My second presentation at SPC2008 was Advanced Search Configuration and Management. I presented in "the BIG room" and what a thrill that was. The AV folks were true professionals, the stage was amazing, and the audience (though a bit small due to the early hour on the last day..) was very receptive and kind.

After the session I fired up the VPC to determine what went wrong with the breadcrumb demo and determined that in my haste I chose the wrong master page. Rather than editing blueglassband.master, I edited blueband.master. The resulting pages should have looked like this, notice that the search box is missing on both pages.

I promised that I would post the links, deck, and code so here you go.

Links

Microsoft Enterprise Search: http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch

Microsoft Enterprise Search Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/enterprisesearch

Partner Search Information: https://www.quickstartmicrosoftsearch.com

My Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/matthew but you knew that!

Index Tuning and Relevance

One attendee asked about tuning relevance. There are a few techniques that you can use. Here are a few articles that should get you pointed in the right direction.

SharePoint SDK "Improving Relevance"

Evaluating and Customizing Search Relevance in SharePoint

You can adjust relevance in the thesaurus file as well: Microsoft KB 837847

Open Search Spec

I wrote up a separate post with the walk through that I did not get to in my demo. Light up IE with Open Search.

Managing keywords outside of MOSS

http://www.bjglx.com/archives20/651980/index.php

There was an "Importer" for XML, I am at a loss for where I saw it though…

Using Vista Desktop Search with MOSS

Code

My XSL, Thesaurus, and Open Search code examples.

My Page Anatomy Master page

The Presentation

Here is the deck I presented: Advanced Search Configuration and Management.