I am thrilled to have been selected by the SharePoint Evolution Roadshow to be a presenter. Steve Smith and the Combined Knowledge team never fail to put on one of the best SharePoint Conferences year after year. I have committed to the ENTIRE event, that’s 12 cities over two and a half weeks! The speaker lineup is awesome, I am proud to be counted in this fine group. Since we know some folks will be attending in more than one city I am planning on presenting 4 different sessions based on the location of the event. Here are the sessions I am preparing and freshening up.

Technical Sessions

Developers Approach to Search Applications

I love this session and keep updating it as the services and support improve. This is a developer focused session with some ideas for everyone on how to handle search applications in SharePoint 2013.

This session looks at what developers can do with the SharePoint 2013 Search API to create custom search applications. Whether your goal is to enhance the SharePoint Search center or create custom search applications that take advantage of SharePoint’s powerful search engine, this session offers tools and techniques to help you build the solution and get the most from SharePoint Search. This session will discuss:

• Out of the box search enhancements
• New 2013 Search API
• Adding query time logic
• Results presentation
• REST interface to Search

SharePoint Search Back to Front

Are you new to SharePoint Search, are you still getting up to speed on what’s possible? This is the session for you.

SharePoint 2013 introduces many exciting enhancements to the end user search experience. In this session you will learn what the major changes are and how to apply them to your enterprise. We will introduce new concepts like continuous crawling, query rules, result types and display templates. Through many demonstrations, this presentation will show how to improve the search experience for your end users with SharePoint 2013.

Objectives:

• Learn about the changes in how the search engine is configured
• Learn new features available to Site Collections
• Learn how to use Query Rules to promote special classes of content
• Understand how Result Types and Display Templates work for presenting Search results

End User Sessions

SharePoint 2013 Display Templates and Query Rules

I had a great time presenting a version of this session at the SharePoint Conference 2014. This version will be updated to focus on the end user changes that can be made to make your search results amazing.

SharePoint 2013 introduces new techniques for presenting search results. This sessions teaches you two of the primary techniques that you can use with SharePoint 2013 to present search results in new powerful ways using Display Templates and Query Rules. In this session you will learn how to:

Objectives

• Improve the presentation of search results
• Manage the look of the Content by Search web part
• Implement Query Rules to present meaningful results
• Deploy your changes from site to site

Creating an Actionable SharePoint Search Center

This is a brand new session for me. Everything in this session is going to be performed in the site collection, my goal is to show how much you can accomplish while staying in the site collection. That means it applies to Office 365 as well as SharePoint on-premises.

Office 365 and SharePoint 2013 have added new features of Search at the Site Collection level, this is good news for SharePoint power users. You now have much more control over Search Settings as a Site Collection Administrator. In this session you will learn what the major changes are and how to apply them to your SharePoint Sites. Through many demonstrations, this presentation will show how to improve the search experience for your end users by building new Search Center pages.

Objectives:

• Learn how to administer Search at the Site Collection level
• Learn new techniques for creating Managed Properties and Refiners
• Learn how to add new Search Vertical to the Search Center
• Learn how to change the look of search results with Display Templates
• Learn how to promote special classes of content

Join Us!

Come for a day (or more) this is going to be an amazing time. The cost is only £99 per day! I know our host, Steve Smith, Zoe Watson and company, will make it a memorable time. Keep an eye on @EvoConf for fun and games associated with the conference and surrounding events.