Now that the BDC source has been created and crawled, managed properties must be mapped to the crawled properties such that those columns may be used within the search results (XSLT). The steps in this article need to be repeated for each data element that is to be used within the search results. For scenario purposes, a Client URL is being provided by the BDC and this is the link we want to show in the search results (versus the standard BDC properties page).

From the Configure Search Settings page and select the “Metadata property mappings” link:

On the Metadata Property Mappings page click the New Managed Property button:

On the New Managed Property page, enter a name for the property, an applicable description, and select the type of information (most values will probably be the default of Text). After this has been entered, click on the Add Mapping button:

On the Crawled Property Mapping dialog, select the Business Data category. The list of available properties should appear. Find the appropriate property and select it. (If there are too many properties, enter a part of the name and use the Find button to narrow down the list).

Click OK.  Back on the New Managed Property screen, select the “Allow this property to be used in scopes” checkbox and then click OK.

Repeat for the remaining BDC data elements.

A full crawl will be needed on the BDC content source once the managed properties have been added.

What’s Next?

This was a short and sweet discussion but very necessary to continue. The next effort is to create the custom results page for use within the client search scope and therefore the next article will show the steps to successfully accomplish this task.

The out-of-the-box search features of MOSS 2007 include two scopes, All Sites and People; but what about customers or clients? Many organizations are in business because of their customer base; so when adding new scopes and search content, the customers are the next best bet (pun definitely intended).

Therefore this article will demonstrate the process of creating a Client scope for use in search from a BDC source. It assumes that a Client BDC definition file has been created and imported into the MOSS implementation. The customer/client is simply a business scenario and the steps outlined can be used for any BDC application.

Creating a Content Source for the Client BDC

The first step is to add a content source to the search settings for the Client BDC. From Central Administration, select the SSP under the Shared Administrative Services menu. Select the Search Settings link:

On the Configure Search Settings screen, select the “Content sources and crawl schedules” link:

On the Manage Content Sources screen, select the New Content Source button:

The Add Content Source screen will appear. Enter a name for the content source and select Business Data as the type. The Applications section will refresh. Select the “Crawl selected applications” and make sure the instance checkbox is checked:

Enter the appropriate Full and Incremental Crawl schedules as applicable.

At the bottom of the screen, select the “Start full crawl…” checkbox and then click OK:

The Manage Content Sources screen should appear with the new content source entry:

Before proceeding, make sure the full crawl is completed and the status is Idle.

Adding the Client Scope

Return to the Configure Search Settings page and select the “View Scopes” link under the Scopes section:

On the View Scopes page, click on the New Scope button:

On the New Scopes page, enter a title for the scope. For now, make sure the “Use the default Search Results Page” is selected. We will generate a new search results page in future articles.

Click OK, the screen should return the View Scopes page. The new scope should be listed but with an Empty status. Click on the Add Rules link under this status:

On the Add Scope Rule page, select Content Source. This will make the Content Source section appear. Select the BDC content source created for the search previously. Leave the Behavior to the default “Include” and click OK:

Return to the Configure Search Settings screen and select the “Start update now” under the Scopes section:

The scope should begin the update process. Refreshing the screen will show the % complete on the Update status line. We are done with the SSP settings at this point.

Adding the Scope to the Site Collection

Open a new browser and navigate to the main MOSS web site. Select Site Settings from the Site Actions menus (if there is a extended menu, select “Modify All Site Settings”).

Under the Site Collection Administration section click on the Search Scopes link:

On the View Scopes page, select the Search Dropdown link:

On the Edit Scope Display Group screen, check the checkbox next to Clients scope. Click OK.

Back on the View Scopes page, select the Advanced Search link:

On the Edit Scope Display Group screen, check the checkbox next to Clients scope. Click OK.

Navigate once again to the main MOSS site. The Clients scope should now appear in the search drop-down box:

Searching within this scope should yield results from the BDC.

What’s Next?

Now that the content source and scope has been created, in order to customize the search results, managed properties need to be mapped to the crawled content. The next article will explain the steps to create the managed properties.

High Level Search Concepts

Essentially, there are two main components of search, the indexing and the querying. The indexing is the process in which all documents and content are reviewed and many key items about the item (meta data) are stored. The querying is when a user wishes to search for an item. The user enters keywords or phrases and the query engine looks at the indexed content and returns items that match.

The indexing process is called “crawling” and the indexed content is called “crawled content”. The querying and the query results (search results) is the end-user experience of the MOSS Search capabilities. Usually in a MOSS farm, there is one server dedicated to perform the indexing and the querying, however, these functions may be split out onto two separate servers. For this series, the assumption is the same server provides both services to the farm.

Office SharePoint Server Search Service

The server that runs the search service needs to have the Office SharePoint Server Search service started and configured. This is facilitated within Operations of the Central Administration (CA) and is managed by the Services on server settings.

The settings for the service will be investigated in the next article.

Search Settings

Once the service has been started on one of the servers in the farm, the next step is determining what will be crawled and how often. Of course, there are out-of-the-box default settings which will be shown here. The remainder of this article series will build upon the default configuration and expand the overall search experience within MOSS.

The search settings are governed by the Shared Services Administration within the SSP that was setup during the MOSS installation process. Clicking on the SSP name will bring up the overall settings.

Clicking on Search settings will show the main search settings screen in which most of the modifications within this series will occur.

This is where the content sources can be defined. From MSDN, a content source is a collection of start addresses representing content that should be crawled by the search index component.

Search Results

The results are based on the “scope” that is used for searching. There are two main out-of-the-box scopes; All Sites and People. A scope carves out a piece of the crawled content and determines what should be searched. It can be thought of a defined view of the crawled content. During this series a new scope will be created for a customized search experience.

The results appear on page within the MOSS system (within the Search Center by default) using a pre-defined web-part page which contains several out-of-the-box search web-parts. The main web part is the Search Core Results and its configuration determines the appearance and layout of the results.

This series will also dive into the customization of the Search Core Results web-part to include additional search fields based on the business data content source.

What’s Next?

The next article will dig a little deeper into the settings and configurations described above. The entire series will build out a scenario of adding content from an external data source (using the Business Data Catalog) and then enabling MOSS to return customized results.

Glossary of Terms

Based on the above discussions, the key terms are defined as follows:

Business Data Catalog (BDC) – an Enterprise feature in MOSS that allows for the retrieval of external data from other systems or databases.

Content Source – a collection of start addresses representing content that should be crawled by the search index component (Source: MSDN)

Crawling – the process at which the search engine retrieves information from a content source and produces appropriate indexes and properties based on the content that is found.

Full Crawl – the process of crawling all of the content available within a content source; the reindexing of previous crawled content may occur

Incremental Crawl – the process of crawling only new content from the previous full or incremental crawl.

Managed Properties / Meta Data Properties – Managed properties are the set of properties that are part of the search user experience, so to include a crawled property value in search functionality, it must be mapped to a managed property in the Document property mappings. (Source: MSDN)

Scope  - search scopes are a collection of items grouped together based on a common element among the items within that scope, which help users broaden or narrow the scope of their searches. (Source: MSDN)

References

Enterprise Search Architecture – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms570748.aspx