Search Driven Solutions

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hey guys how’s it going? Let’s thank the sponsors for the pizza for lunch.
• #3: In this session I will be talking about ways to utilize search-based web parts to build out a dynamic intranet. This session targets power users to developers.
• #4: We don't wanna hear your "MMMBop" ringtone go off
• #6: I will do a brief intro to search itself. Next I will talk about Display Templates. I will not go into too much code here and instead will focus on some already built templates available for you to use.
• #8: Where in the past you might have used something like SPServices to query data from a SharePoint list or library you can do the same thing with search web parts. You’ll find that you can implement a search based solution without the need of a developer 80% of the time. There are a lot of out-of-the-box and free templates out there that are ready for a power user to install and use. There may be some cases where you need the output to be different in which case you can enlist the help of a developer to build out a custom template.
• #9: So we said Search Driven Solutions offer better performance but what do we mean by that? A big hit on performance is having to make multiple calls to the database. jQuery based solutions that make list calls require a call to the database. If you need to pull information from multiple lists on your intranet home page then those database calls can add up and bring your load time to a hault. With a search based solution, you aren’t calling the database but rather the search index which acts as a cache. You do still have some options you can use a Content Query Web Part or Search Core Results Web Part or just regular old custom code. Unfortunately these options aren’t as user friendly and you will most likely need a developers help
• #10: While search is great there are some instances where it might not be the best fit. One limitation is the data won’t show up instantaneously. After you add new content you will have to wait for search to crawl that content before it’s displayed. The time it takes search to crawl varies. If you are on-prem your SP Admin configures the crawl schedule which can vary from every 5 minutes to every hour or more. A benefit of on-prem is you can also request your SP Admin to kick off an on-demand crawl for you as well. If you are on Office 365 then you are at Microsoft’s mercy. Generally the crawl runs every 15 minutes, however, during “peak load times” it can take as long as 6 hours. I’ve personally never seen it take that long though. Another case where you might not want to use a search based solution is if you don’t have control over managed properties. Search based solutions are dependent on these managed properties as that is where it gets it’s data. Managed Properties are controlled via Central Admin so if you don’t have that access it’s going to be difficult. There are many managed properties already configured and generally, each time you create a Site Column it creates a corresponding managed property for that. However, you might need some configuration such as setting the property to be filterable, searchable, sortable, etc. I’ll explain what a managed property is in the next slide. Another important thing to note is search based solutions are not meant to be a forms solution alternative. These solutions will generally be read only.
• #11: While search is great there are some instances where it might not be the best fit. One limitation is the data won’t show up instantaneously. After you add new content you will have to wait for search to crawl that content before it’s displayed. The time it takes search to crawl varies. If you are on-prem your SP Admin configures the crawl schedule which can vary from every 5 minutes to every hour or more. A benefit of on-prem is you can also request your SP Admin to kick off an on-demand crawl for you as well. If you are on Office 365 then you are at Microsoft’s mercy. Generally the crawl runs every 15 minutes, however, during “peak load times” it can take as long as 6 hours. I’ve personally never seen it take that long though. Another case where you might not want to use a search based solution is if you don’t have control over managed properties. Search based solutions are dependent on these managed properties as that is where it gets it’s data. Managed Properties are controlled via Central Admin so if you don’t have that access it’s going to be difficult. There are many managed properties already configured and generally, each time you create a Site Column it creates a corresponding managed property for that. However, you might need some configuration such as setting the property to be filterable, searchable, sortable, etc. I’ll explain what a managed property is in the next slide. Another important thing to note is search based solutions are not meant to be a forms solution alternative. These solutions will generally be read only.
• #12: If you are still on SP 2010 then what we are going to discuss won’t do you much good. My humble suggestion would be to upgrade to 2013 if you can so you can take advantage of the new search features. You do still have some options you can use a Content Query Web Part or Search Core Results Web Part or just regular old custom code. Unfortunately these options aren’t as user friendly and you will most likely need a developers help
• #13: Re-iterating what we discussed in the previous slide. The official statement from Microsoft for SharePoint online is listed. Again, I’ve yet to see it take that long to crawl though but its important to be aware. On-Prem search crawls are typically controlled by your SharePoint Admin. The crawl schedule can vary from 15 minutes to once a day. If you have on-prem SharePoint and want to implement a search-based solution it would be a good idea to check with your SharePoint Administrator and see how often your crawl schedule runs so you’ll know if that will fit with your intended solutions.
• #15: There are a couple major components of search that you need to be aware of to utilize search web parts. The first is Crawled Properties. For each site column that is created and used SharePoint will automatically create a corresponding Crawled Property for the column. It’s important to note that the column has to have data in it before this happens though. Crawled Properties are the building blocks of Managed Properties which are vital to using search web parts.
• #16: If you are doing anything with search you will need to use Managed Properties. Search looks at managed properties for building the queries and displaying data.
• #17: There are some settings for Managed Properties that are important to know before building out a search-based solution. For each managed property, you must define the settings. These settings will determine what you are allowed to do with the given property.
• #18: When working with search solutions you will eventually run into an issue and need to troubleshoot your query. Luckily there is a good, free tool for that. This tool can be downloaded on your desktop and can connect to you online or on-prem site. It allows you to stub out and debug queries.
• #20: Display templates are what makes your Search Queries look pretty.
• #21: Display Templates consist of a Control and an Item. The control is your container for the search results. The Item is the manipulation of each search result item.
• #22: You can find all of the display templates in the master page gallery. There are two folders. One for Content Search and another for Search. If you are using Search Results Web Part then you’ll want to put your custom display templates in the Search folder. If you are using the Content Search Web Part then put your custom display templates in the Content Search Web Part.
• #23: Some general tips and warnings here. First, I suggest creating a new folder under the display template folder to house all of your custom templates. This separates them from the out of the box templates and makes them easier to find and manage. Next tips will save you some heartache. Unless you are a JS whiz, never touch the JS file! You should typically only be customizing the HTML file. SharePoint will automatically sync any changes you make to the HTML with the JS file to keep it kosher. You run the risk of breaking stuff if you start editing the JS file even if you know what you’re doing. If you really need to modify the JS file then I suggest making a backup of your template first. Last tip is to never modify and out of the box display template. Same idea as above, if you mess it up then bad stuff can happen. You have no good way of knowing where that template is being used and stuff can break. The safe bet is to make a copy of it and give it a unique name and customize it from there.
• #25: Benjamin Nulin from ShareGate is big on Search and he has created several cool templates that are available for you to download. I’ve used some of his templates which I will show you later on in the demo. There is also a project out on GitHub which has a ton of display templates out there for you. I personally want to check out the accordion display template. And lastly, I’ve posted the display templates that I’ve customized out on my github.
• #27: I’m not going to go into the code of heavily customizing a display template. Instead I’m going to focus on some of the readily available templates out there. If you want to create your own, as I said before, start with an existing, make a copy and modify to suite your needs. I will show you an example of what the code of a display template looks like and how we can make a copy and make a small change easily in the demo next.
• #28: Show how to make a copy of an existing template and make a small change to customize.
• #29: So now that we’ve went over how to get some cool display templates to utilize in your search web parts we are going to talk about the web parts themselves and how to configure them to display content. The first web part we are going to talk about is the Content Search Web Part
• #30: This may be a major bummer to some of you but the Content Search Web Part is only available for SP 2013 On-Prem Enterprise of SP Online Plan 2. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have that licensing. You can accomplish similar functionality with the Search Results Web Part that we’ll discuss later on.
• #31: It’s really a case of “anything you can do I can do better”. The CSWP is the latest and greatest and can do anything the SRWP can do faster and easier. The major benefit that you’ll see with the Content Search Web Part is you can utilize property mappings within the web part settings itself. This means your display template just has a placeholder for a value and the end user can define that value in the web part. Whereas with the SRWP you will have to define the properties in the display template itself.
• #32: The CSWP is comprised of two basic elements. The Query and the Template.
• #33: The Query Builder is pretty self explanatory, you define what you want search to display. The cool thing about the CSWP is you can search across site collections. Many companies have multiple SharePoint site collection and in the past it was extremely difficult to aggregate data from those site collections into one place. You can do that with search.
• #34: We’ve already talk about display templates. You’ll see with the CSWP that you have a lot of templates there for you to use out of the box. It even has an image slider built in for you.
• #36: As I said before a big benefit of the CSWP is the ability to map properties. In this example you’ll see it has a placeholder to choose the field to use for the picture, link, title, and description.
• #37: Show the home page and how to add a CSWP. Create a query and choose a display template.
• #38: So what if you don’t have the CSWP? There’s still the SRWP.
• #40: Show how to add the People Directory Search Results Webpart
• #41: The cool thing about search based solutions is they are super easy to provision. It’s just a matter of copying over some files.