Joel Oleson, director of enterprise search strategy at BA Insight, gave a presentation on search tips and tricks for power users of SharePoint. He discussed best practices for using keywords, phrases, Boolean operators, inclusion/exclusion operators and proximity searches. He also provided tips for building complex queries using parentheses and the keyword query language. The presentation included quizzes and highlighted the importance of metadata, managed properties, and precise queries for achieving the best search results.

1. Power User SharePoint
Search Tips and Tricks
Joel Oleson
Director of Enterprise Search Strategy
BA Insight
@joeloleson

2. Microsoft’s go-to ISV for
Enterprise Search
Focused on Search and
SharePoint since 2004
Search Industry Leader
About Joel Oleson
• Director of Search
Strategy, BA Insight
• First SharePoint
admin
• Top social media
influencer
Who Am I?
Passionate About
• Search
• SharePoint
• Search-based
applications
• Community
• Travel
Connect
@joeloleson
CollabShow.com
TravelingEpic.com

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Agenda
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71% percent of Company executives say Search is VITAL
or Essential to their day to day business…
Why do only 18% have cross repository search
capabilities?
- AIIM 2014 Findability Survey

8. Search Tips
Word, Words vs. Phrase
Boolean
Inclusion and Exclusion
Proximity

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Search User Tips

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Boolean

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Inclusion and Exclusion Operators
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Proximity
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Parenthesis: Building Complex Queries
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KQL – Keyword Query Language
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KQL – Keyword Query Language
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Quiz… What is the difference
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17. Quiz
Which ones are the same?
A. Dogs or Cats
B. dogs or cats
C. dogs OR cats
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Dashes, Underscores or Spaces…
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Meaningful Titles, Folders, Sites & File Names
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20. Wild Card Search *
The * Star or Astrisk can be used to expand
your search or for unknown spelling
• "micro*" finds documents that contain "Microsoft" or
"microchip"
• Use on last term. Don’t use * at the beginning of a
search query *soft will NOT return Microsoft. KQL
queries don’t support suffix matching.
• Combine with phrasing for powerful search
• Ex. “john de*” is better than John De*
Stemming & Wildcard is on by default in
2013, but not turned on in 2010.
Default Search sorted by Relevancy

21. If the product can’t be found,
does the product exist? If the
feature can’t be found, does the
feature exist?
34 percent of the sites don’t
return useful results when users
search for a model number or
misspell just a single character in
the product title.”
- 2014 study by Baynard Institute
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Quiz…
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Search Tips Cont.

24. Is Metadata more powerful than
content?
Stewart Baker, former general
counsel of the NSA, said last
year: "Metadata absolutely tells
you everything about somebody's
life. If you have enough
metadata, you don't really need
content."
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25. Property Operators
• = (equal) Returns search results where the property value is equal to
the value specified in the property restriction.
• : (colon) matches individual terms in the property value that is stored
in the full-text index
• < less than >greater than when used with date based operators
• .. Elipse example A..B where they fall between values
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26. Query Custom
Managed Properties
• Property can be retrieved using KQL when
the Managed Property Keyword
Retrievable property is set to true for a
managed property.
• Configure your Managed Property to include
content from crawled properties.
• company:"Adventure Works"
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27. Quiz
What is the difference between these searches?
• title:sharepoint search strategy
• title=sharepoint search strategy
• title=“sharepoint search strategy”
• title:“sharepoint search strategy”
• Title:”SharePoint Search*”
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Tips and Gotchas
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29. XRANK
• Advanced parameters typically they're not
used.
• The cb parameter refers to constant boost
• The stdb parameter refers to standard deviation boost
• The rb parameter refers to range boost. This factor is multiplied with the
range of rank values in the results set
• The pb parameter refers to percentage boost. This factor is multiplied with
the item's own rank compared to the minimum value in the corpus.
• All items containing the term "animals", and
boosts dynamic rank for cats over dogs
• (animals XRANK(cb=100) dogs)
XRANK(cb=200) cats
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30. “sales forecast” OR (“sales“ NEAR “forecast”) AND (author:”William
Zuckermann") AND (format:”XLS”) OR (format:”XLSX”)
Give me a search box
and I will formulate my own query to find it
Users with a combination of high technical / high domain expertise
will achieve the best search results.
search
Searches Need to be Precise for Best Results

31. The New Role of Taxonomy – Noise Reduction
Eliminate Noise from Queries

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Key Takeaways
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33. Search Tips References
• SharePoint Search Help
http://office.microsoft.com/client/15/help/home?Shownav=true&lcid=1033&ns=SPOSTANDA
RD&helpID=SearchTips&ver=16
• Keyword Query Language (KQL) Syntax Reference
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee558911(v=office.15).aspx
• Property Restriction Keyword Queries
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff394509(v=office.14).aspx
• Building Search Queries in SharePoint 2013
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj163973(v=office.15).aspx
• Plan End User Search Experience
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263089.aspx
• Tips for Effective Queries
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/tips-for-effective-searches-
HA010241114.aspx#BMha10241114_sectipsonpropertiesinsearc
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34. Questions!
Joel.Oleson@bainsight.com

35. Nos partenaires
Platine
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Affichage

36. Thank you for your attention!
This presentation will be available on the
Casablanca SharePoint Days web site after the
event.
Merci de votre attention !
Cette présentation sera disponible sur le site internet
de SharePoint Days Casablanca, après l’événement.

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