Aggregate Guide

Quick Guide

• Aggregate Introduction
• Aggregate Center
• Aggregate Administration
• Editing Aggregate Center

Aggregate is a virtual library solution for SharePoint that provides functionality to present views of documents from the entire SharePoint farm and also from external content sources indexed by SharePoint. By default, Aggregate Center displays documents from document libraries residing in all Web applications in a farm. But you can configure it to show all content from all Web applications and also from external content sources. Results can also be filtered to show documents from certain Web application(s), site collections or even sites. Furthermore, by using fixed queries you can configure Aggregate Center to display documents, for example, only with a certain file extension or by a certain author, etc. Although the Aggregate is a part of the Search solution, it is a separate product. To be able to use the Aggregate you will need a license that supports this product.

Aggregate Center is created like any other SharePoint site. Activating the Search feature at the site collection level makes the Aggregate Center site template available for that site collection. To create an Aggregate Center, please go to the root site of the site collection. Then click Site Actions and select New Site or More Options. On the Create window locate the Aggregate Center. If the template is not available in the list of templates, please make sure that the Search feature is enabled as described above and an appropriate SharePoint language pack is installed according to the list of languages supported by.

Please note that an Aggregate Center can be created without having a valid license that supports this product. But you will be able to use the center only after obtaining a valid license that supports the Aggregate and setting it as active in the Central Administration > General Application Settings > Manage licenses.

Aggregate farm level configurations are done in Central Administration > General Application Settings >Manage Modules > Manage Aggregate Configuration. Here you can find configuration pages with default property settings forSearch result actions and also searchable, Search result as well as refiner properties that will be used by all Aggregate Centers in your farm. In addition to default properties, you can also define custom properties. Site collections and sites in Web applications, where you deployed the Search solution, will also have those configuration settings in their Site Settings pages. Lower level configurations inherit settings from higher levels, which means that custom properties defined at the farm level will be available at the site collection and site levels. Those settings can be overwritten at lower levels.

In addition to configuring settings in the farm, site collection and site levels you can also configure Aggregate Center Web Parts. The core Web Part of an Aggregate Center is the Aggregate Results Web Part, which contains some key settings such as selection of Web applications, content types to be displayed, result templates, language selection, etc. To make changes go to an Aggregate Center and click Site Actions > Edit Page. Then locate the Aggregate Result Web Part and click on the Configure this Aggregate Result Web Part link. That will open the Aggregate Result Web Part Settings page. The most important settings of the Web Part are located in the Fixed Search section.