query transform are the two important parameters which tells the Result Source what to do in the SharePoint.

Protocol – Local SharePoint for results from the index of this Search Service. OpenSearch 1.0/1.1 for results from a search engine that uses that protocol. Exchange for results from an exchange source. Remote SharePoint for results from the index of a search service hosted in another farm.

Query Transform – Change incoming queries to use this new query text instead. Include the incoming query in the new text by using the query variable “{searchTerms}“.

Use this to scope results. For example, to only return OneNote items, set the new text to “{searchTerms} fileextension=one“. Then, an incoming query “sharepoint” becomes “sharepoint fileextension=one“. Launch the Query Builder for additional options.

Manage Query Rules

Query rules are to conditionally stimulate the search results and show hunks of supplementary results based on the rules created in the SharePoint. In a query rule, you can specify conditions and correlated actions without any help of code. The user with Site Collection, Site owner permission level can create and manage the query rules.

Manage Query Client Types

Query Client Types are one of the new search features in SharePoint 2013. Client Type identifies an application where a search query is sent from. Applications are prioritized by tiers. Top tier has the highest priority. When resource limit is reached, query throttling becomes ON, and search system will process the queries from top tier to bottom tier.

System Client Types are available out-of-the box, and cannot be deleted. We can add a new custom Client Type by clicking on New Client Type.

Remove Search Results

To remove data from the search results, type the URLs which needed to remove from it. All the URLs listed in the textbox will be removed from search results immediately, once after the Remove Now button is clicked.

View Usage Reports

Here the administrator will be able to see the usage reports and search related report, example Query Rules usage by day, Top Queries by Day, etc.

Search Center Settings

In this setting, the default search system will be mapped. Usually the Enterprise Search Center site that has been created for search entire SharePoint sites in the organization.

Export Search Configuration

Create a file that includes all customized query rules, result sources, result types, ranking models and site search settings but not any that shipped with SharePoint, in the current tenant that can be imported to other tenants.

Import Search Configuration

If you have a search configuration you’d like to import, browse for it below. Settings imported from the file will be created and activated as part of the site. You can modify any of the settings after import.

Crawl Log Permissions

Grant users read access to crawl log information for this tenant.

Search Client Object Model

SharePoint 2013 Search includes a client object model (CSOM) that enables access to most of the Query object model functionality for online, on-premises, and mobile development. You can use the Search CSOM to create client applications that run on a machine that does not have SharePoint 2013 installed to return SharePoint 2013 Preview search results.

The Search CSOM includes a Microsoft .NET Framework managed client object model and JavaScript object model, and it is built on SharePoint 2013. First, client code accesses the SharePoint CSOM. Then, client code accesses the Search CSOM.

NOTE: Custom search solutions in SharePoint Server 2013 do not support SQL syntax. Search in SharePoint 2013 supports FQL syntax and KQL syntax for custom search solutions.

We can configure crawled and managed properties. Configure Result Sources which were Federated Result / Scopes in SharePoint Search 2010.

Introduction to Business Connectivity Services (BCS)

<

p>BCS has the ability to connect and query the data sources and returns the results to the user through an external list, or app for SharePoint, or Office 2013. The Microsoft Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 include Microsoft Business Connectivity Services (BCS).

The SharePoint 2013 and the Office 2013 suites include Microsoft Business Connectivity Services. With Business Connectivity Services, you can use SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 clients as an interface into data that doesn’t live in SharePoint 2013 itself. It does this by making a connection to the data source, running a query, and returning the results. Business Connectivity Services returns the results to the user through an external list, or app for SharePoint, or Office 2013 where you can perform different operations against them, such as Create, Read, Update, Delete, and Query (CRUDQ). Business Connectivity Services can access external data sources through Open Data (OData), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) endpoints, web services, cloud-based services, and .NET assemblies, or through custom connectors.

Business Connectivity Services can access external data sources through Open Data (OData), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) endpoints, web services, cloud-based services, and .NET assemblies, or through custom connectors. The Open Data Protocol is known as OData. It is an open web protocol for querying and updating data.

Business Connectivity Services uses SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 as a client interface for data which doesn’t reside SharePoint 2013 environment.

The following screen capture is the BCS features and configuration options available under the SharePoint Administration Center in the Office 365.