SharePoint 2013 and Search-Driven Content

For the last year I have done a lot of concept and architecture design together with development in cases where SharePoint is used as organization internal communication, news, announcement and general information channel. Basically I mean traditional Intranet with news pages, announcements lists, blogs, HR content sites, department sites etc. For this reason I have spent my time looking the new SharePoint 2013 Preview (SP2013 on this point of view. There is so much to look into and learn that you better start from something you are familiar with. I have tried to find out what there is new for my customers that are using SharePoint with Publishing Portal features inside their company. So few upcoming posts, including this one, will include my thoughts and findings on this point of view.

Here is how the Publishing Portal looks in right after creation

Search-Driven Content web parts

First big thing that you should notice are new web parts related to search. They are called Search-Driven Content web parts. When showing something like announcements in page on SharePoint 2010 (SP2010) you basically had four options 1. List View web part 2. Content Query web part 3. Search Result web part 4. Custom web part. In all of these there are pros and cons and you can still use them.

But SP2013 introduced a whole set of new search-driven web part. It seems that Microsoft really wants us to use search index when fetching and publishing content on the site. And I don’t claim them from doing so. Search index is very efficient and safe way to do it.

Content query web part is create but there is a possibility that your site is slowing down if you get content from a large site. That is why search is a create option. Only problem in SP2010 is that Search Result web part isn’t very useful way to do things and you are able to use List View web part only on that site where the list is located (without some SharePoint Designer hacks). So I have to say that in quite many occasion we went to road of making custom web part for some needed components on the site. Now I think that we can change this thinking at least in quite many occasion.

Available web parts

1. Content Search – Web Part will allow you to show items that are results of a search query you specify.
2. Articles – Web Part will show any items that are derived from the Article Page content type.
3. Catalog – Item Reuse Web Part to reuse or republish the content of an item from a catalog.
4. Items from a Catalog – Web Part will show items from a catalog configured for this site.
5. Items Matching a Tag – Web Part will show items that are tagged with a term.
6. Pictures – Web Part will show any items that are derived from the Picture or Image content type.
7. Popular Items – Web Part will show items that have been recently viewed by many users.
8. Recently Changed Items – Web Part will show items that have been modified recently.
9. Recommended Items – Web Part will show content recommendations based on usage patterns for the current page.
10. Videos – Web Part will show any items that are derived from the Video content type.
11. Web Pages – Web Part will show any items that are derived from the Page content type.
12. Wiki Pages – Web Part will show any items that are derived from the Wiki Page content type.

All of these web parts can fetch, except Recommended Items and Catalog-Item Reuse that have special features, data from current site, current site collection, specified URL or whole index (=Don’t restrict results by location). You are able to control this with query builder in web part properties. I will tell you more about this later. This really means that you fetch and show items from almost every possible location. This is why using index in these web parts is so powerful.

Use cases that customers wants

As you can see there are a lot of good and useful web parts for your intranet site. Something like popular items, articles (news pages) or recently changed items are something that customers ask almost every time. I can really see that these will be used a lot when people learn how to use them and can recommend those to customers. You can also create extra value in you intranet with these web parts because you can focus content more closely to users in different places regardless where the content is actually created and saved.

You can for example show department related news or blog post in department community site with Items Matching a Tag web part. Only thing you have to do is create necessary managed metadata and use those when publishing different kind of content. I really think that if organizations start to use these web parts effectively we will see good and really useful intranets in the feature. Laura Rogers has written a good overall look to Content Search web part that you should take a look at: SharePoint 2013 Web Part: Content Search

Something like popular items, articles (news pages) or recently changed items are something that customers ask almost every time.

And just as a site note Content Query Web Part has also this new Query builder that I like already. Catalog mentioned on some web parts, by the way, is a new thing is SP2013. Catalogs are used in cross-site collection publishing. MVP Liam Cleary gives a nice example of using catalogs and search-drive web parts here: SharePoint 2013 – Cross Site Collection Publishing Part 1. More information from cross-site collection publishing can be found here: What’s new in web content management for SharePoint 2013 Preview publishing sites.

Plan the metadata and search!

Of course using these web parts means that you have to plan, maintain and implement your search and metadata model well. Otherwise you can’t take a really advantages from these web part. I have notice that even though many people sees that metadata and terms are important it’s not that easy to implement and adapt them to organization. Now is the real time you start to think about these things and start to discuss about metadata. Remember that that metadata is not about technical issues, it’s about real life artefacts and content. You can create metadata model without SharePoint and IT department J. We can make many nice technical solutions but if people don’t tell what kind of items they save to SharePoint we can’t take full advantages from the possibilities.

Continuous crawl

Other important thing to release here is that index is not real time. You have to tell this to your customers and make clear that they understand this limitation. Corey Roth has written a create post about search in new SP2013: Search is Everywhere! What you need to know about Search in SharePoint 2013 Preview. One basic thing is to master and schedule your content sources. SP2013 introduced a new thing called continuous crawl.

Here is what Corey he says about continuous crawl:

“This crawls your content source continuously (every 15 minutes by default). However, there is some magic that occurs now and new items can appear in the index within seconds.”.

I think that in the environment that we are talking about you should definitely use this crawling option.

I wrote down a little more about continuous crawl and configuration about it in a separated post Using and Configuring Continuous Crawl.

So everything is perfect now?

Well as you can guess from the topic I think there are still things that could have done differently. One of mine top ranked wishes for the new SP was easier handling of xsl files in content query web part. This didn’t unfortunately come true. The same thing concerns also these search-driven web parts. Styling is done is xsl file. You still have to open/copy the xsl file, make the changes and save them back to styles library. Of course you can use SharePoint Designer or Visual Studio to make the changes. And if you want to link the web part to another style sheet than OOTB one you still need to take the road of SPD or Visual Studio solution. What I was expecting was xsl editor in web part level, or minimum of possibility to link you own custom xsl file like in List View Web Part. But this didn’t come, at least not in this preview version.

One of mine top ranked wishes for the new SP was easier handling of xsl files in content query web part. This didn’t unfortunately come true.

Other missing thing in these search-driven web parts is that you are not able to create personalized views or behavior to them. For example there is no possibility to filter the search results based on user profile value like department. You can only give the department value as static property. For sure you can use target audience and but multiple web part to the site but is always a maintenance hazel. Ok, to accomplish there should be some kind of scripting possibility on the query builder.

Luckily there is always my favorite framework solution MatchPoint that can handle these two issues. MatchPoint has web part called Composite Web Part. This web part can be connect to different data sources, you can modify the query with easy to use editor and you also have an editor to handle the styling. Composite also have a special expression framework that you can use to make dynamic queries during the load time. With this web part we have made solutions where we have fetched data from different sources based on user profile values and styled them with xsl. Here’s basic information about Composite web part but I will post more details of MatchPoint Composite web part little later: MatchPoint Composite Web Part

Using Search-Driven Web Parts – Example

I think that let’s stop this novel writing and let’s look something practical example. Here is on example of using search-driven web parts in communicational Intranet – SharePoint 2013 and Search-Driven Content – Articles Web Part.