"When it Absolutely, Positively, has to be Found."

One of the key features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), and Microsoft Search Server 2008 (MSS) - including Express (MSSX), is Enterprise Search. What you may not realize is that SharePoint actually includes two fundamentally different mechanisms for providing search results to your users. I'm not talking about WSS versus MOSS/MSS search. Rather, I'm talking about a second, parallel, system that returns results to user queries - often on the same page as the "regular" search engine.

So, what is this "shadow" search mechanism? Keywords and Best Bets. Although you may have heard of them - possibly even used them on your sites - you probably didn't know that they were completely independent of your main Enterprise Search corpus. This independence brings with it a number of ramifications. While mostly positive, it is important to understand them in order to both avoid potential pitfalls, as well as take maximum advantage of this powerful capability.

Enterprise Search - Not Enough on its Own

Enterprise search is a great tool to help your users find the information they need; however, a search system alone cannot solve all problems related to true "Findability". Bill English's series on Findability and SharePoint details many other factors, such as corporate culture and information architecture, that play a major role. Still, the technology of search itself can be a limiting factor.

Most people are aware of how the basic search functionality works - you define a content source, and SharePoint crawls it - interpreting and indexing the contents of the files it encounters. Then, when your users enter a query into a form, the server looks in this index and returns results that match. Of course, this relies on several things being true. Among them:

• The information exists
• The information is in a content source being crawled
• The terms being queried are contained in the crawlable properties of the information
• The information has actually been crawled and compiled into the index at the time of the query (lag time)

Even where this is true, the user still may not actually "find" the information that is needed. Perhaps there are a large number of similar documents containing the chosen query term, or the desired term has special meaning in your organization, but is also used differently in other contexts. (This is also discussed in Bill's article series.)

Note that this weakness is not unique to SharePoint search. Any system you put into place - whether it is MOSS, the Big Yellow Box, or some other system - is going to be faced with the same issues. (While the others may also offer comparable capabilities, I'm focusing on the SharePoint/Search Server version here.)

All of this adds an element of risk to the search process. Like spinning the roulette wheel, you might hope you get the result you want, but there is always that element of doubt. Fortunately, in this case, you are actually "the House", and therefore have the ability to control the odds. In fact, you can stack the deck to ensure that the right information always comes out on top.

Place Your (Best) Bets!

The Keyword and Best Bets feature in SharePoint works very differently from the primary search. This is a completely manual system. You enter the terms you expect your users to use, and the results those terms should generate. No crawling, indexing or other "automated" processes need to take place. No services need to be reset. Results are available in queries immediately, and you know what the results will be, because you have defined them.

In many respects, this makes Keywords system more of a direct lookup system than a "search" system per se. But "search" is still the action your users perform, and "find the right information" is the desired result. Let's see how to make that happen.

Configuring Keywords and Best Bets

Keywords and Best Bets can be easily configured by a site collection owner. As always, you start with the Site Actions menu, and select Site Settings. Since Search is configured at the site collection level, if you are in a sub-site you will need to click through to "top level site settings" in order to get the page below.

Click the "Search Keywords" link. This will bring you to the Manage Keywords page.

The Manage Keywords page looks and operates much like a SharePoint list. You have the toolbar with its Add button, for example. Notice though, that it has a somewhat different search bar. Search can be very important here because you could end up generating a lot of keywords. The "where" dropdown gives you the ability to look up keywords various ways.

In addition, there are some predefined views listed in the Quick Launch area. These provided an appropriately reduced list based on information entered into the keyword definition. When you click Add Keyword, you are presented with this form, which is also used to edit existing keyword definitions.

Again, it looks a lot like any other list form in SharePoint.

There is only one required field - the keyword itself. Of course, a keyword alone doesn't do much to help your users. The Synonyms field allows you to register other terms your users might enter which should bring up the same results. For example, if your company president's name is "Selma Superior" you might have that as a keyword, with synonyms of CEO, Managing Director, President, or even Big Cheese. From that point on, any of these terms will return the entry associated with the keyword.

Note: Remember that the keyword/best bets system is independent of the primary search service. Synonyms you enter here will not affect regular results. To achieve a similar effect there, you need to edit the Thesaurus files on the SharePoint Servers.

Once you have used a term as a keyword or synonym, the system knows it has already been used, prevents you from using it again in another keyword definition. This can help you avoid creating ambiguous results.

The best bets are links to the actual pages or documents you want your users to find when they enter the keyword or its synonyms. When you click "Add Best Bet," you will see the form listed below.

In addition to the link itself, you can provide some descriptive text. You can have multiple best bets on a keyword. You can also associate the same best bet with multiple keywords. Using the earlier example, one of the Best Bets for the CEO might be the Executive Committee's Newsletter/Blog. That location could be equally valid for the CFO and CIO.

You can enter some descriptive text, which will be shown along with any matching results. You can also use the keyword feature for time-sensitive information by entering a start and end date for the keyword's display, and review date to ensure the content is still valid. The contact information allows you to distribute ownership of different keyword entries, as well as automatically notify people when entries are due for review.

The results from keywords and best bets are displayed on the default SharePoint results page above the results from the standard search.

The keyword search system has its own web parts for displaying results. If you are creating your own results page, you will need to add either a "Search Best Bets" or "High Confidence Results" web part to that page.

More Ways to use SharePoint Keywords and Best Bets

Earlier I pointed out that most of the fields in a keyword configuration are optional. While it is true that a keyword "by itself" isn't very useful, there are a lot of ways you can use keywords that go beyond highlighting particular pages and files in your corpus. This is one of the big benefits of the system being independent of the primary search. Here are just a few examples:

So, What's the Catch?

Of course there's a catch. Administration.

As a manual system, you need to be careful that information is not only entered correctly, but also maintained. If someone moves a document flagged in a best bet, you need to manually change the entry in the keyword system. You should be careful to include review dates and contact information on as many keywords as possible. Use the views provided for keywords that have expired or are due for review, and check them regularly.

Conclusion

The keyword and best bets system in SharePoint and Search Server gives you a powerful tool to increase the findability of information within your organization. However, it is not a panacea. Like any other aspect of SharePoint, it requires careful planning and long-term commitment to ensure that you get the most out of it. But if you double-down, do the legwork, and keep up with the maintenance, you will find you have a system that will put your users on a winning streak.