Microsoft has invested heavily in SharePoint 2010. These are some of the improvements in search with SharePoint 2010:
|
Feature |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Index limit |
No longer a limit of 50 million items. |
|
Query syntax |
Can use AND, OR, NOT keywords in search query. |
|
Wildcard search |
Using * in search query. |
|
Refiners |
Refiners are shown in the panel on the search results page so you can filter the results (using metadata and tags). This functionality is supported in all SharePoint editions. |
|
Social people search |
Phonetic name matching (returns names that sound similar to what the user has typed as a query and all variations of common names, including nicknames); exploring results by name, title, and expertise; real-time presence awareness with Microsoft Lync server. |
|
Social distance |
SharePoint builds a model of your regular interactions based on e-mail conversations and group memberships that it uses to organize people search results based on social distance, where, for example, a direct colleague appears before someone three degrees removed. |
SharePoint 2010 can index and query data sources not only stored on SharePoint itself, but also on sites and databases outside of SharePoint. SharePoint can index:
Having access to multiple sources of information available in one place can be a competitive advantage to companies providing professional services. Their consultants can access and repurpose intellectual property held within the firm, and at the same time integrate it with information available externally. While the maximum number of indexed documents has increased, performance has also been improved. So, even though SharePoint 2010 can search for more documents, the time it takes to return your search results has been reduced.
The benefits of many of the improvements are richer results that arrive faster.
For example, when searching for expertise, the people search results will display more information from each person's My Site profile than was the case with SharePoint 2007. The following example shows the person's description, areas of expertise, and project experience. This information can often eliminate the need to click through to the My Site itself.
Another example is the View in Browser link. With the optional installation of Office Web Apps, SharePoint 2010 offers the ability to view Microsoft Office files in the browser. This gives you an easier and faster way to evaluate the relevance of the search result to your needs. You can quickly view the contents of the document without waiting to launch the file's application.
In this chapter, we will take a look at the new and improved features in SharePoint 2010 Search from the user's point of view.