A Call for Answers to SharePoint Mystery
July 10, 2013
SharePoint pro Marc D Anderson believes Microsoft has some explaining to do, he asserts in his blog post, “SharePoint 2013’s Search Continuous Crawl: an Enigma.” While updating one intranet system, he was working with the continuous and incremental crawl settings. He describes his confusing results, complete with screenshots, so see the write-up for the technical details. He summarizes:
“Continuous Crawl seems to be working, but at some underlying schedule which isn’t visible. There have been some suggestions that the Continuous Crawl schedule is set to every 15 minutes by default, and the evidence above seems to support that since the second piece of content showed up in 12 minutes, about 15 minutes after the last crawl that was visible in the logs. There is some PowerShell you can use to get at properties of the Continuous Crawl, but it’s not totally clear what impact they have on the schedule. . . .
“Another thing that’s not clear is how many Continuous crawl threads might stack up if things get backed up. One person has suggested an unlimited number and someone else told me there’s a maximum of 8 threads.”
Anderson calls for Microsoft to put out documentation that will clear up the confusion. He does list a few links that may be of some help to some SharePoint users, and calls for readers to share any information they have in the comments section. If this enigma might be of concern to your organization, you might want to check back there for more answers.
Cynthia Murrell, July 10, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint and SharePoint Search: End of Life?
June 16, 2013
I had a chat with a former IBM executive. At lunch, an interesting emerged as we talked about the trials and tribulations large enterprise software vendors are facing. In addition to the embarrassing layoffs at IBM, there are signals that the financial screws are being turned at Hewlett Packard, Oracle, SAP and elsewhere. Part of the pressure is normal because the April May June quarter is an important one before the world goes on vacation in July and August. September, obviously, will be another flat out period for sales and marketing professionals. But there was one t hought which we kicked around in a post-prandial stupor.
A dilemma now exists in the enterprise software sector.
Stick with what works and has worked
Go in a new direction and improvise.
What happens if Microsoft does the Adobe thing and forces SharePoint licensees to embrace the cloud? What happens to the resellers? What happens to the integrators? What happens to the in house staff who know the intricacies of on premises installations of SharePoint but not the secrets of Azure?
Microsoft has a significant dependence on on premises sales. This is the client access license, the enterprise license, and the special set ups which make Microsoft the de facto choice for desktop computing workers worldwide.
Is an end of life play for SharePoint possible without making Microsoft even more vulnerable to the enticements of Google and others who want to supplant Microsoft as the “king of the desktop enter” and “baron of the back office”?
On one hand, the idea that SharePoint and its okay search solution, administrator employing mail and database systems, and its quirky collaboration and document management solutions could shift to the cloud is silly. Why give up those license fees? Why alienate service firms dependent on sales and support to hundreds of millions of SharePoint users? Why assume that a cloud business model will work for on site license customers? Organizations are conservative. Change comes slowly or not at all. Stick with the status quo.
Comperio 2013 SharePoint Seminar to Charge Extra for No Shows
April 17, 2013
Held in Oslo, Norway, this year’s Enterprise Social and Search with SharePoint seminar promises its usual diverse audience and tech-based discussions. It will take place on May 14, 2013 from 9:00-11:30. Although official events begin at 9:00, show up early for breakfast and networking at 8:30.
The seminar is free, unless, of course you do not show up without providing advanced notice.
According to the seminars registration page, the audience will include the following:
“CIOs, IT Directors, Collaboration Leads, SharePoint Leads, Social Networking Leads, Enterprise Search Leads, Big Data Leads, Business Intelligence Leads, Communication Directors, HR Directors.”
Technology discussed includes SharePoint 2010 and 2013, FAST Search for SharePoint, Comperio FRONT, Hadoop, HD Insight, and Yammer.
Not a bad line up for a free seminar in Oslo. However, those who register but do not attend (and do not provide notice) will be charged a fee of kr. 200, or about $30 US dollars. Considering the expenses Comperio will shell out for each attendee, this no-show charge is an interesting approach to guaranteeing attendance and accounting for wasted expenses.
Samantha Plappert, April 17, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Creating Search Based Apps in SharePoint Simple and Effective
February 20, 2013
New SharePoint users can often benefit from a hands on learning tutorial that lays out step by step how to get things done accurately and well, accurately. Let’s face it, in this fast paced world of ever evolving technology it is important to not waste time. Time is MONEY and money is the business.
Ontolica has done it again. With “Building Search Based Applications with SharePoint,” author Robert Piddocke walks users through an easy and effective way to create a search based application.
“Creating Search Based Applications in SharePoint is an easy and effective way to drive contextually valuable information to users without the limitations of having the documents in a specific library. Search can surface content from not just SharePoint but even from File Shares or other document management systems. All you need is the content crawled and you can create a document display mechanism based on search.”
The first step is to identify what metadata you want to use and if custom columns on SharePoint lists exist and can be used for your search. You must make a metadata mapping in the search service application for each piece of metadata you want to use. Run a full crawl.
Next up is creating a new page for your search based app. Then you must configure th core search result web parts but don’t forget that each web part needs a unique setting in order to function properly. After you adjust the layout xalt on the resut web parts to exclude the description and display relevant metadata you then have to set the sort on the result web part for date to display the most recent items and ply a query hat will match what you need users to see.
For more detailed information and some ridiculously helpful screenshots as well as a download we suggest heading over to Piddocke’s article.
Leslie Radcliff, February 20, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint 2013 Offers Improvements in Search
January 10, 2013
An overall architecture for SharePoint 2013 Search can be found on the Search Technologies’ Web site.
As new releases tend to do, SharePoint 2013 has made some tweaks that users would do well to explore, we learn in “Search Engine Changes in SharePoint 2013” from iT Pro. SharePoint consultant Veena Sarda details the search-related changes and presents them in a handy chart.
The first thing to note is that FAST Search has now been worked into the SharePoint code base. That means that FAST capabilities like metadata extraction, visual search, and advanced linguistics are now part of the package. Content and analytics processors have been added to the logical architecture, and a specialized Search Administrator now manages these and other search-related components. Also new is a dedicated analysis engine, which performs both search and usage analytics.
Crawling has been improved; it is now possible to crawl http sites anonymously, and the time for the index to merge and present those results has been dramatically shortened. Results rendering has been moved from the server to the client side. Document parsing is now much more refined, relying on a set of new parsing features, rather than on file extensions to do the job.
Other welcome improvements affect the user experience. The UI has been revamped to accommodate the new features, with a re-design based on nested layout templates defined in JavaScript and HTML. This change allows for easier extensibility. Furthermore, end users now have an easier time of it; the write-up notes that the platform now provides:
“Direct access to the most granular information inside of sites and documents, and then enables users to act on the results without having to leave the results page. Every search box in every team site offers full access to enterprise-wide search, people search, and other specialized search experiences in addition to the traditional scoped site search.”
Part of this simplified workflow is the new Hover feature, which presents a visual preview of sites, documents, and conversations at the pause of a mouse.
A few more search-related improvements: Authors are identified as experts based on document content, where before they were identified by My Site profiles. People Search (which used to be independent of document search) has been integrated with the core results and can be targeted by name, location, phone number, and other properties.
Perhaps one of the most noteworthy shifts is the new Query Rules feature. SharePoint 2010 only allows for simple queries—one query, one set of results. Sarda writes:
“Query Rules are a new feature in SharePoint 13 that help act upon the ‘intent’ of a query – Query Rules are composed of three top level elements: Query Conditions (i.e. matching rules), Query Actions (i.e. what do you do when you find a match), Publishing Options (i.e. when should this rule be active). Query Rules allows to have search requests from a user trigger multiple queries and multiple result sets.”
A welcome addition. For more information on SharePoint 2013, see the “brief functional walk-through” posted at Search Technologies. It contains, among other things, an easy-to-understand flow chart. The SharePoint experts there also promise to post future updates at that link.
Search Technologies leverages search engines to provide business advantages to their clients. With over twenty years of experience in the field, the company asserts that it is the largest IT services company dedicated to search engine implementation, consulting, and managed services. For information on the firm’s SharePoint 2013 Search Services, visit www.searchtechnologies.com. Search Technologies is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia.
Cynthia Murrell, January 10, 2013
SharePoint Gets a Stricter Governance Tool
December 31, 2012
SharePoint is Microsoft’s glorified collaborative content management platform. It usually provides decent out-of-the-box solutions for managing projects and allowing users to work and share on content collectively, but sometimes it needs help from an IVP to make it better. Metavis is an add-on software solutions provider and according to Web Media 360 they have “Metavis Introduces New SharePoint Governance Enhancement Tool.”
The new governance tool is called Informant and is currently in its beta phase. It is supposed to help control the comings and goings of files outside of SharePoint. These actions hold a security risk for all enterprise-based companies:
“Metavis says it is the transfer of content beyond the confines of SharePoint which holds the gravest potential consequences in terms of undermining the integrity of an enterprise’s content management and security strategy. Such transfers, says Metavis, have become more frequent owing to the proliferation of file sharing platforms.”
Informant will help SharePoint users monitor and control transfers in their SharePoint environment as well as tagging, archiving, and placing permissions on files. Securing data is a big part of any information governance. Technology makes it so easy to steal information, but it also makes it easier to lock it down. Take precautions to monitor your data.
Whitney Grace, December 31, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
SharePoint Users Will Discover Built-in Search Is More Than Icing On Cake
December 13, 2012
After Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, which took place over the summer in Toronto, more information has been released in regards to SharePoint 2013. In fact, Search Technologies has published an article on “Search For SharePoint” that includes the major bullet points of SharePoint 2013’s search functions and capabilities. The article follows the flow of documents, providing an idea of the process from crawling all the way to search functionality provided to users.
The driving force behind this latest version of SharePoint is the FAST search technology that Microsoft acquired back in 2008. Additions from Bing and other search companies have been added into the software in order to offer clients a comprehensive solution; that also means customization is available for companies with specific needs.
As for the process, once crawling – or capturing metadata – occurs, the content processing known as the indexing pipeline takes place:
“In SharePoint 2012, this resembles the FAST pipeline and looks to have retained important features. The content processing component also writes information to a “link database”. This information can be subsequently used by the analysis processing component to calculate link popularity statistics and provide relevancy weighting possibilities. Anchor text within links can also contribute to page content for ranking purposes.”
The analytics processing that happens next in the sequence of events allows for additional context to be woven into the indexing process. The final step after indexing lies in an often overlooked aspect of enterprise search: query processing. This component improves search with attention to precision, recall and relevancy.
Now that SharePoint 2013 includes a top-tier enterprise search infrastructure, competitors do not have as much room in the conversation on search. Companies are lining up to implement SharePoint everyday, and with that software in the bag they also get to discover the magic of FAST technologies. Search is not just the cherry on top for SharePoint, it encapsulates the entire sundae.
Megan Feil, December 13, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
An Intriguing Idea: SharePoint Search Is a Data Access Technology
December 7, 2012
Shortly after the SharePoint 2012 Conference, I had time to think about an interesting and quite intriguing view of search. The idea is that search is another “data access technology.” The idea was explained in “SharePoint Conference 2012: Prominent Role for Search in SharePoint 2013.”
Sanjeev Bhutt gave a tip of the hat to Scot HIller, who was a speaker at the conference. Mr. Bhutt reported:
In his session on building search-driven applications, Scot Hillier made the point that we should no longer think of search in the limited scope of what occurs when a user types in a search term in a search box and the corresponding results that appear. Rather, we should think of search as a data access technology, in the same vein as CAML, REST and CSOM. In fact, he went as far as to say that search is the data access technology because, as he put it, “Search knows where all the skeletons are buried.” [Emphasis in the original text.]
Since the conference, I have noticed more emphasis on the use of a traditional and faceted search interface was a way to access a wide range of data and information types. Sphinx Search, for example, provides a system which eliminates the need for command line queries for content stored in MySQL databases. Many other vendors are moving in the same direction.
Search Technologies offers a range of services related to SharePoint 2013 search. Of particular relevance is the company’s search architecture design services. The firm’s engineers provide due diligence reviews of existing systems, to the detailed planning and costing of new search applications.
If you want to make the shift from search to finding and discovery, you will want to explore a range of technical methods and engineer your SharePoint or other information solution to deliver the results that users want: Information which answers a question without guessing what key words unlock the riches in the organization’s knowledge stores.
For more information about Search Technologies, visit www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, December 7, 2012
MetaVis Rolls Out Another Organizational Tool for SharePoint
December 7, 2012
SharePoint’s stronghold shows through in recent news about MetaVis. MetaVis Technologies offers organizational tools for SharePoint and they are rolling out a new governance solution for an upcoming conference. The press release, “MetaVis to Preview New SharePoint Governance Tool at SharePoint Conference 2012” discusses the latest and greatest from this company.
The release discusses the boom in information and data we are experiencing. However, the statement that content growth is happening at an exponential rate is no surprise to anyone. Two words: big data.
In response, MetaVis serves up Informant for SharePoint, software designed to analyze content, identify sensitive information and enforce compliance standards or governance policies in the file system, SharePoint or Office 365.
Market Watch also discusses the accumulation of more file sharing and storing options:
“As a result, more and more content is uncontrolled and unmanaged by a company’s IT department which can lead to information leaks, security breaches and compliance risks. MetaVis Informant for SharePoint helps mitigate these risks by providing a convenient and familiar way of crawling, analyzing, reporting, and taking action across enterprise data.”
Is there a need for an entire company to tackle add-ons for an existing software solution? With the multiple tools for organizing SharePoint that MetaVis offers, it sounds like SharePoint can be a challenging system to manage.
Megan Feil, December 07, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Possible SharePoint and Lync Server Price Increases
November 30, 2012
It is rumored that SharePoint and Lync Server prices will increase, but Caroline Donnelly says enterprise users may end up better off. She discusses the claim in the ITPro article, “Microsoft Users Warned of Upcoming SharePoint and Lync Server Price Hikes.” Richard Gibbons, software manager at Microsoft reseller Bechtle Direct says that SharePoint prices may go from £4,000 at the moment, so an extra £1,500 for 2013. This is added:
Gibbons was quick to point out that end users who stump up for the 2013 versions of Sharepoint and Lync from 1 December will be rewarded with extra functionality, which might make the price hikes a little easier for some end users to swallow.
For instance, Microsoft has introduced changes that mean end users will no longer need to purchase additional SharePoint for Internet licenses, which allow external users to access the software.
And while the added functionality comes at a cost for Standard users, enterprise users already having the features could end up paying less. The price hike doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise, but the amount may be hard for many to justify. To save resources, consider evaluating your third party tools and streamlining your systems. Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers Enterprise Search with SharePoint Connectors so to easily snap into your existing farm. In addition to all-inclusive search, Mindbreeze creates relevant knowledge by storing data according to type and relevance while processing data in a comprehensible form at a fair price.
Philip West, November 30, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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