Secrets of the SharePoint Search Results Revealed - Mauro Cardarelli

From a Microsoft perspective, 2004 was the year of SharePoint Portal Server. Organizations around the world have implemented SharePoint-based solutions for more effective knowledge management and better team collaboration. It is becoming the single source for corporate content… unless, of course, you are trying to find something! I’ve equated the SharePoint search results with my seven year old daughter’s room: I know what I’m looking for is in there somewhere; I just can’t find it. This article is intended to help you better leverage SharePoint’s search results… I’ve given up on my daughter’s room.

Introduction

You’ve created a portal site for your organization. You put documents in document libraries, enabled discussions via discussion threads, and implemented ifilters to include additional content like pdf’s. You have configured SharePoint to crawl your file shares, public folders, and external websites. All this content is searched as part of your portal’s search interface. What a mess! Don’t get me wrong; the search engine is great. It always finds the proper results. Sometimes, I just have trouble understanding how to use this data.

Although it isn't obvious, SharePoint exposes a great deal of additional search flexibility behind its standard search web part. Let’s look at how to find these parameters.

Viewing SharePoint’s Search Parameters

Follow these steps to export SharePoint’s search parameters to an XML file.

(1) In your browser, go to the following path:
http:///search.aspx?mode=edit&view=shared

(2) You’ll see the context menu ‘Modify My Page’; select ‘Shared View’

(3) You’ll see the context menu ‘Modify Shared Page’; select ‘Design This Page’

(4) Your search page is now in design mode. On the Search Results web part, click the down arrow and select ‘Export…’

(5) Save the file to your hard drive. It will create a .dwp file (this is a web part file extension). The contents are standard XML. You can make changes to this file. It is strongly recommended that you save a copy of this original file.

For the Beginner

If you do nothing else with the search parameter file, add the following line (you can place it above the ‘GroupbyList’ line):

<OpenNewWindowForMatchingItems xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:DataResultBase">true</OpenNewWindowForMatchingItems>

This parameter tells SharePoint to pop up a new window for each selected search item. One of the frustrating behaviors of standard SharePoint search results is that when you select a search item the results are shown in the same window. You lose your connection to your original search list. The only way back is the IE 'Back' button or re-executing the search. The method above forces a new window. You can look at the results, close the window, and return to your search list. This has generated a few “Wow’s” in my demonstrations.

For the Bold

Ever wonder why SharePoint always shows the top 40 results? It is a property in the search results file called ‘MaxMatchingItemsNumber’. You can change it by altering its value. The default sort is stored in ‘DefaultSortBy’. You can alter ‘ColumnURIs’ to control the header associated with search results (i.e. you can remove Author, the default middle column, and replace it with the content type).

I suggest that you spend some time and study the XML. It offers some interesting insight into what SharePoint is doing with its search results.

For the Truly Brave

This section is intended for those who are comfortable enough with SharePoint to create more advanced search solutions.

I believe the .dwp file’s most interesting method is the ‘QueryTemplateWherePart’. It contains the logic that controls relevancy as well as scope. If you are truly brave, you can alter the order of the search results as well as limit scope to a specific portal region. As an example, my portal’s search results page contains many results web parts. I have one for just People; another searches technology topics only. I’ve done this by creating unique search parameter files. Note, this works naturally with the standard SharePoint search box… all with no custom code!

Above, I showed how to add a method to pop up search items in a new window. You may wonder what else is ‘missing’ from the standard search file. The list of available methods is at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/spptsdk/html/cDataResultBase.asp?frame=true

I found this list in my investigation and have actually used a few methods. One that you might want to try is the ‘ShowRankForEachItem’ method. When set to ‘true’, it adds the result rank next to each search item. This is especially useful when the results include several site groupings.

Save any changes to your modified .dwp file. Don’t forget to change the ‘Title’ node to a name that distinguishes it as a custom version (i.e. ‘KMA Custom Search Results’).

Follow the steps above to place yourself back in design mode.

(1) Delete the current Search Results web part. You can do this through its context menu

(2) Select the ‘Add Web Parts’ from the ‘Modify Shared Page’ context menu; select ‘Import’ from its list

(3) Browse for your modified .dwp file and import it

(4) Drag your web part onto the page under the Advanced Search web part

(5) Go to the homepage and execute a search You can continue to test changes to your web part by re-executing the steps above.

Summary

You can greatly enhance the user experience associated with SharePoint search results by altering and adding a few basic parameters. While these changes are not a substitute for proper information tagging, they offer an easy way for more effectively connecting employees with organizational content.