Guest Author: Agnes Molnar
http://aghy.dotneteers.net

SharePoint 2010 has very powerful search capabilities, especially with the integrated FAST Search Server. But in this part of my series I don’t want to show you the server-side search capabilities but some client side gotchas instead.

SharePoint 2010 Search in Windows 7

Windows 7 is the first operation system with the capability to use external search providers as federated search locations – and yes, this federated location can also be SharePoint! In general, all search providers can be federated if it’s OpenSearch 1.0/1.1 compatible or, in other words, can provide the search results in RSS/Atom format.

For example, let’s assume your SharePoint 2010 search site’s URL is http://sp2010/search, and the Title of this site is “SP2010 Search”. If you go to your browser and run a query for the word “sharepoint”, the result page looks something like this:

In the top right corner of the result set, you should find three icons: two of them might be familiar from the MOSS 2007 search result pages (RSS and e-mail alerts), but the third one is brand new. It can allow you to search this SharePoint Search location later from Windows Explorer.

If you click on this icon, the search connector settings will be generated and the SharePoint search will be added to your Windows Explorer as a federated search location. You’ll be asked if you really want to add this Search Connector to the Windows Explorer, press Add:

After that, the Search Provider will be available in your Windows Explorer immediately:

1. The newly added Search Provider in Windows Explorer.
2. The query box, where you can type anything you’d like to search for.
3. The result set, received from the SharePoint Search Provider.

What do you think? I’m sure it’s a great feature especially if you search a lot like me

Finally, let’s see how it works. Behind the curtains, there’s an OSDX file that is a search connector description file, with a special XML format. For example, in case of our sample SP2010 Search connector, the content of OSDX file is something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-
     ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>SP2010 Search</ShortName>
<Description>SP2010 Search</Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml"
     template="http://sp2010/search/_layouts/
     srchrss.aspx?k={searchTerms}&amp;web.count=50" />
<Url type="text/html"
     template="http://sp2010/search/Pages/results.aspx?k={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Of course, you might also write this XML file manually, and add to your Windows Explorer. Just copy the XML code above, paste it to a new file, and change the highlighted values:

• The Description parameter ‘SP2010 Search’ is the name of the connector, can be anything you choose.
• The URL for RSS contains the URL of your search site, then the path to the srchrss.aspx (it’s under the _layouts), finally the query parameter. You can pass the user query by typing ‘k={searchTerms}’ here, or a fix query.
• The URL for HTML contains the URL of the results page on your search site with the query parameter. You can pass the user query by typing ‘k={searchTerms}’ here, or a fix query.

After performing all the necessary modifications, save the file in OSDX format (with .osdx extension), then add it to Windows Explorer by a double-click. It’s so easy, right? It can be pretty useful, for example, if you’d like to deploy these Search Locations in a uniformed, centralized way in your company.

VIEW ALL ENTRIES IN THE SERIES

Guest Author: Agnes Molnar
http://aghy.dotneteers.net

Agnes Molnar has been working with Microsoft technologies and SharePoint since 2001. After releasing MOSS 2007, she founded a SharePoint consulting company in Hungary, Central Europe. She’s been working as senior consultant and solutions architect, has leaded numerous Central European companies’ SharePoint implementation. Agnes’s main focus is on Architecture, Governance, Information and Knowledge Management, and Enterprise Search.

She’s also a frequent speaker of both Central European and international conferences, including Best Practices Conferences in Washington DC and London, SharePoint Conferences in Peru and many countries in Central Europe, SharePoint Saturdays, and more. She’s a co-author of the book ‘Real World SharePoint 2010′. You can follow Agnes on Twitter at @molnaragnes