The Search Circle. Search Note Planning for SharePoint 2013 search implementation. October Agnes Molnar and Martin White

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1 Search Note Planning for SharePoint 2013 search implementation October 2013 Agnes Molnar and Martin White

2 Introduction Many organisations are now in the process of planning a migration from SharePoint 2010, or perhaps even SharePoint 2007, to SharePoint From a search management perspective the search functionality of SharePoint 2013 has been almost totally re-engineered to provide a much-improved user experience and easier search administration. As a result even for organisations who are using FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 there are many changes in architecture and search management. For organisations using the Standard CAL Search Server application the jump in search management and complexity will be quite considerable and will need careful planning. This Search Note summaries some of the main changes between SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 search and highlights the importance of a search governance plan that takes especial note of user requirements in order to make the best use of the customisation options. Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. A short history of SharePoint Search 3 3. An overview of search in SharePoint Introduction to SharePoint 2013 Search 5 5. Installation, administration and Maintenance 6 6. Content processing 6 7. Analytics management 7 8. Working with metadata 7 9. Working with queries UI customizations Managed navigation A change of language Impact of the latest announcements Search governance Search support team The challenges of Preparing for Recommendations 12 Appendix A Changes to SharePoint 2010 search applications 14 Appendix B Resources 18 Search Notes Search Notes are published as a service to members of. They may be circulated within but not outside of the organisation. This Search Note has been prepared by Agnes Molnar and Martin White Intranet Focus Ltd is not able to take responsibility for decisions made on the basis of information contained in this Search Note. Intranet Focus Ltd

3 1. Introduction This Search Note sets out the benefits and challenges of working with the search functionality that is included in SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Microsoft SharePoint 2010 customers are offered both Microsoft Search Server and FAST Search Server for SharePoint The latter contained many elements of the FAST ESP search application that Microsoft bought in 2008 and was only available to customers with an Enterprise CAL licence. As a result most SharePoint 2010 implementations made use of the Search Server application in the Standard CAL licence. With SharePoint 2013 Microsoft offers just a single search application which although based on elements of both FAST ESP and FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 offers a significant increase in functionality. Even for organisations with FAST Search Server experience the changes may present some challenges in implementation and management. This Search Note summarises the current situation in SharePoint search, setting out both the benefits and issues that arise from a migration to SharePoint A short history of SharePoint Search The search functionality of SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007 was very limited and Microsoft realised that without a significant enhancement of search in SharePoint 2010 it could not position SharePoint 2010 as an enterprise level application suite against IBM and Oracle. In 2008 Microsoft bought FAST Search and Transfer and rushed through the development of FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010, often referred to as FS4SP. FAST Search and Transfer was a Norwegian company that had developed FAST ESP as a very powerful enterprise search application that ran on both Linux and Windows servers. Microsoft continued to support the original FAST ESP application though fairly quickly ceased to support the Linux version. However no further development was undertaken and so from 2008 to 2011 the only version available was the 5.3 release from Full support for this application ceased in June The FAST ESP enterprise search application continued to be offered but support for this expired in June An overview of search in SharePoint Microsoft offers two search applications for SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Search 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint Because of the naming convention adopted by Microsoft the impression was created that FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 (FS4SP) was identical to the FAST ESP application and many search managers and IT managers were convinced that they had the full power of FAST ESP available to them. FS4SP is only available through an Enterprise CAL contract and so comes at a significant additional cost. The table on the next two pages shows some of the main differences between SharePoint Search 2010 and FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. This table is included because it illustrates the significant increase in functionality between the two search applications, and therefore the scale of the upgrade from the Standard CAL search application and SharePoint At the time of launch FS4SP was positioned as a potential step towards a customer adopting FAST ESP as a broader-based search application by adopting many of the search management features of FAST ESP within SharePoint. This created the impression that there was going to be an option to upgrade to FAST ESP and many organisations were both surprised and disappointed both by the failure of Microsoft to enhance FAST ESP beyond Version 5.3 and then to announce that full support for FAST ESP would cease in Intranet Focus Ltd

4 SP2010 FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Basic search Visual Best Bets. Keyword terms and synonyms defined by an administrator to enhance search results. For FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint only, a section of relevant information is displayed in addition to search results for a keyword term (for example, an image banner or HTML) Scopes. Users can filter search results by using scopes Search enhancements based on user context Scopes Best Bets, visual Best Bets, and document promotions and demotions to a sub-group of employees Custom properties. Manage which properties are indexed and how these are treated in search results Property extraction. Extracts key information (people names, locations, company names) from unstructured text to use as additional managed properties. (Limited: title, author, and date only) Query federation. Federates results from multiple search sources Query suggestions. Provides help with query formulation based on what the user types. Similar results. Generates a new search based on the selected search result. Sort results on managed properties or rank profiles. Sort results based on selected managed properties or by FAST Query Language (FQL) formula. Relevancy tuning by document or site promotions. Promote selected documents or sites as highly relevant results for a keyword. Demote documents or sites to give lower rank. (Limited: promote documents for a given site, not query specific.) Shallow results refinement. Refine results using metadata associated with the top results Deep results refinement. Refine results using metadata associated with all results Previewers. Display inline previews of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files Windows 7 federation. Enterprise search results are available in Windows Limited Limited Limited Intranet Focus Ltd

5 desktop search People search. Search users to find people by name or expertise Social search. Relevancy is improved by how people interact and relate with content by factoring in social tagging and the relationship of people to content and other people Taxonomy integration. Takes advantage of user generated tags. Managed taxonomy influences search rankings and experience Multi-tenant hosting. Data partitioning of crawled data based on tenants Rich web indexing support. Indexing of a wide variety of web content, including Flash For customers used to the comparatively weak feature set of the search application in SharePoint 2007 the migration to SharePoint 2010 Search needed care but was not a major leap in terms of search administration. FS4SP was a much more challenging prospect, especially if the organisation had little if any search management expertise. SharePoint 2010 Search canbe implemented almost out-of-the-box but is certainly not the case with FSP4SP. The challenges are not just in the management of the back-end servers but in the development of an effective search user interface. 4. Introduction to SharePoint 2013 Search It is probably better to see SharePoint 2013 Search as a new product rather than an evolution, especially when compared to the Search Server application in SharePoint Microsoft has integrated search into all elements of the SharePoint 2013 platform rather than positioning it as one of the many elements within the overall application. Content Sources HTTP File shares SharePoint Content Query Front-end User Profiles Exchange Crawl Component Content Processing Component Index Component Query Processing Component Client Application Lotus Notes Documentum Crawl Database Analytics Processing Component Link Database Custom Analytics Reporting Database Event Store Search Administration Component Search Administration Database Some of the most important changes are Intranet Focus Ltd

6 Complete integration of search within the SharePoint platform A simplification of the content processing pipeline Major changes to crawling and content processing The introduction of the Analytics Processing Component Substantial changes to the user interface Built to be a cloud-based application, offering a hybrid search of on-premise and Office 365 More control at Site Administration level The need to support a cloud-based architecture is one reason why certain changes have been engineered into SharePoint The chart below sets out the situation that will be faced by search managers familiar with either of the two SharePoint 2010 applications. SP2013 FS4SP Management Complexity SP2007 SP2010 MOSS07 Functionality and features Particular attention needs to be paid to the migration from the SharePoint 2010 Standard CAL search to SharePoint 2013 search. This requires very careful planning both with the IT team and with the business to understand the implications for migration and successful long-term search support. 5. Installation, administration and maintenance From a technical perspective the initial planning of the search deployment has to start with the hardware infrastructure. All the search components are tightly integrated into SharePoint 2013, so that each search component will be one of the servers in the SharePoint farm. Both the crawling and querying components can be scaled out and more servers to improve the performance but this needs good planning and a very good understanding of capacity planning for search applications. The challenge lies in keeping a balance between content volume (item count) within SharePoint 2013, the query load in Queries per Second (QPS) and the crawl load in Documents per Second (DPS). Because of the range of crawl options the crawl load element needs careful assessment. From software perspective, the installation of SharePoint 2013 Search infrastructure is relatively easy but again needs to be planned with care. It can be done either on the Central Administration UI or by repeatable scripts. Although this second approach needs more preparation this is probably the best approach. Search administration can be also done on both the UI and by scripting. Again, this second approach is getting more and more important as the search platform and environment becomes increasing more complex. On one hand, we have much more features and Intranet Focus Ltd

7 opportunities in scripting than to be tied to the admin UI. On the other hand, we get a repeatable way of administration by scripting that is also critical. It is important to appreciate that search administrators can delegate a lot of tasks to lower levels of the information architecture (site collections and sites). This means less overload on the central administration level, but also it needs more attention and governance as the environment can easily get to be a search silo without enforcing rules and policies. 6. Content processing Content freshness is one of the major measurements of search systems. In SharePoint 2013, the most important major improvement in content processing is the new type of crawling. Besides full and incremental crawls, there s a new concept called continuous crawl which runs every 15 minutes as a default schedule. It works on SharePoint content sources and enables changes (new or deleted items, changes in content or metadata) to be added to the index in minutes or even seconds. This new way of crawling is very agile. There can be multiple crawling processes running (to improve performance and content freshness) and these can be run in parallel with a full crawl on the same content source. However a continuous crawl just ignores and logs any errors it finds. Besides content freshness, this might be very important for large-scale implementations where it is not uncommon for a full crawl to take several weeks. In SharePoint 2010 no other crawl process could be ran in parallel with a full crawl. So that the content, even if it has been crawled in the beginning of the full crawl, could not get refreshed until the full crawl finished. As a result, at the end of the full crawl it was possible for content items that were not up-to-date in the index With the new model of continuous crawl it is possible to refresh the items already indexed even if the users modify them during the long full crawl process. As a result there is always a current index. 7. Analytics management A major change in SharePoint 2013 is the availability of an Analytics module. This module is not just a means of managing search logs but lies ate the heart of many of the novel features of SharePoint 2013, such as the recommendation of content based on prior searches. The Analytics module also monitors documents that are opened by each user and makes the assumption that if the document is opened it has importance to the user. This, and similar information, is used in ranking a document in a results list. This is carried out at a Site Collection level and this enables SharePoint 2013 to deliver highly personalised search results based on the role of a particular user derived from which Site Collections are being used. However the Analytics module only tracks events occurring to content that is being managed within SharePoint External content that is being indexed by SharePoint 2013 will not be tracked by the Analytics module and this could have implications for relevance ranking. There is a good summary of how to develop customised ranking models for SharePoint 2013 search on the Microsoft Developer Network site. The amount of applied mathematics in this post, for example around the BM25 rank feature model, illustrates why specialist expertise is required to support the power of SharePoint 2013 search. 8. Working with metadata Metadata has been always the glue of search solutions and is essential for search-based applications. In SharePoint 2013 the concept of metadata management is broadly the same as in SharePoint Crawled properties are automatically generated by the metadata of the content source, while managed properties are created and controlled by search administrators. These controlled managed properties can be mapped to the automatically created crawled properties in order to be able to use them in end user scenarios. For example they can be Intranet Focus Ltd

8 refiners (facets) that can be displayed with the results and can be used to sort or filter the results as well as query by them. What has changed in SharePoint 2013 is the way of management and maintenance of the search schema. With the new delegated administration of search managed properties can be managed not only on the global Central Administration level, but site collection administrators also have the privileges to create and manage their own, site collection-level managed properties. This can be very useful as departments, projects, etc. can have their own search metadata sets, without having any effect on others. 9. Working with Queries Users who enter the queries and use the search system will have different backgrounds, knowledge, personas and expectations. They might be also interested in different content: sales people look for customer-facing presentations, developers need technical documentation, finance and accountant need the proposals, invoices and payment certificates. Their search maturity level also might be different. Query Rules are the way to help searches responding to the intent of users, by creating conditions and corresponding actions. When a query meets the search system performs the actions specified in the rule, to improve the relevance of the search results, such as by narrowing results, changing the order in which results are displayed, displaying additional Result Blocks or using additional queries or modifying the current one. The last improvement on query (and UI) to mention is called Content by Search. This is a new way to dynamic content from SharePoint search index, based on dynamic search queries. The query can be either entered by the user or generated automatically. Obviously, content freshness of items displayed depends on the latest crawl this is why continuous crawl can be so critical in some scenarios, as discussed above. 10. UI customizations An important addition to the look and feel of search in SharePoint 2013 is the Hover Panel. This is a side-panel that gets displayed when users hover the mouse over a search result. It displays a preview of the document (out-of-the-box for Office documents and web pages stored in SharePoint), the outline, the most important properties and actions to take on the item. The Hover Panel varies by the type of the result. Intranet Focus Ltd

9 In SharePoint 2013, customization of these UI elements is also much easier to develop and update. There is now no need to create and modify long and complex XML configurations. Instead Display Templates control which managed properties to use, how to use and display them, and also the available actions. They are used in each components (web parts) of the Search UI, on the result set and Content-by-Search, we can configure which managed property to display and how, by result type. On the Hover Panel, the most important things we can configure are the properties to display and actions available by result type. Document previews also have some level of configuration. Finally, the way to display refiners can be also configured by Display Templates. With these options, we get an easy and powerful way to customize our search UI, to be able to build up great Search Based Applications. 11. Managed Navigation Managed Navigation itself is not a Search-based concept, although can be used with in some very nice ways. It is a dynamic, taxonomy-based navigation that creates SEO-friendly URLs that are derived from the managed navigation structure. It provides an alternative to the traditional SharePoint navigation feature, even with the opportunity to create a global, farm-level navigation experience without any custom development (code writing). Moreover, this navigation experience can be combined with search. The landing page can be a search result page, with Content by Search, refiners and more. The query that drives the results is how and where the user navigates to. It is dynamic: as soon as a new term is added into the navigation term set it will get displayed as a new node and users will see the related items (results) immediately. This is highly intuitive and dynamic and a good basis for creating a catalogue-like experience or an interactive Search Based Application. When SharePoint 2013 is being used to index either non-microsoft content (for example PDF files) or content that is not being managed within SharePoint 2013 (such as the corporate website) it is important to test out the extent to which these sources are being managed by SharePoint 2013, and this needs to take into account the role of the Office Web Apps server which is the component of SharePoint 2013 that provides previews of documents in the search results. Just because a document can be previewed does not mean to say that the indexing and relevance rules are being applied in the same way as other content. 12. A change of language SharePoint users have long been familiar with the unique way that Microsoft uses terms such as List and Library. In moving from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 there are some language changes that need to be fully understood. This is especially the case for Best Bets, Promotion and Demotion of Results, Synonyms and Scopes, all of which are now managed within Query Rules. In moving from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 it is advisable not to assume that the same label achieves the same action. Intranet Focus Ltd

10 13. Impact of the latest announcements Microsoft is taking a very different route to product upgrades. In the past changes between versions were mainly bug fixes. With SharePoint 2013 Microsoft is releasing upgrades on a more frequent basis and it might be that there will not be a SharePoint For example, one of the latest updates is related to the ranking models. Relevance tuning has been always a complex task and it still is. But in SharePoint 2013, we can use Query Rules (see above) to complete the standard out-of-the-box ranking models to provide a good relevance experience. Moreover, we can use this approach even in cloud-based deployments (Office 365). Office 365 plays an extremely important role, anyway, and Microsoft tries to provide more and more enterprise capabilities even in the cloud. For example, the way search results are presented is the same on-premise and in the cloud. This way of unifying both the experience and administration/customization, brings the two approaches closer together, and makes the transition into a hybrid or fully cloud-based environment much more solid. 14. Search governance To a significant extent Search Server for SharePoint 2010 could operate out-of-the-box and needed little in the way of search support. FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 needed careful management of the back-end processing but the options for the user interface and administration were more limited. In addition FAST Search Server implementations were generally in large multinational organisations which had at least some degree of internal expertise in search management. This may well not be the case for SharePoint 2013 and the move to this version may well expose a lack of understanding within IT departments about the value and complexity of search. SharePoint 2013 needs to be implemented within a well-developed search strategy, especially as many organisations of all sizes will already be running other search applications. For example there needs to be consideration of the types of content have to be searchable and from what content sources. Decisions have to be made about versions (whether to search in the latest public version or in each previous ones as well), exclusions and inclusions, content freshness requirements and crawl schedule guidelines, etc. It is also very important to have policies for the metadata, i.e. what should be queryable, what are the standards for displaying these metadata and under what circumstances they can be used. In SharePoint 2013, the governance of metadata has an important new dimension. Because of the multi-level search administration policies will need to be developed for metadata on different levels (central administration, site collection), and we have to have define what has to be on which level. Enforcing these rules are the next challenge though SharePoint 2013 does provide some tools for this. There is also a requirement to make the rules about who is responsible for which set of metadata and what actions should be taken to monitor the effectiveness of the metadata in searching. With regard to relevance decisions have to be about the ranking models to be used and the basis on which these models need to be changing or new ones created. Last but not least it is important to understand and make full use of the User Interface. Search can be and is everywhere in SharePoint 2013 from the organization-wide Search Centers down to the single but complex Content by Search web parts. Governance is very critical to avoid having a poor search experience that takes time and effort to redress, 15. Search support team For organisations that have invested in FS4SP the migration to SharePoint 2013 search is in many respects not going to offer significant challenges to the search development team, but for organisations using a Standard CAL SharePoint 2010 there will be a requirement for a wider range of skills to get the best out of SharePoint 2013 search. Certainly the out-of-the-box Intranet Focus Ltd

11 implementation will provide some benefits but to get the best out of the application will require investment in a search support team. With SharePoint 2013 there is no easy option. Although there may not be the same requirement for developer support the rich user interface and the range of analytics all require a skilled team of specialists on an on-going basis. Task Working with System Administration Search Administration Content Administration Capacity planning Crawls Metadata Install Property Mapping Content Types Backup Result Sources Search Driven Monitoring Query Rules Publishing Central Administration SQL PowerShell Logs Site Collection Administration Search Reports Site Administration Term Store Needs to know SharePoint Architecture Performance Testing Security Information Retrieval Concepts Query Syntax Query Rules Information Architecture Concepts Usability Catalogues Source Jeff Fried, CTO, BA Insight at the Enterprise Search Summit, New York, May 2013 In an organisation of any size the Search Administration and Content Administration Roles will be full time, and the System Administration work needs to be undertaken by someone who can make this work their top priority. In addition there needs to be a Search Manager who monitors changes in business requirements and maintains a close relationship with business managers. This is moving towards a team of 3-4 people as a minimum to support SharePoint 2013 search. This team would need to be increased by at least one search administrator if the SharePoint 2013 search application is used to index other content repositories. 16. The challenges of 2013 SharePoint 2013 is being positioned by Microsoft as an enterprise search application capable of federated search across multiple repositories out of the box. At the same time the full benefits of the upgrades to the search technology can only be gained from managing the content totally within SharePoint A major change to SharePoint 2013 is that there is no Pull API, which enabled content from other applications to be selectively moved to SharePoint for indexing. To some extent this serious omission has been overcome by the availability of Continuous and Incremental crawls but this is not a complete answer. The number of connectors available from Microsoft to interconnect SharePoint 2013 with other applications is currently quite limited. Other companies are offering a wider range of connectors but these require careful implementation and support. The presentation of the search results from other repositories is not very elegant. For example unless content is managed within SharePoint 2013 it is not possible to provide thumbnail previews of the content. Indexing pdf files requires the installation of the ifilters pack and even then there can be problems indexing pdfs which are not pdf versions of Microsoft Word documents. Organisations currently using FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 would be advised to look at what elements of the application are not available in SharePoint In some cases the SharePoint 2013 functionality is better but that is not always the case. Appendix A lists some of the changes that have been made. Intranet Focus Ltd

12 With a significant development effort some of the weaknesses in SharePoint 2013 search can be overcome to some extent but this would be beyond the capabilities of any company which did not have a team of experienced search developers. 17. Preparing for 2013 The benefits and challenges of implementing SharePoint 2013 search have an important bearing on the migration routes from SharePoint Migrating from an Enterprise CAL SharePoint 2010 implementation using FS4SP will need a careful review of what features of FS4SP are now deprecated (i.e. not supported) in SharePoint In particular this will affect any highlycustomised search based applications, to the extent that companies may well choose not to migrate these applications but run them in SharePoint At least with a FS4SP to 2013 migration there will be the in-house skills to take advantage of the power of SharePoint There will however be changes in relevant rankings and users may well find that content that may usually have appeared on the first page of results no longer does so. Migrating from a Standard CAL SharePoint 2010 implementation is not a trivial task. For a start a team with the requisite skills need to be allocated, or perhaps even recruited, ahead of the migration. What is emerging as the good migration path is to implement SharePoint 2013 and use it to index and search the SharePoint 2010 implementation. This will highlight areas where there seem to be changes to relevance rankings and give the development team an opportunity to learn not only the new functionality of SharePoint 2013 search but also the new terms used by Microsoft to describe many of the features. Once this has been accomplished then the migration of the other components can be undertaken. Although there have been many changes to elements such web content management these are usually not visible to a user looking at a page of content. That is not the case for a user undertaking a search who may have some initial difficulty making use of the new features of the user interface. However there are other migration options, for example making use of the Office 365 version of SharePoint 2013, and each option needs to be assessed carefully for associated benefits and risks. 18. Recommendations In a short report we can only highlight some of the many benefits and challenges of implementing search in SharePoint Set out below are ten recommendations for organisations that are in the process of planning a migration to SharePoint 2013 as far as search implementation is concerned 1. Do not assume that SP2013 search adds to SharePoint 2010 search. The search platform has been re-architected to such a degree to provide a substantial improvement in search functionality that it is very important to spend time working through exactly what is being offered on SP2013 with the IT development team. 2. Develop a search governance plan at an organization level that describes the rules, policies and owners with particular reference to metadata management at a Site Collection level and the customization of the user interface. 3. Develop and maintain a search strategy at an organisation level that balances user requirements for search against the capabilities of SharePoint 2013 in providing an integrated search across multiple repositories. Intranet Focus Ltd

13 4. Search must always be user-led. Because of the considerable potential to customise the user experience in SP2013 we would recommend that the search team develops search personas and use cases that can be used both in the initial design and then as the basis for usability testing later in the development process. 5. The enhancement in functionality is especially significant when moving from a Standard CAL implementation of SharePoint 2010 and it may take some time for the IT development team to understand all the implications for hardware, software and support. Make sure that the schedule for the migration takes into account the learning curve for SharePoint 2013 search. 6. Make sure you are aware of the implications of searching non-sharepoint content with SharePoint Discuss with other enterprise application owners the implications of the continuous and incremental crawls of SharePoint 2013 and the lack of a Push API. 8. SharePoint 2013 needs to be supported by a core team with a good knowledge of SharePoint 2013, in particular the way that metadata can be managed at Site Collection level, Query Rules and the design of customized Search interfaces. A skilled search support team along the lines of the skills and responsibilities set out in Section 15 needs to be in place ahead of the migration to SharePoint 2013, not once the implementation has been undertaken. This is because of the need to have a very close linkage with business requirements from the outset of the project. 9. In addition Microsoft plan to introduce new features and upgrades on a regular basis. The assessment and incorporation of these needs to be able to be undertaken as soon as possible after release and this can only be achieved with a dedicated search support team. 10. There should be an investment in training all staff involved in SP2013 search delivery at the very outset of the project so that decisions are made on the basis of a good information-base about the project. Intranet Focus Ltd

14 Appendix A Changes to SharePoint 2o1o search applications This Appendix lists a selection of the features from SharePoint Server for SharePoint 2010 FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 that have been discontinued or changed in SharePoint The full list can be found at SharePoint Server 2010 deprecated search features The following section provides details about the deprecated search features in SharePoint Server. a. Modifying the search topology using a web-based interface Description: SharePoint 2013 uses the web-based interface to show the current status of the topology. You change the topology by using Windows PowerShell. SharePoint Server 2010 also included a web-based option for changing the topology. Reason for change: The core search architecture of SharePoint 2013 has a more complex and flexible topology that can be changed more efficiently by using Windows PowerShell. Migration path: Use Windows PowerShell to modify the search topology. b. Replacement mode within the thesaurus Description: The thesaurus replacement mode is deprecated in SharePoint In SharePoint Server 2010, you can classify entries in the thesaurus as expansions that are added to the query in addition to the original term. Likewise, you can classify entries as replacements of the original term in a query. In SharePoint 2013, thesaurus replacements are no longer supported. All entries in the thesaurus are expansions, and the original term is not removed from the query. The original query term is always evaluated when you search the index. You cannot remove synonyms or words from the index. Reason for change: The feature has limited usage, and may also have unwanted side-effects for relevance. Migration path: No equivalent feature. c. Search Query web service Description: The Search Query web service is deprecated in SharePoint In SharePoint Server 2010, the Search Query web service exposes the SharePoint Enterprise Search capabilities to client applications. This enables you to access search results from client and web applications outside the context of a SharePoint site. Reason for change: The Search Query web service is deprecated because the client object model (CSOM) and a new REST-based web service are available for developing Office-wide extensibility scenarios. The CSOM exposes the same functionality as the Search Query web service, and a larger set of functionality for stand-alone client applications. Migration path: Change custom search solutions to use the CSOM or REST-based web service instead of using the Search Query web service. Intranet Focus Ltd

15 d. Search RSS and search from Windows Description: The search RSS feature is deprecated in SharePoint The functionality for performing enterprise searches from Windows 7 depends on search RSS and this element has also been deprecated in SharePoint The RSS link no longer appears on the results page. This link is replaced by the Search Alerts link. Before upgrading site collections to SharePoint 2013, you can continue to use RSS in the SharePoint 2010 version of the Search Center. However, after you upgrade the Search Center to SharePoint 2013, the RSS is no longer available. In SharePoint 2013, you can create custom RSS feeds that use the client object model (CSOM), which targets the needs of your particular application and the RSS readers. Reason for change: Most RSS readers that are available do not support claims authentication. In SharePoint 2013, claims authentication is the default authentication model. By using claims authentication, RSS readers work while the authentication cookie is cached. However, after the cookie expires, RSS readers cannot refresh their authentication, and so they stop working. Migration path: After migrating a site to SharePoint 2013, you can create search-based alerts to be notified of changes to search results. You can also create a custom RSS feed in SharePoint document libraries, by using the UX extensibility platform. e. Custom word breaker dictionaries Description: The format of the custom word breaker dictionaries has changed in SharePoint In SharePoint 2013, you can only create one language-independent dictionary. In SharePoint Server 2010, you can create language-specific custom dictionaries (one dictionary for each language) to edit the word breaker behavior of enterprise search. The word breaker behavior for East Asian (CJK) languages has not changed in SharePoint In SharePoint 2013, custom word breaker dictionaries from earlier versions of SharePoint Server are not supported. Reason for change: The search processing framework for SharePoint 2013 is new, and the way the word breakers operate has changed. Migration path: You must combine existing custom dictionaries into one languageindependent dictionary. f. Configuration of stemming in the registry Description: The configuration of stemming in the registry is no longer supported in SharePoint Modifying stemming entries in the registry has no effect during search. In SharePoint Server 2010, you can turn stemming on or off, or you can replace it with a thirdparty stemmer by changing the registry. In SharePoint 2013, you cannot use a third-party stemmer. Reason for change: This feature has limited feature usage. Migration path: There is no migration path available for custom stemmers. You can enable or disable stemming in the Search Result Web Part. g. SharePoint Search SQL syntax Description: In SharePoint Server 2010, you could construct complex search queries by using SQL syntax. Search in SharePoint 2013 supports FAST Query Language (FQL) syntax and Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax for custom search solutions. You cannot use SQL syntax in custom search solutions. Custom search solutions that use SQL syntax with the Query object model and the Query web service that were created in earlier versions of SharePoint Intranet Focus Ltd

16 Serverdo not work when you upgrade them to SharePoint If you submit queries by using these applications, you will receive an error. Reason for change: The core search architecture has changed in SharePoint 2013, and the SQL syntax is no longer supported. Migration path: Change current search solutions to use either the KQL syntax or FQL syntax for queries. h. Shallow search refiners Description: SharePoint Server Search in Office 2010 supported shallow search refiners. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint supports shallow refiners and deep refiners. InSharePoint 2013, only deep search refiners are supported. We recommend that you use deep search refiners to refine searches. In SharePoint 2013, deep refiners are an improvement to the existing FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint functionality. For example, the resource usage for each refiner is improved in SharePoint In SharePoint 2013, you can view refiners as you did in the earlier version of the product. However, the refiners are now computed differently. They are created based on index structures that are aggregated across the full result set. Reason for change: The shallow search refiners are replaced with an improved implementation of deep search refiners. Migration path: No specific migration steps are necessary. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint deprecated features The following section provides details about the deprecated features in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. a. FAST Search database connector Description: The FAST Search database connector is not supported in SharePoint Reason for change: The connector framework for SharePoint 2013 is combined with the BCS framework and the Business Data Catalog connectors. Migration path: Replace the FAST Search database connector with the Business Data Catalogbased indexing connectors in the BCS framework. b. FAST Search web crawler Description: The FAST Search web crawler is not supported in SharePoint The SharePoint 2013 crawler provides similar functionality to the FAST Search web crawler. Reason for change: The crawler capabilities are merged into one crawler implementation for consistency and ease of use. Intranet Focus Ltd

17 Migration path: Use the standard SharePoint 2013 crawler. The following table explains the differences between the FAST Search web crawler and the SharePoint 2013 Preview crawler, and provides details about migration. Feature FAST Search web crawler SharePoint 2013 crawler Refeed documents Extract dynamically generated links and content from Java You can refeed documents that you have previously downloaded to the index without having to recrawl them. You can extract dynamically generated links and content from JavaScript. You can extract dynamically generated links and content from JavaScript. You can perform crawls focused on language. You can perform a full recrawl with similar functionality, but with slightly decreased performance of feeds. No longer supported. Migration path None. None. Languagefocused crawls You can focus a crawl on a certain language, by only following links from and storing content for documents that match specific languages. No longer supported. None. This feature is intended for large scale crawls that target specific languages but that do not limit the crawl to a top level domain. Modify URIs You can modify the URIs before crawling them. Such a modification of the URI enables you to remove certain features of the URI, such as dynamic components, and to rename host names. You can apply prefix-type URI rewriting with the "Server name remapping" feature in Search Admin. This allows you to perform the most relevant modifications of the URI. None. c. Find similar results Description: The Find similar results feature is not available in SharePoint The Find similar results feature is supported in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint to search for results that resemble results that you have already retrieved. Reason for change: The Find similar results feature is available only within the query integration interfaces, and it does not consistently provide good results in many scenarios. Migration path: There is no migration path available. Intranet Focus Ltd

18 Appendix B Resources There are relatively few resources available on SharePoint 2013 search at present. We would recommend that the following resources are essential reading for all members of a SharePoint search team Professional Microsoft Search. Mark Bennett, Jeff Fried, Miles Kehoe and Natalya Voskterenskya. Wrox, ISBN This excellent book covers not only SharePoint 2010 search but also the implementation of FAST ESP. The opening sections of the book highlight the need for a search strategy and the establishment of a Search Centre of Excellence. The book takes an Microsoft-independent perspective on SharePoint 2010 search management. Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. Mikael Svenson, Marcus Johansson and Robert Piddocke. Microsoft Press, ISBN This is the definitive Microsoft handbook on FAST Search Server for SharePoint 2010 and runs to over 450 pages. Despite the changes made in SharePoint 2013 this will still be a useful resource for a SharePoint 2013 search team. SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Search Walkthrough Guide. Steve Mann This is a remarkably detailed handbook that has been self-published by a very experienced Microsoft developer based in Philadelphia. The 300 page book is full of screen shots, coding examples and practical advice primarily for IT development teams. However search managers with a business focus will still gain a lot from understanding the capabilities of SharePoint 2013 search. Steve Mann also has a very good blog on SharePoint 2013 but it is framed so it is not possible to point to individual entries BAInsight e-books BAInsight, a search and search services vendor, has published three e-books on SharePoint 2013 search which present the benefits and challenges in much more detail that we have been able to provide in this Search Note. SharePoint 2013: Building a Search-Driven Content Site The Essential Guide to Enterprise Search in SharePoint 2013 What's New in Search for SharePoint 2013: Top 5 Key Changes in Architecture and Search They are all very well illustrated with screen shots and provide very practical advice on how to get the best from SharePoint 2013 search. SharePoint 2013 Search Capabilities Video Training Agnes Molnar has developed a series of videos on SharePoint 2013 search implementation, on which this Search Note has been based. Search in SharePoint 2013 This is the Microsoft SharePoint development centre website. Essential SharePoint Scott Jamison, Susan Hanley and Chris Bortlik. Addison Wesley 2o13. ISBN This is the definitive overview of SharePoint 2013 with a focus on governance and business planning. Intranet Focus Ltd