SharePoint Online, Viva , Teams, Power Platform, Azure, Identity: June 2015

Configure Contexual Search

Configure CONTEXTUAL Search

Before configuring it we need to understand the search basics about Result sources and Query Rules. There are some nice articles available on tech-net which explain these in detail:

Understanding result sources for search in SharePoint Server 2013

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn186229.aspx

Configure result sources for search in SharePoint Server 2013

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj683115.aspx

How to Customize SharePoint 2013 Search Results Using Query Rules and Result Sources

http://blogs.technet.com/b/mspfe/archive/2013/02/01/how-query-rules-and-result-sources-can-be-used-to-customize-search-results.aspx

Once you go through above articles next requirement is to customize your overall search experience and setting up contextual search. I came across a nice thread which explain this in detail

Setting up a full contextual search from within folders, document libraries or lists

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/bbfe1c92-78a1-4b1d-8549-46c89895689f/setting-up-a-full-contextual-search-from-within-foldersdocument-libraries-or-lists?forum=sharepointsearch

SharePoint 2013 Search Spelling Suggestion

Search Query Suggestions and Search Spelling Suggestions. They are not the same!

Query Suggestions are offered while the user types in the search box.

Spelling Suggestions are offered only in the search results pages, after the user executes the search.

Search Suggestion:-

There are four sources for spelling suggestions:

1. The default static spelling dictionaries (static out of the box dictionaries).

2. The default dynamic spelling dictionary (dynamically generated from your content). This is also called a "content-aligned spelling dictionary".

3. The Query Spelling Inclusions term set (manually entered).
4. The Query Spelling Exclusions term set (manually entered).

Spelling suggestions are based on the closest matches in the default spelling dictionaries and the Query Spelling Inclusions list.

Only one suggestion will be displayed. It appears that a phonic / sound alike match is being used, so the properly spelled and misspelled words must be similar in length and pattern.

You can’t edit the default static or dynamic spelling dictionaries.

Static dictionaries

The static dictionary is a canned list of words. (Something like the Word dictionaries.)

Dynamically created dictionaries

The dynamic dictionary is created by search as content is indexed. I.e. it's based on words commonly found in your content.

For dynamic spelling correction to work, you should have at least several thousand medium-sized documents. The default settings require that a word occur in at least 1000 documents to be included in the dictionary.

The dynamic dictionary is updated once a night and can be a long running process. (The default timeout is 6 hours!)

Query Spelling Inclusions / Exclusions

1. You must have a configured Managed Metadata Service.

2. The terms must be added to the auto-created Query Spelling Inclusions term set.

3. You manually enter a list of words into an include or exclude list of terms.

4. You can only include single words, not phrases in the term sets.

It may take ten minutes or more for updates to the term sets to show up in search results. (Search Custom Dictionaries Update timer job)

Using Power shell - Change the threshold limit for spelling suggestion (default is 1000 as stated above)

There are two PowerShell cmdlets that can be used to manage the on premises.

Get-SPEnterpriseSearchQuerySpellingCorrection
Set-SPEnterpriseSearchQuerySpellingCorrection

Note: These cmdlets are currently only for on premises SharePoint. It looks like Office 365 is set to use the Dynamic dictionary.

You can see the spelling suggestion options using:

$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
Get-SPEnterpriseSearchQuerySpellingCorrection -SearchApplication $ssa

SpellingDictionary = Static / Dynamic

Many of the blogs state that you can choose either Static or Dynamic as the SpellingDictionary value, and that by selecting one of these you would exclude your manually entered Query Spelling Inclusions .

The confusion seems to be around the definitions of the words Static and Dynamic.

My testing shows that:

Dynamic = use the list of words found in your content, plus the Query Spelling Inclusions term set

Static = use the static built-in / out of the box dictionary, plus the Query Spelling Inclusions term set

As an example, I do not have "SharePoint" or "SharePint" in my Query Spelling Inclusions term set, but I do have "corydoras". When I do a search for "SharePint" I get the following only when SpellingDictionary is set to Static: (this word is in the canned dictionary)

When searching for a term in the Query Spelling Inclusions term set like "corydoras"

I get results regardless of if SpellingDictionary is set to Static or Dynamic.

Why don't I get any help when SpellingDictionary is set to Dynamic and I search for "SharePint"?

Take a look at the TermFrequencyThreshold property. Using the defaults SharePoint would need to find at least 1000 documents that contain the word "SharePoint".

My testing sample set of documents is not quite that big. If I change it from 1000 to 20 and run the "Spelling dictionary update" timer job then I can start to get useful results from "Did you mean?" for "SharePint". (i.e. "SharePoint" was in at least 20 of my sample documents.)

Ref:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/jj219497.aspx

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-in/library/jj591607.aspx

Sorting does not Work in the Search Results Web Part in SharePoint 2013

That's very strange, defining the sorting criteria in the search result web part does not seems work.

I had configured the search query in the Query Builder of the Search Web Part to retrieve the documents or Everything (which is very easy with the query builder). Underneath the sorting tab, I configured it to sort by the creation date.

Here you can see the sorting configuration:

ViewLifeTime Property :- Its give more hit item on the top, if we defined this property in descending order.

Solution Approach:-

Create one more result with replica of same (reason of replica - whatever we are going to define in that result source might not require in other place where we are going to use same result source)

Configuring the sorting in the web part settings did not work, so the next thing I tried was to create a result source with the same query. Creating a result source can be done on the Site Collection itself, so you do not need to go to Central Administration.

Step 1:

Go to Site Setting and select Manage result source under Site Collection Administration section. Click Edit.

Step 2:

Select Launch Query Builder

Step 3:

Select sorting tab under Build your query section.

Select the sorting criteria whatever you want there and save it.

After the creation of the result source and sort criteria just configured the search results query builder and specified my result source as the query that needs to be used.

This approach works perfectly, the result source does the sorting, instead of the search results web part.

Enable Sort Option in Search Result Page Share Point 2013

Adding the sort option on Search pages, It really comes like value addition to the search result. Everything or Document search have different option as OOTB where People search have different option as OOTB which will be depicts in below screen shots:-

1.Edit the Page

2. Edit the search result web part

3. In the web part tool pane, scroll down and expand the Settings section. Click the Show sort drop down check box:

4.The sort options are controlled by the JSON in the Available sort orders text box. You may modify this to add or remove sort options. Feel free to choose from any of the 600+ managed properties available out-of-the-box.

Click OK in the toolpane and check-in the changes of the page.

Perform a search. A drop-down appears above the results

Similarly we can do with People Search also:-

You can follow same above step 1 and step 2

5. Select the check box i.e. show drop down and JSON object will be different here.

6. Click OK in the toolpane and check-in the changes of the page.

Perform a search. A drop-down appears above the results

Add Focus on the Search Box SharePoint 2013 Search

As a user navigates through your SharePoint Search Center, the page does not focus on any particular control or item on the page:

To enable this feature, edit a search results page that contains a search box. From the Search Box drop-down select Edit Web Part:

In the Search Box Web Part properties tool pane, scroll down and expand the Settings section. At the bottom of the section you'll see the option:

Simply check the checkbox and click OK. Check in and publish your results page. Now when the page is rendered, the focus is on the Search Box and the cursor appears accordingly.Sometimes the smallest things are the coolest!

Remove Junk Data in SharePoint 2013 Search

How we can remove junk record from the search and how we can remove the content which never help in search results.

Search Result means - search result should give the result which actually meaningful and relevant not like links, folder etc. No one will be interested in going into folder and search the content and AllItem.aspx page of List and Library - We can easily eradicate this type of junk records.

Below defined few area - we should always remember while setting up the search results:-

Remove excess external content type links and nonsense
Remove Folders from search results
Remove overall list results (AllItems.aspx)
Remove Link List Items
Remove Link Lists
Remove Explorer Views (web folder results)

User can navigate to any verticals or search navigation page and edit the same and modify the query of search result web parts, which depicts in below images-