SharePoint Content and Resources : Search

SharePoint Developer Best Practices Resource Center now LIVE on MSDN!

randalli — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:15:00 GMT

We have compiled a list of best practices for everything from working with SharePoint Lists to disposing SharePoint Objects, from writing SQL syntax queries for relevant Search results to developing Workflow solutions. Also, you can quickly access the latest information from patterns & practices specific to SharePoint, all in a one-stop shop! http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dd638301.aspx

Send us feedback about what else you'd like to see SharePoint Best Practices written for, and we will maintain this page as a living document of best practices guidance.

Just Published! WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 SDK 1.4 Download and Online MSDN Library (8.29.2008)

randalli — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:54:00 GMT

Hello SharePoint Developers!

We are excited to announce the availability of the latest updates to the online MSDN Library + the downloadable SDKs for both MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0!

In our never-ending efforts to improve the customer and partner experience, we are announcing the sim ship of both the online MSDN Library and the downloadable SDK! No more confusion about what’s the latest version: August is August!

> Download the MOSS SDK 1.4 <

> Download the WSS SDK 1.4 <

The August 2008 update is version 1.4 and reflects feature enhancements that were part of the recent Infrastructure Update. For more information on SharePoint Products and Technologies updates, you can start here on TechNet.

Which SDK do I need to download?

If you are only writing code that utilizes the Windows SharePoint Services platform, you can download the WSS SDK. However, if you want the superset of all documentation and samples, you should install the MOSS SDK, and then you’ll get all the platform and technology information as well. You don’t need to download both, but you will need to uninstall all previous versions.

Note The SDK 1.4 downloads are full releases that include all previous tools and documentation.

What’s New in this release?

The SDK updates in 1.4 include:

New Federated Search Samples:

Custom Federated Search Web Part with a Credentials UI (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
Federated Search SQL Server Connector (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
Federated Search HTML to RSS Connector (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)
Federated Search Virtual Earth Map Connector (also available at MSDN Code Gallery)

· Updated documentation files, including updated, offline versions of MSDN Library Technical Articles and Developer Guides
What’s New in the MOSS SDK 1.4 Documentation
What’s New in the WSS SDK 1.4 Documentation

· Lots of new documentation for Records Management APIs.

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.Holds

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.InformationPolicy

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.RecordsRepository

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.Reporting

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.SearchAndProcess

While you’re updating your SharePoint development tools…

You can also update the Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint Services. Here is the link to the installer: VSeWSS 1.2. The extensions were updated on 7/1/2008 and now work with Visual Studio 2008!

Don’t forget to download the user’s guide: version 1.1

Please keep sending us feedback!

We want to make sure you have all the information you expect to find in the SDK. Please reply to this blog entry with comments if you have a request. And don't forget to use the Community Content Wiki on MSDN to annotate the SDK documentation online with your own insights. Just look toward the bottom of each page online or click the Add Content... button in the top-level menu on MSDN Library pages.

Tons of New SharePoint Content Now Live on MSDN - July 12, 2007

randalli — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:36:00 GMT

Hello folks.

It has been several weeks since I posted an update on new MSDN content. We have been extremely busy publishing content, and here is the list of content published in the month of June and the first week of July:

Visual How-to Screencasts

· Creating Search Queries Programmatically by using the Search Web Service in SharePoint Server 2007
By Patrick Tisseghem

· Creating Search Queries Programmatically by using the Search Object Model in SharePoint Server 2007
By Patrick Tisseghem

· Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane
By Patrick Tisseghem

Technical Articles

· Development Tools and Techniques for Working with Code in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
By Patrick Tisseghem

o Part 1: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530302.aspx

o Part 2: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530301.aspx

· Using the Business Data Catalog and Smart Tags with the 2007 Office System
by Scot Hilier and Bhushan Nene (Microsoft Corp.)

o Accompanying Download for the Business Data Catalog and Smart Tags article

· Evaluating and Customizing Search Relevance in SharePoint Server 2007
by Dmitriy Meyerzon, Avi Schmueli, and Jo-Anne West (Microsoft Corp.)

· Using Forms Solutions in Groove 2007
by Josh Mahoney

· Upgrading an MCMS 2002 Application to SharePoint Server 2007
by Microsoft Corp.

o Part 1: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb466172.aspx

o Part 2: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb466171.aspx

Developer Guides

· Excel Services and Excel 2007 Windows Compute Cluster Server Job Submission Sample Developer Guide

· Excel Services and Excel 2007 Windows Compute Cluster Server Job Submission Sample (Download)

Book Excerpts

o Chapter 3: Customizing and Extending the Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 Search (Part 1 of 2)
By Patrick Tisseghem

o Chapter 3: Customizing and Extending the Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 Search (Part 2 of 2)
By Patrick Tisseghem

o Chapter 6: Integrating Spreadsheets into the Enterprise

Downloadable White Papers

· Windows white paper: Software Update for Web Folders (Download)

Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map

Check this out if you haven’t already seen it! It’s a Windows Presentation Foundation-based, interactive developer map like the ones we have available for download. It also has dynamic content via RSS feeds, so you can always get the most up-to-date information. So cool!

· http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb497969.aspx

Keep the feedback coming! We want to hear from you.

JUST RELEASED: Post-RTM Update to MOSS and WSS SDK Documentation is Now Live on MSDN!

randalli — Wed, 02 May 2007 02:54:00 GMT

We have been working non-stop since RTM to update major sections of the MOSS and WSS SDK documentation on MSDN. You can browse the SDKs online here:

If you're working with Visual Studio a lot, you can follow the simple instructions in this blog post to get Help directly from MSDN in Visual Studio's Help viewer; it also works for F1 Help within your code. Browsing the online version of the SDKs also lets you see the MSDN Community Content that appears in Wiki-style content blocks at the end of each SDK topic.

Here is the fine print for those of you who wish to know what has been updated and added:

What's New in the Windows SharePoint Services SDK

New conceptual sections:

Content Migration
Change Log and Synchronizing Applications
Creating Declarative, No-Code Workflow Editors

Procedural topics:

How to: Create a Custom Field Type and Field Control
How To: Extend the STSADM Utility

Schema reference topics for the following schemas:

Content Migration XML Schema Reference: Contains over 180 element topics that detail the eight migration schemas
Workflow Configuration Schema

Greatly expanded Class Library Reference material for over 300 types in the following namespaces:

· Microsoft.SharePoint

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment

· Microsoft.SharePoint.EmailIntegration

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Navigation

· Microsoft.SharePoint.MobileControls

· Microsoft.SharePoint.StsAdmin

· Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages

· Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow

As well as expanded reference material for the following Web Services:

· Authentication Web Service

· Copy Web Service

This update also includes numerous updates and revisions to existing SDK content.

What's New in the Office SharePoint Server SDK

Class Library and Web Service Reference

Microsoft.Office.Workflow

· Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Utility.Contact

· Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Utility.Form

· Microsoft.Office.Workflow.Workflow

Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.Barcode

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.BarcodeGenerator

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.PolicyFeatures.IBarcodeGenerator

· Microsoft.Office.RecordsManagement.InformationPolicy.IPolicyFeature

Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.ExchangeServiceBinding

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.OWACalendarPart

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.OWAInboxPart

New and updated content in over 40 classes in the Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles namespace

New and updated content for UserProfileService and Workflow Web services

Updates to numerous Search Web Part classes

New content and updates in nearly 60 types in Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.* namespaces:

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Administration

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.Navigation

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebControls.EditingMenuActions

· Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.WebServices

General Reference

· Enterprise Search Protocol Handlers (multiple topics, new)

· How to: Customize XSL for the Content Query Web Part (new)

· Updates to 4 more Web Content Management topics

And much more!

"Continuous Publishing" and the SharePoint SDKs

We are continually updating the SDKs with more information as it becomes available and as we receive customer feedback with new content requests; we call this "continuous publishing" at Microsoft.

The downloadable SDK will be updated in the next few months, which will be a coordinated release in both U.S. English and Japanese.

10 Office Visual How-to Screencasts Now Published for MOSS!

randalli — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:13:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I announced the arrival of a new content type: the Office Visual How-to Screencast. Now instead of 3 of them we have published 10 for MOSS!

Search

Creating a Custom Search Page and Tabs in the Search Center of SharePoint Server by Patrick Tisseghem, U2U
The Search Center is a new type of site that is included by default in the site collection when you provision a collaboration portal. Its goal is to provide users with a customized search experience, and to replace the search box that is available at the top of the pages in the portal. There are two editions of the Search Center: the Search Center Lite and the Search Center with Tabs. The Search Center Lite is typically added to site collections where the publishing features are not activated. An example is a site collection with only team sites. The Search Center with Tabs offers a full customization using a tab-based user interface, but it requires the publishing features to be active. This is the case by default within collaboration portals. This article covers two customization options that can be performed in the Search Center with Tabs: how to add custom search pages and tabs, and, how to replace the XSLT for the search results with a custom XSLT.
Creating and Exposing Managed Properties in the Advanced Search Page of SharePoint Server Enterprise Search by Patrick Tisseghem, U2U
Lists and document libraries in SharePoint sites typically have extra columns defined for them. This custom metadata is collected by the crawler when it indexes the contents of these containers. Administrators can expose this custom metadata to the users who perform search queries in the Search Center. The Advanced Search page has a property picker that can be populated with managed properties. This article explains and illustrates how to expose managed properties to the user, and also explains how developers can programmatically create managed properties.
Creating and Exposing Search Scopes in SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Search by Patrick Tisseghem, U2U
Search scopes in SharePoint Server 2007 are used to narrow the search results returned to users executing a search query. Search scopes can be shared or locally defined. You can use different rules in the definition of a search scope, from simply scoping based on a content source to more complex scoping with conditions using custom metadata. You can view search scopes in the browser with scope pickers. Scope pickers are connected to a display group listing the scopes to be displayed.
Creating Content Sources to Crawl Business Data in SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Search by Patrick Tisseghem, U2U
A content source is a location that contains resources, and you may want the resources crawled or indexed. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 includes functionality to search Web sites and SharePoint sites, folders, and data exposed using the Business Data Catalog. In this Visual How-to article, we'll focus on working with the Business Data Catalog with step-by-step instructions and samples.

Business Data Catalog (BDC)

Refining Business Data Catalog Search with Scopes by Ryan Femling, 3Sharp
You can use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to search entities and other Business Data Catalog items, site collections, and people. You can easily refine the results of these Business Data Catalog searches with scopes. When you define the scopes, you can use them to segregate your Business Data Catalog search results from the rest of your SharePoint Server 2007 search results. You can display this data in a separate Web Part on the Search Results, or in a separate landing page altogether. This ability to segregate yet display the data side-by-side allows the searcher to easily see what they have searched on that is in the Business Data Catalog, along with any relevant material from SharePoint Server 2007.
Using Business Data Catalog Actions to Pass Parameters to InfoPath 2007 Browser Forms by David Gerhardt, 3Sharp
You can build forms with Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007 that run both in InfoPath 2007 and in a Web browser. For browser scenarios, you can integrate with the Business Data Catalog in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 by having a custom action pass a parameter value to form files.

Filtering one Business Data Catalog List from Another by Using Associations in SharePoint Server 2007 by John Peltonen, 3Sharp (previously announced)
The Business Data Catalog allows you to define multiple entities for a given line-of-business (LOB) system. Furthermore, within the metadata file, you can create associations that define a hierarchy within the entities. For example, if there are two entities defined, such as customers and orders, you can create an association to tie the customer entity directly to the order entity. This allows users within your Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 portal to create master-child behavior.

Creating Business Data Catalog Entities in SharePoint Server 2007 by John Peltonen, 3Sharp (previously announced)
The Business Data Catalog is a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 feature that exposes and incorporates Line-of-Business (LOB) data into other baseline portal functionality, such as lists and enterprise search. To incorporate this data into your portal, you must build an XML file that identifies where the data is stored (either Microsoft SQL Server or a Web service) and what the data looks like (for example, what the data types and primary keys are).

Excel Services

Creating Managed-Code UDFs for Excel Services by Joel Krist, Akona Systems
Much like previous versions of Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office Excel 2007 provides support for user-defined functions (UDFs). UDFs are custom functions that extend the calculation and data-import capabilities of Excel 2007.

Retrieving Excel 2007 Workbooks or Snapshots Using Office SharePoint Server 2007 Excel Services by Joel Krist, Akona Systems (previously announced)
If you want to save a copy of an up-to-date workbook, store it somewhere, send it to someone, and so on, you can retrieve an entire workbook or a snapshot using Excel Web Services. When a user or application requests a snapshot, Excel Services opens the Excel file on the server, refreshes data sources, and calculates all Excel formulas. Excel Services then generates and sends a snapshot back through the Web service API.

Let us know what you think! We have many more coming soon for MOSS, and we look forward to your feedback about the subjects we're choosing, the usefulness, and the technical depth of the videos. Let us know what you'd like to start seeing more of or less of!

More information: Office Visual How-to Center on MSDN

Downloads

Visual Studio Extensions for SharePoint Services 1.0 has been released! Download it today to get started building SharePoint solutions with Visual Studio: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=19f21e5e-b715-4f0c-b959-8c6dcbdc1057&displaylang=en

MSDN Information Centers

We have three new Information Centers on the MSDN SharePoint portal. An Information Center is a starting page for learning about a particular feature or task, with links to SDK content, articles, blog postings, downloads, and more. From the links on these pages, you can dive deep into any subject in the SDK in the MSDN Library, or you can find great resources that help you learn or troubleshoot a task or an issue.

SharePoint Server 2007 Information Center

We added seven new headlines and six new downloads to this "Getting Started" page; check it out! http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905504.aspx

Enterprise Search Information Center

Check out the Enterprise Search Deep Dives. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb335345.aspx

Videos and Webcasts

There are more videos, webcasts, and Office Visual How To articles and videos coming next month. Check this page for what is available now: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa940989.aspx

If you haven't seen them already, be sure to check out the Business Data Catalog, Migration and Upgrade Information, Excel Services, and Web Content Management Information Centers as well. We are constantly updating the portal to ensure you have the latest information about SharePoint development.

Coming Soon

April is going to be a huge month for us, so keep your bookmarks updated at http://msdn.microsoft.com/moss! On its way next month we plan to have:

MSDN Library SDK refresh
Office Visual How To articles and Screencasts
New Articles and White Papers
Book Excerpts
Workflow and ECM Information Centers
And more!

New MSDN Technical Articles and Downloads Published for MOSS

randalli — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:13:00 GMT

The following MOSS Technical Articles have been published recently in the MSDN Library. There is one article about Enterprise Search Best Practices, and three articles (two with downloads) about Excel Services.

Enterprise Search

Best Practices: Writing SQL Syntax Queries for Relevant Results in Enterprise Search

Excel Services

What is a Technical Article? Typically, it is a magazine-style article of 5 - 25 pages that demonstrates an end-to-end scenario around a core programming task. Often there are downloadable samples with the article, and at the very least we have code inline with the article. Another distinguishing feature is that articles usually stand on their own; in other words, you can read the article from end-to-end and get the full story. Nevertheless, we always provide links to additional information or to the relevant sections of the SDK.