Adding, Editing and Deleting Grouping Properties
To configure grouping properties:
1. Go to the Search Tabs page for the site level at which you want to create the new grouping property as described in “Search-Tab Configuration and Inheritance”.
2. Click on the search tab for which you want to modify properties and select Configure Search Tab from its action menu. This opens the Search Tab Configuration page.
3. Click on the Grouping Properties link under the Property Settings heading on the Search Tab Configuration page. This brings you to the Grouping Properties page.
4. Use the toolbar and action-menu commands on the Grouping Properties page to add, remove, arrange, copy and/or edit your properties (see also “The Grouping Properties Page” for details about these controls).
When you are adding a new property, you will see the Add Grouping Property page. When editing an existing property created at the current site level, you will see the Edit Grouping Property page. When editing an existing property created at a higher site level, you will see the O*verwrite Grouping Property* page. When you are creating a copy of an existing property, you will see the Copy Grouping Property page. Each of these pages includes the same collection of settings, which are described below.
Figure: The grouping-property configuration page
Basic Configuration Settings
For most types of grouping properties, you will only need to define the basic configuration settings, which are:
• Name and Description > ID: Enter a unique ID for the property. Do not use spaces.
• Name and Description > Name: Enter a display name for the property.
• Name and Description > Description: Enter a short description of the property. This will be shown as a tool tip on administration pages (such as the list on the Grouping Properties page).
• Property Icon: If you would like to display a small icon next to the grouping property name, then enter a URL for your preferred image here. Note, however, that the XSLT template used by the Search Summary Web Part that creates the grouping control must be prepared to handle and display the icon correctly. The default XSLT template renders grouping controls as a drop-down list and therefore ignores this icon set. Note also that if you choose to specify the image URL using a relative address (e.g., “ /_layouts/images/logo.gif”), then you must make sure that this relative path is valid for all of your Search Centers and copy the file to the appropriate location on each front-end Web server.
• Property Mapping: The drop-down list here shows the name of each available managed property. Select the managed property by which you wish to group results. (Note that all metadata properties that you wish to use must be available and configured as a managed property in SharePoint before you can configure them as search-result properties for Search & Preview; see also “Establishing Custom Properties in SharePoint”.)
• Default Group: Often, your site will include documents and pages for which no value is defined for the current grouping property. All such results will be grouped together under a heading such as “other”. Enter the name you wish to use for this heading here.
• Property Values > Value Source: For properties whose values you want to show just as they are stored in the database, set this to No property values. However, if you would like to translate the values for display and/or use icons for various values, then you can use the other settings available here to map database values to display values. See the sections below for details about how to do this.
• Target Audiences: Use this setting to limit the types of users that will see the current property. Enter one or more audience names (separated by semicolons) to limit the audiences to which the current property will be shown. Leave this setting blank to show the property to all users. See also “Target Audiences in Search & Preview” for details about this setting and its helper controls.
Setting up Value Translations with a Manual Table
As mentioned above, you can use the Property Values settings on the Grouping Properties page to establish translations between values stored in the database and those shown to users. One common use for this is to translate several file-name extensions (which identify file types) to a more user-friendly name (for example, to translate .xsl, .xlsx and .xlsm to “MS Excel”). You can also use these settings to display icons for each of several expected values.
To set up value and/or icon translations:
1. Create or edit the appropriate grouping property and fill out the basic configuration settings as outlined above.
2. Set the Value Source setting to User defined values. The page then loads to show a Value Data table.
3. The Value Data table can hold any number of rows, each of which shows database value in the Value(s) column (separated by semicolons), display text in the Display Name column and, optionally, an icon to the left of the display name. Here you can do the following:
To edit an existing row, select it in the table and then click on the Edit button. This opens a window for editing the values and/or an icon for the selected row. If you would like to map a single display value to multiple database values, then list all relevant database values in the Values(s) field and separate each with a semicolon (;).
To add a new row, click on the Add button. This opens a window for defining a new row; this window has the same settings as the edit window described above.
To remove a row, select the target row in the table and click on the Delete button.
To change the order in which items are listed in the table, select an item and then use the up and down buttons to reposition it.
| Note: URLs for the icons defined for each entry in the Value Data table are returned with the result set, but they will only appear on your result page if the Search & Preview SharePoint Search Result Web Part on your page is using an XSLT template that uses them. You might, for example, use the icons as part of the heading for each group shown in the list. The default XSLT template, however, ignores the icon settings here. Note also that if you choose to specify the image URL using a relative address (e.g., “ /_layouts/images/logo.gif”), then you must make sure that this relative path is valid for all of your Search Centers and copy the file to the appropriate location on each front-end Web server. |
Fetching Value Translations from a Web Service
As an alternative to the manual table of translation values described above, you might instead choose to fetch a table of the display to submit values from a Web service.
Search & Preview includes a sample Visual Studio project that provides a skeletal Web Service that will return value options in the format required by Search & Preview. You must customize this project using Visual Studio so that it will interact correctly with your remote system. The project includes comments, examples and other documentation that will help you customize the service; some programming experience is required. Search & Preview submits a property ID to the service and expects to receive a set of values back. To find this project, open your Search & Preview CD or downloaded the archive and then look in the following folder:
To configure a grouping property to fetch display/submit options from a Web Service, do the following:
1. Customize the skeletal service supplied with Search & Preview as needed for your remote system. Then install and test the service.
2. Establish a searchable property in Search & Preview and configure it as a mapped property (as described above).
3. Set the Value Source setting to Web service data provider. The page then reloads to show the relevant settings in the Property Values area.
4. In the Value Data field, enter the URL of the Web Service. To confirm that the service is available, click on the Click here to test values link.
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