SharePoint 2010 contains new Web Parts
as well as significant improvements to existing Web Parts in SharePoint
2007. What is immediately clear from looking at the Web Part settings is
how XSL template management and included properties configuration
(called columns in the Web Part settings) have been changed to be
centrally managed by default from Central Administration.
This supports both central management of the look and feel as well as
the new federated structure. Another noticeable thing about search Web
Parts is the new Locations selector. In SharePoint 2007, the
architecture was based on Shared Services Providers. Now it is based on
Search service applications (SSA), which are constructed around a
federated model. Even searching locations in SharePoint (the SharePoint
search index and property store) is a federated search. This is
reflected in the new Web Part settings.
Web Part Settings
Web Part settings are stored individually for
each instance of a Web Part. They are also configured directly from the
Web Part itself. To start editing Web Parts, click the Page tab on the
ribbon and click Edit (Figure 1). This will change the page to Edit mode. If the ribbon is not showing, it can be enabled from the Site Actions menu.
Figure 1. Ribbon with Page tab active
Open the appropriate Web Part context menu, and choose Edit Web Part (Figure 2).
This will open the Web Part settings menu. Note that the Web Part
settings menu is located in the upper right corner of the Web Part page
and that the page does not automatically scroll to that location, so it
might be required to manually scroll to the top of the page to find the
settings menu.
Figure 2. Accessing Web Part settings
The Web Part context menu also contains options
for deleting the Web Part or exporting it. Web Parts that are exported
preserve their configuration. This means that a configured Web Part can
be exported and later imported again either in the same place or on a
different Web Part page with the same configuration. The following
sections will cover the settings most administrators should know or
consider changing when planning to utilize search in SharePoint.
Search Box
The Search Box Web Part is used to receive the
user query input and forward the input to a search results page. In this
section, we will look at the following search-related settings (Figure 3) of the search box: Scopes, Query Redirection, Query Suggestions, and Additional Query Terms.
Figure 3. Search Box settings
As with all Web Parts in search centers, both
the search pages and the search result pages contain a Search Box Web
Part. Those are configured independently. This is especially useful, as
the search dialog Web Part on multiple search pages can redirect to the
same search result page. This allows a customized look, feel, and
behavior of the search dialogs located on different search and search
result pages, without the hassle of creating multiple result pages.
Scopes
The search box can be configured to use scopes in a number of different ways (Figure 4).
Either a scope can be used implicitly or a scope drop-down can be
configured to be displayed. This allows the user to select which scope
to search. It is preferable to provide a description for the drop-down
label to help users identify the purpose of the scopes. Real-life
experience shows that users are often reluctant to use advanced search
features, such as scopes, if it is not very clear to them why they can
benefit from them.
Figure 4. Choosing a scope visibility mode
From the Scopes drop-down (Figure 5),
you can configure which scopes should be displayed. This way the search
box can be configured to either use hard-coded scope settings or to
receive its scope setting from the URL parameter.
Figure 5. Possible scope visibility modes
“Contextual scope” means the displayed scope
selector will show scopes defined for the current site context. The
default setting is to use the default scope of the target results page.
Other options are to use the URL parameter, which could be relevant if
the query is redirected from another search center, or another external
link from where a specific scope should be set as default.
Query Redirection
Query redirection (Figure 6)
enables the performed query to be redirected to a search results page
on another search center. Redirection is especially useful for when
putting search dialogs on custom pages outside the search centers. This
way the creator can choose which search center should handle the query
while still allowing the search to be performed using a specific scope
(given that the results page is configured to use the scope from the URL
parameter). Query redirections are configured by specifying the “Target
search result page URL”. The URL should be entered as a relative path.
Figure 6. Setting query redirection to a specific results page
The scope display
group defines the group of scopes that should be displayed to the user.
This way
the creator of the search center or the page containing the search
dialog can choose which subset of the available scopes to enable for the
given search box.
