Search Guide

Quick Guide

• Activating Search Features
• Setting Active Search License
• Creating Search Center
• Configuring Search Box
• Configuring Cube Feature

All Search & Preview farm-wide features are automatically activated at the SharePoint farm level and this can be verified at Central Administration > System Settings > Manage farm features. If you are upgrading the solutions from earlier versions, then after you have run the setup, you will need to deactivate and then reactivate the solution features.

The farm-wide Search configuration pages can be accessed via the Central Administration > General Application Settings > Manage Modules page. Links to the Search site collection and site level configuration pages are located in the Site Settings pages of site collections and sites. Configuration settings at higher levels are automatically inherited at lower levels in the hierarchy, but those settings can be overridden.

The installation process automatically activates the free evaluation license that comes with the installer. This license enables Search for 30 days. To apply a production or development license go to General Application Settings > Manage Licenses. Please remember to set the license as active after uploading, as well as to backup your licenses in a safe location.

An Search Center can be created in a given site collection after activating the Search feature for that site collection. The feature is activated at site collection root site > Site Actions > Site Settings > Site collection features. To create an Search 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 one of the site templates: Search Center or Search Center Publishing. The publishing version allows easy creation of additional search and search results pages for an Search Center if needed. Please note, to be able to use the Search Center Publishing template you need to make sure that the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature is enabled at the site collection level. If Search & Preview templates are not available in the list of templates, please make sure that features are enabled as described above and an appropriate SharePoint language pack is installed according to the list of languages supported by Search & Preview (see full documentation)

To enable the Search Box, please go to Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Web Application. Select the Web application from the list and then click on the Manage Features option on the ribbon. On the Manage Web Application Features window click on the Activate button next to the Search Box feature. To associate the Search Box with already created Search Center go to Central Administration > General Application Settings > Manage modules > Manage Search Box Settings. On the Search Box Settings page click on the Settings button on the toolbar, and make sure that Site URL field in the Target Search Center is set to: ~sitecollection/ < Search Center Path >. To modify Search Box inherited settings at the site collection or site level go to *

The following steps are required to configure the Cube, which is needed by the Search context-aware features: Auto-suggestions, Related Queries Web Part, and Tag Cloud Web Part. Cube can also provide reporting functionality if the Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) is available. Using the SSAS Cube enables creating custom reports on search, storage and related statistics from SharePoint that can be viewed using third party software such as Microsoft Excel. If the Cube feature is to be used only for Search context-aware features, the SSAS support is not required. Please check the system requirements document.

To start please go to Central Administration > General Application Settings > Manage Modules > Manage Cube Database and install the Cube database by providing appropriate database access credentials.

To enter information about the domains, from which users will be accessing Search pages, go to Manage Modules > Data Processing Settings. If domains have alternative NetBIOS names, these names also need to be entered with the same IDs as for the fully qualified domain names. This will indicate that the same domain/sub-domain can be referred to using two alternative names. The default domain entries listed on the page should be kept.

To be able to use the context-aware features, all data providers need to be processed. To schedule data providers go to Manage Modules > Schedule Data Providers. On the Schedule Data Providers page either choose the Start Processing Now option for each listed provider or click on the Process All option to process all providers at once. Data providers can also be scheduled for automatic processing on the same page. It is recommended to processes providers not more than once per day. However, some providers may initially need to be processed twice to ensure that all data is processed completely. Note that data for some providers is logged at 24 hour intervals. You can observe the data processing status on the Data Processing Status page. The Data Import Status table displays rows of data for each provider. After successful processing, all values from the Row Count column in the Temporary Database Usage table will be set to 0, and Data Warehouse usage table will be filled with processed data counts. In case data values persist in the temporary table, make sure to check the configurations done on the Data Processing Settings page and also the User Profile Synchronization has been properly configured in SharePoint.