Preview Guide

Quick Guide

• Preview Introduction
• Preview Back-end Installation
• Installing Preview Back-end server without Web App
• Preview Installing Search & Preview Preview Database
• Preview Default Content Access Account
• Preview Managing Content Sources
• Preview Manage Crawl Rules
• Preview Gatherer Service Status
• Preview Crawl Log
• Preview Adding the Web Part to a Search Center
• Preview Adding the Web Part an Aggregate Center
• Preview Adding the Web Part to a Document Library
• Enabling Preview of Web Pages
• Enabling Full Document Preview

After the Search & Preview Preview solution has been installed and deployed, the Search & Preview Preview feature will be added to the list of farm features and by default, it is activated automatically. The site collections feature list will contain three Search & Preview Preview features, each of which is, in fact, a separate product. The Search & Preview Preview for Search feature adds visual search functionality to Search & Preview Search, SharePoint Search, and also to FAST Search for SharePoint. Visual content navigation functionality can be added to Search & Preview Aggregate and also to SharePoint document libraries by the Search & Preview Preview for Aggregate and Search & Preview Preview for Libraries features, respectively. Please make sure your license supports the products you would like to use.

After installing the Search & Preview Preview solution you can proceed with the installation of the Preview Back-end Installer. Open the Preview Back end Installer folder (installation package) and run the installer. You need to run this installer on all Web front-end machines in your farm. If your farm consists of more than one Web front-end server, select the Complete installation option (Gatherer and Conversion services) only on one of them and Typical installation option (only the Conversion service) on the others. The Complete installation option will prompt you for the SharePoint farm account credentials. The provided account must be SharePoint farm account and also local machine administrator account and will be indicated in the installer. In some scenarios, it might be necessary to provide the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) instead of the NetBIOS domain name in the Service Doman filed.

Certain SharePoint topologies may require that the Preview back-end (Gatherer and Conversion services) must be installed on a SharePoint server which does not have a Web Application – or a server to which for any reason the Search & Preview Preview SharePoint solution cannot be deployed. As the Preview backend installer checks, if the solution is deployed on the given server, it will not allow proceeding with the installation in the mentioned scenario.

Solution:
To resolve the issue you can manually copy the SurfRay.Core.dll and SurfRay.Core.SP[2007|2010].dll into the GAC of the affected server. The dll files can be found on the servers to which the Search & Preview Preview SharePoint solution has been already deployed.

Search & Preview Preview database needs to be installed to store first-page-preview images of documents and Web pages indexed by SharePoint. This database will also be used to temporarily store (cache) preview images from live conversion when the full-document-preview option is selected. If the first-page-preview option is not preferred then the Search & Preview Preview database does not need to be installed.

To install the database go to Central Administration > General Application Settings > Manage Search & Preview Modules > Manage Search & Preview Preview Database page. Type the name of your SQL server, username, and password. The account, associated with provided credentials, needs to have the right to create databases on the selected database server instance. Click the Connect button and when connected click the Install button to create the database.

On this page, you will need to provide credentials for the default content access account. This account will be used by the Search & Preview Preview on Web front-end servers to create full document preview images. It is recommended for this account to have access to a widest range of content in your SharePoint farm.

Search & Preview Preview uses crawl logs of SharePoint Search Service Application(s) as content sources to crawl and create preview images. In the Manage Content Sources page you will need to add one or more Search Service Applications as content providers.

When you click the New Content Source button on the toolbar the * Adds Content Source* page will be opened. You will need to provide a name for the content source in the Content Source Name section. Search & Preview Preview detects all available Search Service Applications in your farm and provides them in a drop-down list. In the Select Service Application section you will need to select a Search Service Application that will be used.

In the Default Content Access Account section you will need to provide credentials for an account that has Open, Read and Execute rights on the content from the selected Search Service Application. By default Search & Preview Preview automatically gets the username of the default content access account for the selected Search Service Application, which can be found in the Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications > Search Service Application > Default content access account. The username of the account will be displayed in the Account textbox. You will need to provide the password for that account if you would like to use that account. You can also use another account. As Web page content and rendering is dependent on the account they are opened by, you can create two different content sources, one for documents and another one for Web pages. Then you can use two separate accounts for content sources. Alternatively, this can be achieved by using Preview crawl rules.

On the same page, you can furthermore configure Search & Preview Preview performance settings, types of content to be crawled and also schedule the time when the Search & Preview Gatherer service will be crawling the content source. Each of these settings includes a short description, along with instructions and also recommended settings. The Manage Content Source page contains a short summary for each added content source. You can edit settings of a content source by clicking its name and selecting the Edit option from the drop-down list. The drop-down list also provides the Delete option to remove the content source.

Crawl rules can be configured for crawling content placed in locations where the default content access account has no access, e.g. file shares. To define a crawl rule you will need to provide the path to the content and also the username and password for a content access account.

This page shows the list of items being processed and queued when the Gatherer service is crawling documents. In case you encounter the “Unable to connect to Search & Preview Preview Gatherer service” error when accessing the page, make sure you have completed Preview Back-end installation first. You will see the same error if the Search & Preview Gatherer service is not running. In that case, start the service in Windows Services console. The processing operation can also be temporarily stopped on this page. Please note that restarting the Gatherer service re-crawls content sources.

The Search & Preview Preview Crawl Log page allows viewing processed items in different categories: All items, Crawled items and Failed items. In this page, you can search for and check if a certain document has been processed by the Search & Preview Preview Gatherer service. This page also provides information on how many total pages each processed item consists of, the number of pages Search & Preview Gatherer service created preview images for, type of items processed and the time when an item has been crawled.

To add visual search functionality to your search center, first of all, please make sure that the Search & Preview Preview for Search feature is activated in the Site Actions > Site Settings > Site collection features. That will make the Search & Preview Preview for Search Web Part available for that site collection. Then please go to the search result page of your search center, where you want to add the Web Part and select Site Actions > Edit Page option. While in the edit mode, click Add a Web Part link on any Web part zone. Locate the Search & Preview Preview folder under the Categories column, select the Search & Preview Preview for Search Web Part under the Web Parts column and then click the Add button. Note: first-page preview images of documents will not be available until the Search & Preview Gatherer service processes documents in question.

To add visual search functionality to your search center, first of all, please make sure that the Search & Preview Preview for Search feature is activated in the Site Actions > Site Settings > Site collection features. That will make the Search & Preview Preview for Search Web Part available for that site collection. Then please go to the search result page of your search center, where you want to add the Web Part and select Site Actions > Edit Page option. While in the edit mode, click Add a Web Part link on any Web part zone. Locate the Search & Preview Preview folder under the Categories column, select the Search & Preview Preview for Search Web Part under the Web Parts column and then click the Add button. Note: first-page preview images of documents will not be available until the Search & Preview Gatherer service processes documents in question.

To add visual document navigation functionality to a SharePoint document library you will need to create a column of type Search & Preview Preview Column for Libraries. Activating the Search & Preview Preview for Libraries feature in the site collection features list makes the *Search & Preview Preview Column for Libraries *column type available to all document libraries in that site collection. This column is added to a document library like any other column and the Search & Preview Preview Web Part will be added automatically.

To proceed go to the document library to which you would like to add the functionality and select the Library link from the top link bar and select the Library Settings in the Settings of the Library ribbon. In the Document Library Settings page click on the Create column link under the Columns heading and that will open the Create Column page. Give a name to the column and select the Search & Preview Preview Column for Libraries option in the Name and Type section. If you select the Search & Preview Preview column type before giving a name to the column then Search & Preview gives the default name for a column as Preview. But if you type a name first and then select the column type then the selected name will be preserved. When you select the type for the column you will see a warning/information regarding possible lack of support for this type of column by earlier versions of client programs on the page.

A column with a small magnifier image (default) for each row will be added to the existing list of columns in the document library. The color of the magnifier icon for a document will be grey until it gets crawled by the Search & Preview Preview Gatherer service and its color gets changed to blue after it is crawled. In the Search & Preview Preview configuration pages the magnified image can be replaced by a small thumbnail image of an actual document. Please note that even if the default magnifier icon has been changed to the small thumbnail image you will still see the magnifier icon before the document in question gets crawled by the Search & Preview Preview Gatherer service. Placing the mouse over the magnifier/thumbnail will display the first-page-preview image of a document/page and clicking that image will show full-document-preview images for that document/page. To close the pane with full document preview images you need to click the magnifier/thumbnail preview image again.

Please note that if you are using the Group By feature for your document library view then you will not see the Preview magnifier/thumbnail image, although you will see the title of the column. To be able to see the Preview image the value for the Group By setting should be set to None.

By default displaying Web page preview images are disabled to maintain confidentiality and restrict access to underprivileged users. This feature can be modified via the Search & Preview Preview Front End Configuration pages in the Central Administration for an entire farm, individual Web applications or even separately for each site collection via the Site Settings page of site collections. To enable this feature go to the Search & Preview Preview Front End Configuration page. Click the First Page Preview link and select the Enabled Content option. Check the Enable the first-page preview on web pages checkbox and click the OK button to save the changes. To enable preview of Web pages for the full document previews, click the Full Document Preview link and select the Enabled Content option. Check the Enable full document preview on web pages checkbox and click the OK button to save the changes.

The full-document-preview functionality of the Search & Preview Preview Web Parts is enabled by default. This feature can be modified via the Search & Preview Preview Front End Configuration pages in the Central Administration for an entire farm, individual Web applications or even separately for each site collection via the Site Settings page of site collections. To make changes for this functionality, go to the Search & Preview Preview Front End Configuration page. Click the Full Document Preview link and select the Enabled Content option. A closely related option is to allow users to open multiple preview panes simultaneously, which is a very useful feature to visually compare documents side by side. To enable or disable this feature, open the Preview Pane option. Note: opening too many preview panes simultaneously will decrease the browser speed.