One of the best new features of SharePoint, in my opinion, is the Query Rule. If you haven’t seen one of my search sessions where I talk about Query Rules, you should come to Las Vegas for Dev Intersections. I’ll be presenting a brand new session devoted to just that, Query Rules. (Well, to be completely honest, it’s Query Rules and Display Templates…because they go together like peas and carrots, Bogart and Bergman … you get the idea.) In this post I’ll detail how you can create a Query Rule that acts on a user’s “intent”.

My new course, “SharePoint 2013 Search Back to Front” just went live yesterday. I am so excited to have completed this project with the great team at Pluralsight. Their attention to detail and rigorous review process helped me make the class even better.

The Course

This course is intended to deliver a SharePoint Search education for beginning and intermediate SharePoint Administrator. Targeted at SharePoint 2013 Farm Administrators and Site Collection Administrators, it will help users who are attempting to provision, configure, manage and customize the SharePoint 2013 Search Service Application and Search Center. Matthew provides sufficient detail for the student to follow the demonstrations to complete a Search configuration and resolve issues with tested troubleshooting techniques.

One sure sign that I have been head down, nose to the grind stone, working, is when friends ping me “Are you OK?” or “Where have you been?” I raise my head, blink my eyes and says, “Oh, sorry, yep, I have been a little busy.” This post should bring you fully up to speed on what’s been going on with me for the past couple months from a SharePoint perspective.

This is one of my favorite tips to show during my Conference Sessions. I think it makes the Search UI so much more fun and easy to use when working with people. Oh, and you don’t have to reserve your self to only Search results. This tip ought to work anywhere in SharePoint that you have an email address (actually, a properly formatted SIP address).

Presentation

The presence awareness of SharePoint depends on a couple different pieces of technology all working together, namely:

SharePoint 2013 introduces a new technique for presenting search results: Display Templates. If you have worked in previous versions of SharePoint and had to modify the look and feel of Search Results you know how cumbersome it is. In 2013 the new rendering techniques have several distinct advantages.

• Display templates are HTML and JavaScript rather than XSL
• Display templates are configured for the Site and Site Collection rather than for a Web part
• Display templates are applied with rules and logic
• Display templates are applied to individual result items, not the entire result set
• Display Templates are used for Results of all kinds, search results, content by search results, and refiners
• …and the list goes on

In this post I’ll show you the basics of creating a Display Template and then future posts will focus on the cool stuff you can do once you know these basics. I will assume that you are using a Search Site Collection. If you aren’t then you will have to tailor your changes accordingly. I also assume that you know how to deal with Crawled and Managed Properties. I have written about this for 2010 and it’s not too terribly different in 2013, in fact you can do it from the Site Collection now!

NOTE: This post is NOT for production use. I am NOT an Exchange 2013 expert. I do, however, rely on Exchange 2013 in my demonstration environment for SharePoint 2013 features like Site Mailboxes, eDiscovery and Task Management. I use self-signed certificates for this environment, which you should NOT do in production. So don’t use this post for resolving production issues. Find an Exchange expert that knows Exchange 2013 (and how it has changed from 2010) to help you for your production implementations.

Looking ahead at my calendar and I am pleased to say that I’ll be speaking at SPTechCon Boston August 11-14th. This is a great conference in a wonderful location. You know I love to eat, this is a Food City! (They pour a bit of beer and wine too, or so I have heard!) Anyway, I am excited to be part of the great cast of characters who will be presenting this year. But that’s not all! This time I’ll be presenting a half day SharePoint 2013 Search Workshop on Sunday! I am so excited to be given a half day to talk about setting up SharePoint 2013 Search. Here are my sessions.

First, what a GREAT conference. I teased my audiences about their lack of enthusiasm, but truth be told, the attendees were wonderful, worm, courteous, and very eager to learn all that we had to share. Even when a demo of mine went a bit south a gent in the audience spotted my error and resolved it on the spot. (I awarded him a drink ticket for his efforts.) The twitterverse was too kind for my sessions #SPEvo13 #DEV207, #DEV209 and #IW416.

I had a great time in San Francisco at SPTechCon. I love how different conferences attract different audiences. I hope I provided the help you were seeking with my two sessions.

Solving Enterprise Search Challenges with SharePoint 2010

The goal here was to provide an overview of SharePoint Search as a solution to business problems.

• Search configuration overview
• Presenting Global Links to File Shares
• Rendering metadata in search results
• Creating a 360 degree view of your line-of-business data
• Creating actionable search results

This class is primarily for IT Pros, but can be for developers that want to know what can be done with Search out of the box. Here is the deck.

I had a great evening in San Antonio at the SharePoint User Group (www.sasug.net) hosted at RackSpace. The turn out was good and the audience was fun and engaging. Folks even drove 2 hours from Corpus Christi to attend…that’s dedication. We even had 4 MVPs in attendance, including newly minted MVP Tom Resing. I think that is a local record for a non-SharePoint Saturday event!

I presented SharePoint Search Center Configuration where I compared the differences between working in SharePoint 2010 Search Center and SharePoint 2013. I covered the topics: