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:-

1. Remove excess external content type links and nonsense
2. Remove Folders from search results
3. Remove overall list results (AllItems.aspx)
4. Remove Link List Items
5. Remove Link Lists
6. 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-

Remove the External Content Type:-

Remove the Folder from search:-

Remove overall List Results (AllItem.aspx)

Remove the Link List Items

Remove the Link Lists

Remove Explorer Views:

Final Query will be :-

At the end , we will more filter records which user want to see instead of junk data.

Download Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Management Studio

https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/pd/SQLEXPNOCTAV2/enus/default.aspx

Ref: https://thelonelydba.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/sql-server-2012-management-studio-download/

What is Federated Search SharePoint2013?

Usually we used the word Federated search – When we are going the content outside the SharePoint Environment and which is not crawl in our SharePoint Farm.

 For example, federation can provide search results from a web-search provider such as Bing, or perhaps from a private data set that you do not have access to crawl.

Another meaning of Federation:-

Federation can also be a good solution for a geographically distributed organization that wants to provide search access to content at its various locations when each location has its own search index. Because each location provides search results from its own index, it is not necessary to deploy a centralized search service that builds and accesses a single, unified index.

 In this context, federation can provide advantages such as the following:

• Low bandwidth requirements ─ An organization that is geographically dispersed might not have the high network bandwidth that is required to crawl and index large amounts of remote content. When an organization uses federation, the main data that is transmitted for search across the wide-area network is only a set of search results from each federated content repository.
• Freshness of search results ─ Each division within an organization can crawl the local content more quickly than a centralized search deployment would be able to crawl all of the content in the entire organization.
• Divisional search variability ─ When an organization uses federation, each division within the organization can provide and control its own search environment. Each division can tailor search to its own requirements and preferences, with its own user experience and its own search connectors, for example. A centralized search portal would not allow for such differences.
• Limited size of search indexes ─ A large, geographically distributed organization might have millions of documents. It might not be practical for the organization to have a single, unified search index because of the infrastructure that would be required to support such a large index. Federation enables users in each division to perform a single search to find relevant content that is distributed across multiple smaller search indexes in the organization.

Comparing Federated Search to Content Crawling in Enterprise Search

To help you decide whether to crawl a repository's content directly or by using federated search, you should consider the differences between the two approaches. You must determine which is most appropriate based on the content repository, and your requirements for the search results you want to return. There are advantages to both approaches.

Advantages of crawling content with SharePoint Enterprise Search

By querying the Search service application's content index for search results, you can do the following:

·         Sort results by relevance.

·         Control how frequently the content index is updated.

·         Specify what metadata is crawled.

·         Perform a single backup operation for crawled content.

Advantages of federating content with SharePoint Enterprise Search

By using federated search to return search results:

·         You require no additional capacity requirements for the content index, as content is not crawled by SharePoint Enterprise Search.

·         You can take advantage of a repository’s existing search engine. For example, you can federate to an Internet search engine to search the Web.

·         You can optimize the content repository's search engine for the repository's specific set of content, which might provide better search performance on the content set.

·         You can access repositories that are secured against crawls, but which can be accessed by search queries.

You select this protocol	To get federated search results from this kind of provider
Remote SharePoint	The index of a search service in another SharePoint farm
OpenSearch 1.0/1.1	An external search engine or feed that uses the OpenSearch protocol, such as Bing
Exchange	Exchange Server 2013

Ref:- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/cc806030(v=office.14).aspx

Code Sample to Federated Search SQL Server Connector

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/cc805905(v=office.14).aspx

Added Federated Search (i.e. Bing Search in to SharePoint Search)

http://3sharp.com/blog/build-a-federated-result-source-for-sharepoint-2013-search-part-2/

Create Content DB at Site Collection Level using Power shell

Create Content DB at Site Collection Level using Power shell

A content database is a database file that stores content for one or more site collections for SharePoint web application. The content can be pages,files,documents,images and much more. So if the Site Collection has more number of SharePoint sites, the content database size grows rapidly.

One SharePoint web application can have more than one content database mapped to it and the max limit is 300 Content DB's per Web Application. If you want to add more content databases to web application, Go to Central Admin -> Application Management -> Manage Content Databases -> select web application -> Add a content database.

Maximum Content database size is 200 GB in general usage scenarios.

Create Content Data Base at Site Collection Level using Power Shell Script

#this line is to reference Microsoft SharePoint PowerShell namespace

#to be able to use SharePoint commands

Add-PSSnapIn Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue;

#Create command required variables

$siteName = "ABC";

$webAppUrl = "http://server:1002";

#You can select any site collection template code by typing Get-SPWebTemplate

$template = "BLANKINTERNET#0";

 $ownerAlias = "domain\username";

$secondaryOwnerAlias = "domain\username";

#this variable is considering that you have a wildcard manged path "departments"

$siteUrl = $webAppUrl + "/sites/"+ $siteName;

$databaseName = $siteName;

$databaseServer = "dbservername";

#Create new content database for DMS department site collection

New-SPContentDatabase -Name $databaseName -DatabaseServer $databaseServer -WebApplication $webAppUrl;

#Create new site collection for DMS department

New-SPSite -Url $siteUrl -OwnerAlias $ownerAlias -SecondaryOwnerAlias $secondaryOwnerAlias -ContentDatabase $databaseName -Template $template -Name $siteName;

#New-SPSite doesn't create default SharePoint security groups

#Create DMS site collection default groups

$web = Get-SPWeb $siteUrl;

# this symbol i:0#.w is presenting windows authentication security mechanism

$web.CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups("i:0#.w|$ownerAlias","i:0#.w|$secondaryOwnerAlias",$siteName);

$web.Update();

Manually also we can achieve.

http://www.sharepoint-journey.com/create-sitecollection-specific-content-database.html

What is crawl and  how its work in SharePoint 2013 – On Premises Environment

In broad terms, SharePoint Search is comprised of three main functional process components:

1.      Crawling (Gathering): Collecting content to be processed
2.            Indexing: Organizing the processed content into a structured/searchable index
3.      Query Processing: Retrieving a relevant result set relative to a given user query

Type of Crawl in SharePoint 2013

1.    Full Crawl
2.    Incremental Crawl
3.    Continuous Crawl

	Advantages	Disadvantages
Continuous Crawl	Work in Parallel mode and maintain the index as current as possible. Its Only Work for SharePoint Objects	It doesn’t work with Non-SharePoint object
Incremental / Full  Crawl	It work for both SharePoint and Non-SharePoint Object	Its work in Sequential mode. Unless until first cycle doesn’t complete second can’t start and it wait till first end.

   

Full Crawl:  

Full crawl: - crawls entire content under a content source – IT can be SharePoint Object and Non-SharePoint Object also.

Incremental Crawl:

Incremental crawl: - crawls the content which has been added/modified after last successful crawl.

Comparison between Full and Incremental Crawl

1. As compared with incremental crawls, full crawls chew up more memory and CPU cycles on the    index.
2. Full crawls consume more memory and CPU cycles on the Web Front End servers when crawling  content in your farm.
3. Full crawls use more network bandwidth than incremental crawls.

There are some scenarios where incremental crawl doesn’t work and you need to run full crawl.

Why do we need Full Crawl?

1. Software updates or service packs installation on servers in the farm.
2. When an SSP administrator added new managed property.
3. Crawl rules have been added, deleted, or modified.
4. Full crawl is required to repair corrupted index. In this case, system may attempt a full crawl     (depending on severity of corruption)
5. A full crawl of the site has never been done.
6. To detect security changes those were made on file shares after the last full crawl of the file share.
7. In case, incremental crawl is failing consecutively. In rare cases, if an incremental crawl fails one hundred consecutive times at any level in a repository, the index server removes the affected content from the index.
8. To reindex ASPX pages on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007     sites. The crawler cannot discover when ASPX pages on Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or  MOSS sites have changed. Because of this, incremental crawls do not reindex views or home pages when individual list items are deleted.

Full Crawl	Incremental Crawl	Continuous Crawl
Crawl full items Can be scheduled Can be stop and paused When required Change content access account Added new manage properties Content enrichment web service codes change/modified. Add new I Filter	Crawl last modified content            Can be scheduled            Can be stop and paused            When required            Crawl last modified content	Index as current as possible.            Cannot be scheduled            Cannot be stop and paused (Once started, a "Continuous Crawl" can’t be paused or stopped, you can just disable it.)            When required            Content frequently changed (Multiple instance can be run in parallel).            Only for SharePoint Content Source            E-commerce site in crass site publishing mode.

Note: You should not pause content source crawls very often or pause multiple content source crawls as every paused crawl consumes memory on index server.

Incremental Crawl Cycle

Continuous Crawl Cycle

Ref:- http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/archive/2012/09/14/how-can-i-achieve-the-best-freshness-of-search-results-introducing-continuous-crawls-for-sharepoint.aspx

Filter based on Managed Metadata using Left Navigation of List or Libraries

Senario:- User have List or Library which is having 100’s record and user used taxonomy for tagging purpose against each record. Now s(he) need to filter the record based on tags in the same List or Library and Unique tags is also more than 20+ It may increase in future to any extent.

Best Posiible solution, I feel:-

Step by Step creation of structure and Configuration with Example:-

Step1:-

user create one term set in the Managed Metadata:-

Step2:-

User create one List and apply the metadata against each records:-

Step3:-

Go to the List Setting -> Metadata Navigation Settings ->Configure Key Filters

Click Ok and Return to your List or Library

Step4:-

Now you will Metadata Field in Left Navigation which will filter the record based on applied tags.

Happy Codding!!