Enterprise search center (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

Article
07/22/2014

Applies to: Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

This is the tenth of 12 articles that compose How Microsoft IT deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (white paper). In this article:

Introduction to the enterprise Search Center
Getting to the enterprise Search Center
Enterprise Search Center tabs
Best Bets and URL promotion

Introduction to the enterprise Search Center

After the migration to Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, MSIT created a new enterprise Search Center that used the FAST Search Center template. The enterprise Search Center in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint includes many default features that were not available by default in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, such as search refiners, document previews for Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 presentations, and a Web Part for related searches.

For the new Search Center, MSIT provided customizations to match the visual design of the MSW enterprise portal, and provided customizations for the search tabs and search results page. MSIT uses the default full-text index and the default rank profile for search results on the enterprise Search Center, but adjusts relevance by using Best Bets and URL promotion.

MSIT also upgraded custom search features from the SharePoint Server 2007 search solution, such as the Glossary Web Part, so that the features worked with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. To reduce page rendering and refresh times, MSIT combined multiple cascading style sheets (CSS) files into one CSS file, and configured the Glossary Web Part to render and refresh asynchronously with respect to the rest of the search results page.

Getting to the enterprise Search Center

Employees often start their searches for information on the MSW enterprise portal, which is one of the most heavily used intranet sites at Microsoft. The portal is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. MSW enterprise portal

MSW enterprise portal

When a user types a query in the search box on MSW, the search service displays the results on the enterprise Search Center results page. Employees can also get to the enterprise Search Center by typing a search query in a search box on certain other intranet sites. Employees can even get to the enterprise Search Center from Windows Explorer on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008. For more information, see Search the enterprise from Windows 7.

Enterprise Search Center tabs

The FAST Search Center template includes two search tabs: All Sites and People. MSIT changed this configuration so that the enterprise Search Center contains three tabs: Intranet, People, and Video.

Intranet tab

MSIT renamed the default All Sites tab to Intranet to help clarify the purpose of the tab. The Intranet tab uses the default All SharePoint Sites search scope. When employees conduct a general search, they often use this tab because it returns the most comprehensive search results. However, the Intranet tab does not include people search results or results from structured data sources.

The Intranet tab includes the following preconfigured refiners when applicable: result type, site, author, modified date, and company. (In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, company is a preconfigured managed property for property extraction.) Web Parts in the right zone include Related Searches, Glossary, People Matches, and MSDN/TechNet Results. Related Searches, Glossary, People Matches, and MSDN/TechNet Results are default Web Parts. The MSDN/TechNet Results Web Part displays links to federated results from MSDN or TechNet and a View More Results link that starts the Bing search engine.

The Glossary custom Web Part draws on a corporate glossary that MSIT created by using the Managed Metadata service. When a user types a term in the search box on the Intranet tab, the Glossary Web Part accesses the corporate glossary by sending a query to the Managed Metadata service via the Managed Metadata web service. The Glossary Web Part then displays a list of terms and definitions that the web service returns. For example, if a user searches on DOS, the Web Part displays definitions for "denial of service attacks" and "disk operating system."

Figure 2 shows a portion of the enterprise Search Center results page after a user searches on windows phone 7 on the Intranet tab. The first search result is a Visual Best Bet graphic that MSIT configured as a hyperlink.

Figure 2. Search results page for the Intranet tab

Search results page for the Intranet tab

People tab

People is a default tab. A search on the People tab provides search results based on information that is in employee user profiles and My Sites. (MSIT imported user profiles from Active Directory Domain Services, and SharePoint Server uses the information for the creation of My Sites.) The People tab includes the following refiners where applicable: job title, organization, ask me about, interests, skills, past projects, and schools. The job title and organization refiners use managed properties that MSIT created based on fields in the user profiles.

Video tab

MSIT added the Video tab in response to popular demand. For the Video tab, MSIT created a "video" content type. The Video tab uses a global scope that displays only results that have that content type. (A search from the Video tab does not extract data from audio or video.)

The Video tab includes custom refiners in the left zone based on metadata for Channel, Published Date, and Tags. Channel refiners enable users to sort results by subject matter, and Tags refiners enable users to sort results according to metadata tags that site owners have applied to the items. Other metadata such as title, description, and length are displayed in the search results under a thumbnail of a frame of the associated video. To customize the search experience for the Video tab so that it differs from the Intranet tab and the People tab, MSIT used XSLT and CSS.

The Video tab search results page can display results in a grid view or a list view. Figure 3 shows a list view of search results on the Video tab.

Figure 3. Search results page for the Video tab in list view

Search results page for the Video tab in list view

Best Bets and URL promotion

For Best Bets for the enterprise Search Center, MSIT selects keywords and synonyms from the Microsoft corporate vocabulary that MSIT created by using the Managed Metadata service. Addition of new Best Bets is another one of the most common change requests that MSIT receives from site owners and users. In addition, MSIT search analysts regularly review user feedback, query logs, and click-through logs to make sure that that Best Bets are available, up-to-date, and relevant. Based on their reviews, the search analysts can create new Best Bets as appropriate.

In the MSIT SharePoint Server 2007 search solution, some keywords had as many as 10 Best Bets. However, in general, the fewer the Best Bets, the more authoritative and effective they are. Therefore, for the enterprise Search Center in the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution, MSIT tries to maintain fewer than five Best Bets per keyword and uses the URL promotion feature to boost the rank of any additional results that are highly relevant. With the URL promotion feature, the appearance of a particular keyword in a search query causes a specified site or document to rank higher in search results, regardless of other factors.

MSIT provides Visual Best Bets for the most popular search results of the most common queries, and for search results about some Microsoft events that have worldwide participation. The Visual Best Bets are graphical hyperlinks. For more information, see Add, remove, and display Visual Best Bets for a keyword by using Windows PowerShell (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint).

For more information, see the following articles: