Deploy people search

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Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

People search helps users find other people in the organization. People search has the following prerequisites:

Each of the above listed prerequisites must be deployed before you deploy people search. People search also requires a Search Center that uses the Enterprise Search Center template.

To make people search available and useful, you must deploy people search and populate the data for people search.

Deploy people search

To deploy people search, you must configure My Sites settings and configure crawling.

Configure My Sites settings

You must configure the My Sites settings in the User Profile service application to specify the My Site Host location and to confirm other settings. Use the following procedure to configure My Sites settings.

To configure My Sites settings

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is an administrator for the User Profile service application that you want to configure.

  2. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the row that contains the User Profile service application.

  4. In the Operations group on the ribbon, click Manage.

  5. On the Manage Profile Service page, in the My Site Settings section, click Setup My Sites.

  6. In the Preferred Search Center section, in the Preferred Search Center box, ensure that the path of the Search Center site is correct.

  7. In the Search scope for finding people list, ensure that People is selected.

  8. In the Search scope for finding documents list, select the search scope that you want to use for finding documents.

    We recommend that you select the All Sites scope.

  9. In the My Site Host section, in the My Site Host location box, ensure that the path to the My Sites host is correct.

  10. In the Site Naming Format section, select the format you want to use to name new personal sites.

    The default format is User name (do not resolve conflicts).

  11. In the Language Options section, optionally choose whether to allow users to choose the language of their personal site and whether the user profile will be edited using the language of their personal site.

  12. In the Read Permission Level section, optionally enter one or more accounts that will be granted the Read permission level in the personal site when it is created.

    By default, all authenticated users are granted this permission level.

  13. In the My site E-mail Notifications section, optionally specify a different name that will appear in all e-mail notifications sent from all My Sites.

  14. Click OK.

After you have configured My Sites settings, the next step is to configure crawling.

Configure crawling

When you configure My Sites, the following updates are made to the Search service application:

  • The URL to crawl the profile store is added to the default content source.

  • The default content access account is given Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers permissions on the User Profile service application.

We recommend that you create a separate content source to crawl the profile store on a different schedule than you use to crawl SharePoint sites.

Depending on your needs, you may want to use an account other than the default content access account to crawl the profile store. If this is the case, you must make sure that the account that you use has access to the profile store. Use the following procedure to configure crawl account access to the user profile store.

To configure crawl account access to the user profile store

  1. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the row that contains the User Profile service application, and then in the ribbon, click Administrators.

  2. In the Administrators for User Profile Service Application dialog box, in the To add an account… box, type the user account in the form domain\user name.

  3. Click Add

  4. In the Permissions list box, select the Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers check box.

  5. Click OK.

After you have given the crawl account access to the user profile store, you must create a crawl rule to specify that you want to use that account when you crawl the user profile store. Use the following procedure to create a crawl rule.

To create a crawl rule to authenticate to the User Profile service application

  1. On the Home page of the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  2. On the Manage Service Applications page, click Search Service Application.

  3. On the Search Administration page, in the Quick Launch, in the Crawling section, click Crawl rules.

  4. On the Manage Crawl Rules page, click New Crawl Rule.

  5. In the Path section, in the Path box, type the start address for the User Profile service application in the form sps3://<hostname>, where <hostname> is the URL for the Web application where you deployed the My Sites site collection.

  6. In the Crawl Configuration section, select Include all items in this path.

  7. In the Specify Authentication section, select Specify a different content access account.

  8. In the Account box that appears, type the user account that you gave access to the User Profile store in the form domain\user name.

  9. Type the password for the account that you specified in the Password and Confirm Password boxes.

  10. Click OK.

For more information about how to manage crawl rules, see Manage crawl rules (SharePoint Server 2010).

If you want to use a separate content source to crawl the profile store, you must create a new content source and remove the URL for the profile store from the default content source. Use the following procedure to create a new content source that specifies how to crawl the profile store.

To create a content source that specifies how to crawl the profile store

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is an administrator for the Search service application.

  2. On the Home page of the Central Administration site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click Search Service Application.

  4. On the Search Administration page, in the Quick Launch, in the Crawling section, click Content Sources.

  5. On the Manage Content Sources page, click New Content Source.

  6. On the Add Content Source page, in the Name section, type a name for this content source.

  7. In the Content Source Type section, ensure that SharePoint Sites is selected.

  8. In the Start Addresses section, type the start address in the form sps3://<hostname>, where <hostname> is the URL for the Web application where you deployed the My Sites site collection.

  9. In the Crawl Settings section, leave the default value of Crawl everything under the host name for each start address.

  10. In the Crawl Schedules section, optionally create schedules for full and incremental crawls.

  11. In the Start Full Crawl section, select the Start full crawl of this content source check box, and then click OK.

After you have created a content source that specifies how to crawl the profile store, you must remove the URL for the profile store from the default content source to avoid duplicate crawls. Use the following procedure to remove the URL for the profile store from the default content source.

To remove the profile store URL from the default content source

  1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is an administrator for the Search service application.

  2. On the Home page of the Central Administration site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click Search Service Application.

  4. On the Search Administration page, in the Quick Launch, in the Crawling section, click Content sources.

  5. On the Manage Content Sources page, click the link to the default content source (Local SharePoint sites).

  6. In the Start Addresses section, remove the URL for the profile store (sps3://<hostname>, where <hostname> is the URL for the Web application where you deployed the My Sites site collection).

  7. Click OK.

To get the best results from people search, you should add as much information as you can by adding user profiles to the profile store and adding information to My Sites.

Add user profiles to the profile store

Before you can obtain meaningful people search results, you must add user profiles to the User Profile service application. You can do this in the following ways:

Important

For a test environment, we recommend that you do not synchronize the profile store to a directory service or other external data source that is in a production environment. Instead, create a copy of the directory service and synchronize the copy with the profile store.

Use the following procedure to view existing user profiles.

To view a list of user profiles

  1. On the Home page of the Central Administration site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  2. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the User Profile service application.

  3. On the Manage Profile Service Application page, in the People section, click Manage User Profiles.

  4. On the Manage User Profiles page, in the Find profiles box, type the name of the domain of which the users are members.

    Do not type the fully qualified domain name. For example, if users are members of the Contoso.com domain, type Contoso in the Find profiles box.

  5. Click Find.

Add information to My Sites

My Sites store information in the User Profile service application databases. The User Profile service application stores much of the information that appears in results for people search. The more information users add to their My Sites, the fuller people search results will be.

The first time a user accesses their My Site, a My Site is created for them and a profile is automatically added to the User Profile service application.

To add information to My Sites, log on as a user for whom a user profile has been created in the User Profile service application, and then go to that user’s My Site. In the user’s My Site, you can provide information about the user’s expertise and interests. To see how the information that you added affects what people search results appear, perform a crawl of the profile store, and then search on the user's name.