David Andrew Smith

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 delivers a much improved search experience out-of-the-box compared to MOSS 2007s search capabilities. With the new refinement panel, you can narrow results of your search and find the right content faster. It is a more sophisticated search engine that offers features that users have come to expect, such as query completion, display of related searches, spell checking, and wild cards.

Search in SharePoint 2010 will give us the ability to provide our staff one location to search all of the division’s documents, if we want to do so. SharePoint 2010 comes with out-of-the-box connectors that will allow us to connect to and crawl content outside of SharePoint easily and securely. For example we could connect to external data sources like FileNet, file servers, corporate web sites, MS Exchange, and custom databases (i.e. data warehouses).

Microsoft’s 5 investment areas for Search:

4. Search
1. Interactive Search Experience
   • Meta-data driven refinement panel, displays related searches –
     Video Demo: (00:52)
   • Query completion, spell checking and wild cards
2. Relevance
• Expanded relevance factors including social data (tagging) and usage (clicks)
3. People Search
• People finding is easier based on social networking and expertise algorithms – Video Demo: (01:34)
• Phonetic search algorithm added
4. Connectivity
• Use the Search Connector Framework in Business Connectivity Services to connect to and crawl external data sources
5. Scale and Platform Flexibility
   • Search up to 100 million documents
   • Build your own Search driven applications – Video Demo: (01:34)