Creating and Configuring Refiner Properties

To configure refiner properties:

1. Go to the Search Tabs page for the site level at which you want to create the new result property as described in “Search-Tab Configuration and Inheritance”.

2. Click on the search tab for which you want to modify result properties and select Configure Search Tab from its action menu. This opens the Search Tab Configuration page.

3. Click on the Refiner Properties link under the Property Settings heading on the Search Tab Configuration page. This brings you to the Search Result Properties page.

4. Use the toolbar and action-menu commands on the Refiner Properties page to add, remove, arrange and/or edit your properties (see also “The Refiner Properties Page” for details about these controls).

When you are adding a new property, you will see the Add Refiner Property page. When editing an existing property created at the current site level, you will see the Edit Refiner Property page. When editing an existing property created at a higher site level, you will see the Overwrite Refiner Property page. When you are creating a copy of an existing property, you will see the Copy Refiner Property page. Each of these pages includes the same collection of settings, which are described below.

Figure: The refiner property configuration page

Basic Configuration Settings

For most types of refiner 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 Refiner Properties page).

• Property Mapping: The drop-down list here shows the name of each available managed property. Select the managed property in which your refiner property should search. (Note that all metadata properties that you wish to use must be available and configured as managed properties in SharePoint before you can configure them as search-result properties for Search & Preview; see also “Establishing Custom Properties in SharePoint”.)

• 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 section 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

As mentioned above, you can use the Value Source settings on the Refiner Properties page to establish translations between values stored in the database and those shown to users. One common use for this is to translate 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 refiner 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. As mentioned above, 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.