SharePoint 2010 : Deploying the Search Center - Basic vs. Enterprise Search Centers

1. Understanding the Search Center

Strictly speaking, the search center is not a required element for search to function in SharePoint 2010. Individual search Web Parts can be added to any page on a site and perform a variety of search tasks. Also, SharePoint comes with a default results page that will display results from the queries to the standard search box on all pages. However, a good starting point for setting up and testing search is to use the search site templates provided and create a search center to which queries will be redirected.

Before that can be done, though, one must follow a short set of steps. Once SharePoint has been installed, some content added, and the first initial crawl run, the administrator can go to the default site collection and search. The search can be performed by the search box that appears on the top right of every page in the default SharePoint site collection and will appear on new site collections as they are created (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The search box

If a search is performed from this search box, the search query will be passed to a search results page and search results will be displayed. However, this search results page, called OSSSearchResults.aspx, is the default search page and will display the results for the given site collection. However, most site administrators will want to create a custom search and results page that users can access both via the search box and via a search page. Although the individual Web Parts can be added to pages to create a totally custom search and results page anywhere within a site collection, this custom search and results page is usually deployed as a site under the site collection using either the Basic or Enterprise Search site templates.

There are several advantages to this. By creating a search center with a search site template, the SharePoint administrator can do the following:

• Give users a site to navigate to for search instead of using the search box to get to the results page
• Customize the search experience with advanced search capabilities
• Access search preferences
• Utilize tabs to create a custom search scoping experience
• Share a search center across sites or collections
• Separate search by collection

2. Basic vs. Enterprise Search Centers

There are two site templates for search delivered with SharePoint 2010: the Basic Search Center and the Enterprise Search Center. The Basic and Enterprise Search Centers vary in several ways and both are included in the standard license for SharePoint. If the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature on the site collection has not been activated, then the Basic Search Center is the only functional option. The Enterprise Search Center template will appear but will cause an error if chosen (see more in the section on deploying the Enterprise Search Center).

Note The Enterprise Search Center is the SharePoint 2010 replacement of the “MOSS 2007 Search Center with Tabs” publishing site template. The Basic Search Center is the SharePoint 2010 equivalent of the “MOSS 2007 Search Center Lite.”

The Enterprise Search Center

The Enterprise Search Center provides a tab-based interface in which users can jump between several search pages. An example of this can be seen in Figure 2. The two tabs, All Sites and People, are provided by default, but additional tabs can be added. These tabs can be fully customized to cater to the needs of a particular organization. By selecting the different tabs above the query field, users can direct their searches to different scopes.

Figure 2. The Enterprise Search Center

The most immediately apparent benefit of the Enterprise Search Center is the availability of the People Search tab. The Basic Search Center does not include a People Search tab, so if this is required, enabling the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature and deploying the Enterprise Search Center are recommended.The tabs provided in the Enterprise Search Center allow users to quickly execute searches against different scopes. Administrators can add one or more additional customized search centers when using the Enterprise template through these tabs. Customized search centers may add simple contrasts, such as directing searches to documents or people, but may be more advanced, such as searching against different physical locations or departments. This provides a range of flexibility for organizations with a central enterprise portal that needs to provide a search experience to a range of independent departments or user groups with distinctly different needs. For example, while the sales department needs to search against customer profiles and marketing documents, the accounting department needs to find information pertaining to contract dates, expense reports, and purchase history. The experience each department hopes to get from search is different. Creating separate search centers that display results based on different properties, provide different refinement panel categories, or even present results in a different format may provide a better experience for each of these groups.

Administrators can control access for each Enterprise Search Center tab. In the foregoing case, they may choose to allow only the sales and accounting departments access to the respective search tabs, while allowing the human resources department access to both. Properly established, security trimming in SharePoint ensures that employees can access only the sites that they are allowed to view.

Deploying the Enterprise Search Center

If People search is required or desired, it is wise to deploy the Enterprise Search Center, which has a template with all the elements of People search already set. Although the Enterprise Search Center template is visible on standard SharePoint deployments, it requires the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature.

To deploy the Enterprise Search Center, follow these steps and refer to Figure 3.

1. Navigate to the top level of your site collection where you want the search center.
2. Log in as a site collection administrator.
3. Choose Site Actions, Create Site.
4. Name the search center in the Title field.
5. Give a path for the search center under Web Site Address.
6. Choose the Enterprise tab under the Template section.
7. Choose the Enterprise Search Center template.

Figure 3. Deploying an Enterprise Search Center

Note If you get an error creating the site, it is likely the Publishing feature activation failed (Figure 4). If you copy the correlation ID from the error page and look in the most recent ULS log at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\LOGS, you will find an error similar to this:

Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: The SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure
feature must be activated at the site collection level before the Publishing feature can be
activated.

This indicates the Publishing feature needs to be activated at the site collection level before the Enterprise Search Center can be used. Activate it, and try to deploy the search center again.

Figure 4. The SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature

The Basic Search Center

Unlike the Enterprise Search Center, the Basic Search Center provides users only with the ability to execute basic and advanced searches against one universal access search experience. The lack of built-in tabs that allow for different search experiences can be seen in Figure 5. While the Basic Search Center can be customized to provide a specialized experience for users, every user on the search center will return results from the same content sources in an identical layout. In addition, as noted earlier, the Basic Search Center does not provide a pre-deployed tab for People search. The main benefit of this search center is simplicity, as it allows for quick deployment of search functionality on any SharePoint site collection.

Figure 5. The Basic Search Center

Deploying the Basic Search Center

The Basic Search Center gives search and result functionality with advanced search and preferences but without a built-in, pre-defined People Search tab. See Figure 2.

To deploy the Basic Search Center, follow these steps and refer to Figure 6.

1. Navigate to the top level of your site collection where you want the search center.
2. Log in as a site collection administrator.
3. Choose Site Actions, Create Site.
4. Name the search center in the Title field.
5. Give a path for the search center under Web Site Address.
6. Choose the Enterprise tab under the Template section.
7. Choose the Basic Search Center template.

 Note It is best to name your search center “Search”. Although many administrators come up with clever names for search for their organization or portal, it is really best to keep it simple. The path can also be /search/ unless there is a good reason to name it otherwise.

Figure 6. Creating a new Basic Search Center