I really am getting excited about the amount of information now available about Search and SharePoint.
SharePoint Server 2007 was a powerful search engine when it RTM'd back in November 2006, since then Microsoft have purchased FAST; and Microsoft Search Server (MSS) 2008 and SharePoint Server 2008 Express (MSSX) have been released. The extra functionality avaliable in MSS can be introduced into SharePoint Server 2007, when you install the Infrastructure Update.
Many organizations leave the search functionality of SharePoint Server unexplored and do not make the most of it. If this sounds familiar then I do recommend that you use the following resources to get up to speed:
- Michael Gannotti's Video: Got Search? SharePoint Search And Beyond.
- Inside the Index and Search Engines: Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007: Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 by Patrick Tisseghem and Lars Fastrup. An excellent book, and although published prior to the integration of Search Server functionality into SharePoint Server, provides valuable inside on how to customize the Search Centre and some information on MSS.
- Bill English's five part blog posts on "Findability and SharePoint" (Well it's five posts to date - I think there will be more).
- Bob Mixon's, webcast series: "SharePoint Findability and your Intranet".
- PDC 2008 session recording: "BB36 FAST: Building Search-Driven Portals with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Silverlight" Stein Danielsen, Jan Helge Sageflåt - I attended this session, and although the inforamtion was not a new, (I believe a similar session was presented at TechEd, America), it was very interesting and some of the same techniques can be applied to a non-FAST implementation of SharePoint Server's Search centre, so even if you don't intend to use FAST, I would recomment you watch the video, down load the slides from the PDC2008 Web site and the code from codeplex. Alexander Meijers has a nice blog summary of the session.
- Professional Microsoft Search: SharePoint 2007 and Search Server 2008, by Tom Rizzo, Richard Riley, Shane Young. This is the next book on my pile to read!
If you want to hear someone talk about search, then here are some events coming soon, that you might like to attend:
- SUGUK meeting on the 25th November in London, where Ben Robb will be presenting session titled, "Customizing SharePoint Search ", signup here.
- Combined Knowledge's 4-day search course, on the 1st December in London presented by Bill English. (Steve Smith and Me will be there too, so it should be loads of fun).
- FASTforward'09, "The Largest Business and Technology Conference Dedicated to Search-Driven Innovation", February 9-11, 2009, The Mirage, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.