Hands-on Lab Overview

1. Introduction

HOL218: Microsoft Search Server 2008 - Installation and Administration

2. Technologies Highlighted

Microsoft® Search Server 2008

3. Audience

ITPro – 200 level

4. Scenario

Learn about the installation and administration options available in Microsoft Search Server 2008, such as the Search
Administration Bar, Content Sources, Crawl Rules, Scopes, Authoritative Pages, Keywords and Best Bets, and Reporting.

5. Purpose of Hands-on Lab

Learn about the installation and administration options available in Microsoft Search Server 2008, such as the Search
Administration Bar, Content Sources, Crawl Rules, Scopes, Authoritative Pages, Keywords and Best Bets, and Reporting.

The Microsoft Search Server 2008 installation is quite similar to the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 installation.
The main differences are a options that are not available in Central Administration and the Shared Service provider, and
that the Site Collection creation and configuration options differ.

For more information on using and configuring Microsoft Office Server 2008, see the “Getting Started with Microsoft Search
Server 2008” and “Microsoft Search Server 2008 - Creating a Federated Search Connector” labs.

6. Pre-Lab Setup

In order to save time some of the installation steps have been pre-completed for this lab. The complete installation can
take up to 2 hours. The steps taken are detailed below to give you an idea of what is required to install Microsoft Search
Server 2008.

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Reference Step 1 – Getting Started with Microsoft
Search Server 2008 Installation
Begin installing Microsoft Search Server 2008
These steps are for your reference only - Lab exercises begin on page 11.
• Login using the following credentials:
o Username: administrator
o Password: pass@word1
o Log on to: LITWAREINC
• Double-click the SearchServerExpress.exe file.
This will extract the files needed to install Search Server, and display the Start page. From here, you
will be guided through the steps needed to install Search Server Express.
• Search Server 2008 introduces the Server Preparation Tool, which allows you to install all prerequisite
components before launching the actual Search Server setup process, preventing potentially
numerous “false starts”. For your next step, click the Run the Search Server Preparation Tool link.
When the wizard appears, click Next to begin the preparation.
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• Once the Preparation Tool completes, click the Finish button and you will be returned to the Start
page. Click the Install Search Server link.
• Wait for the “Microsoft Software License Terms” screen to appear.
• Check the “I accept the terms of this agreement” checkbox, and click on the Continue button.

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• Click the Basic button to continue.

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• When the installation completes, click on the Close button to proceed to the SharePoint Products and
Technologies Configuration Wizard.

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Reference Step 2 – Using the SharePoint Products These steps are for your reference only - Lab exercises begin on page 11.
and Technologies Configuration Wizard

This exercise will take you through the initial

configuration of Microsoft Search Server 2008 farm.

Run the configuration wizard.
In Microsoft Search Server 2008, the Central
Administration site is a SharePoint site collection. This
• The Welcome screen will appear; click Next to continue.
• An information dialog box will appear explaining the services that will be affected by the configuration
wizard. Click Yes to continue.
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means that a number of tasks must occur before an
administrator can visit the Central Administration site.
The SharePoint Products and Technologies
Configuration Wizard leads you through the steps
required to initially configure your Microsoft Search
Server 2008 installation.

• The Configuring SharePoint Products and Technologies page will appear and step through 10 tasks
using the information supplied. Some steps will take several minutes each, please be patient.

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• The Configuration Successful page will appear. Click Finish to launch the Central Administration
pages.

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• The Welcome to Microsoft® Search Server 2008 page is loaded.

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End of reference steps – begin your lab on the next page.

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Hands-on Lab

Discussion Points Actions taken

Exercise 1 – Administration Experience

Administering Search Server 2008 is much easier and more intuitive • Login using the following credentials:
than any previous Microsoft search system. A new Search o Username: administrator
Administration dashboard places all relevant administrative functions, o Password: pass@word1
system status, help topics, and shortcut links at the tip of your mouse o Log on to: LITWAREINC
pointer. • Click Start ->All Programs -> Microsoft Search Server -> Search Server
2008 Administration

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A big key to ease of use is the new Administration Bar. Click on some of
the options and note that it remains visible on all pages of the Search
Server administration console. This keeps your primary options available
at all times as you manage your Search Server.

• Click across several of the Crawling, Queries and Results, or Usage Reports
options and observe that the Administration Bar remains visible. You may always
return to the dashboard by clicking the Search Administration link at the top of
the bar.
• The one exception is the link to access SharePoint’s Central Administration.
Click the Central Administration link. You will be placed on the normal
SharePoint Central Administration screen.
• Return to the Search Administration dashboard by clicking SharedServices1 on
the Quick Launch. Notice that Search Administration has been made the default

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 page in this Shared Services Provider.

In order for Search Server to crawl content or federate results from • Click the Proxy and timeouts link in the Administration Bar.
sources outside of your firewall, you may need to make it aware of your
corporate proxy server.

• Simply enter the appropriate information just as you would for Internet explorer.
Note that from this screen you can also specify timeouts, and whether to ignore
secure (HTTPS) sites which have expired or otherwise invalid SSL certificates.
• Click Cancel. A proxy is not required in this lab environment.

Content Sources, Crawl Rules and Federated Locations are three

distinct ways to define where Search Server finds information to present
to your users.
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 • Content Sources allow you to define locations for Search
Server to crawl and build into its index. All content sources are
available for consideration as part of a query’s scope and
weighted appropriately when part of a result set.
• Crawl Rules permit you to define subsets of your content
sources to explicitly include or exclude during the crawl and
indexing process.
• Federated Locations are systems which have their own URL-
based search functionality. You can instruct Search Server pass
your users’ queries to the other system, and present its results
along side of any results from Search Server’s own index and/or
other federated locations. These results are not considered as
part of Search Server’s weightings, and each Federated result
set is presented in a separate web part on the search results
page.

Content sources are created by administrators based on the company’s • Click Content sources.
needs and are used to determine what content locations are to be
crawled and subsequently indexed. The Content Sources are accessed
when a crawl is performed.

The Manage Content Sources screen lists all current content sources.
The status columns show whether the content source is currently being
used to perform a crawl, how long that crawl has been running, and how
long the previous crawl took. The next full crawl and next incremental
crawl columns provide a quick view of the schedules for your content
sources.

New content sources can be added by using the Add Content Source • Click the New Content Source button.
page. On this page, the administrator can enter a name for the new • Type “contosofinancial.com” in the Name box
content source. There are a number of choices for the type of content
source. It can be other SharePoint sites, Web sites, file shares, or
Exchange public folders. After the content source type is chosen, the
administrator can specify the URL of where the content is located and
optionally set the crawl schedule. Selecting the Start full crawl of this
content source check box at the bottom of the page and clicking OK
starts a full crawl of the new content source.

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• Click Web Sites
• Type “http://www.contosofinancial.com” in the Start Addresses box.
• Check the Start Full Crawl of this content source checkbox

• Click OK
• Repeat the steps to create another content source, substituting “Contoso Files”
for the name, File Shares for the type, and \\localhost\Contosofiles for the start
address.

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• Click OK.

• Wait for the crawl to complete. You can check on the status of the crawl by

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Crawl rules, which apply to all content sources, are created to improve
the efficiency of the crawling and indexing process by ensuring that only
valid content is considered. The SharePoint Central Administration UI
allows administrators to specify what files/folders should be
included/excluded when a crawl is performed. This can also improve
performance and search result relevancy.
clicking on the Refresh button.
• Click Search Administration to return to the dashboard. Note that the status
has updated to show your new content sources and the documents contained
therein.
• Click Crawl rules.
• Click New Crawl Rule.
• Click Include all items in this path. Observe that in an “Include” crawl rule, you
can specify authentication other than the default content access account
credentials. If you select a non-default authentication choice, you will be
presented with options appropriate to that selection.
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The first screen lists any existing crawl rules that are available for
editing. An administrator can add a new crawl rule as well. In this form,
the administrator specifies the path that will be included or excluded
from the crawl.

• Click Cancel. We won’t actually create a rule at this time.

• Click Search Administration.

The Search Administration dashboard provides easy access to the crawl • Click Crawl log. Notice that the values for the status are clickable, allowing you
logs. Here you can analyze what was crawled successfully and to drill down to see the status of the individual items.
unsuccessfully for each content source.

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Search Server 2008 is capable of crawling and indexing sites external to • Click Federated Locations.
your network; however, many sites already contain an effective search
function. Often you will be able to configure Search Server to simply
pass users’ query parameters to that remote engine, and present the
results alongside those directly indexed. This is called “Federated”
search.

See “Microsoft Search Server 2008 - Creating a Federated Search

Connector” for more information on creating and using Federated
Search Connectors.

• Notice the out of the box entries for Local Search Results and Live.com, as well
as a “Live.com (Simulated)” offline source created for this lab.
• Click the New Location button.

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• Notice that there are many options to configure. This is because of the many
possible ways other systems define their queries and return their search results.
However, we have made it easy to add “known” Federated Locations without
needing to enter all of this information.
• Click Cancel.
• Notice on the management page that we provide a link to an Online Gallery of
federation definitions. You can download many popular search Federation
Location Definitions, and easily add them to your Search Server. NOTE: The
target pages for this link is only available when online, and will error otherwise.

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By default, queries in Search Server are processed against the entire • Click Search Administration.
index. Search Scopes allow administrators to create rules to designate • Under Shortcuts, click Scopes for this Search Center. Notice that this link
subsets of the index to be used for certain queries. For example, you takes you to out of Search Administration and to your Search Center’s Site
might wish to limit a query to a particular content source, or even a folder Settings.
within a content source. By judiciously defining scopes and scope rules
you can increase query efficiency and result relevance. Scopes may be
created at the site collection or SSP level, though most are specific to a
given Search Center site collection.

• Click New Scope.

• Enter AdventureWorks in the title field, and select both the Search Dropdown
and Advanced Search checkboxes.

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• Click the OK button.
• Click the Add rules link in one of the new AdventureWorks entries in the scopes
list.
• Select Content Source. Notice that the options change to a dropdown list of
available content sources.

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 • Select the AdventureWorks Documents content source from the dropdown.
• Select the Require option button.
• Click the OK button.
• From the Browser History drop-down, return to the Search Administration
page.

Search Server provides a mechanism for you to easily boost or reduce • Click Authoritative pages. Note the three levels of positive, and one level of
the relevancy of certain content – Authoritative Pages. By specifying negative, authority available.
authoritative pages, you can tell Search Server to assume that these • Click Cancel.
pages (and pages linked more directly from them) are more likely than
others in your document corpus to be valid and relevant to your users.

In the Specify Authoritative Pages page, there are four levels of

granularity for authoritative sites. The first three levels are Most
Authoritative pages, then Second-level Authoritative, and Third-level
Authoritative pages. Finally, the administrator can also specify which
sites should be demoted by adding these sites to the Non-Authoritative
section of the page.

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Sometimes you may wish certain results to always be emphasized when
particular query terms are entered. Search Server 2008 supports
associating Best Bets pages and other information with Keywords.
When matches are found to these conditions, they are called out in a
separate area of your results page.
• On the Search Administration home page, under Shortcuts, click Keywords
for this Search Center. Again notice that these are defined per Search Center
in Site Settings, not for the entire server.
• Click Add Keyword.

An additional benefit of Keywords and Best Bets is that they do not need
to refer to pages contained within your index. This allows you to specify
results outside of your network, or simply provide critical information on
the spot.

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Exercise 2 – Reporting on Search Usage
Search Server provides key reports to help you understand what your
users are looking for, what they are finding, and (perhaps more
important) what they are not finding.
Query reports provide an easy way for administrators and managers to
see what is being searched upon and how results are being returned.
These reports show how accurate the results have been and provide
clues about how the administrator can improve these results.
Each view can be exported directly to Microsoft Excel or as a PDF file.
• Note the options available. Click Cancel.
• From the Browser History drop-down, return to the Search Administration
page.
• Click Queries report. The first two query views show the number of queries
over a certain amount of time, either 30 days or 12 months. By default, the data
is displayed as a bar chart, but it can also be viewed as a list.
• The Search Queries Report page appears.
• The first two query views show the number of queries over a certain amount of
time, either 30 days or 12 months. By default, the data is displayed as a bar
chart, but it can also be viewed as a list. Notice the Queries Over Previous 30
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Note: Since this is a new server and no searches have been performed, Days and Queries Over Previous 12 Months charts.
some of these reports may be blank or the screenshot examples may • Click the forward arrow above the Queries Over Previous 12 Months chart.
differ slightly.

• Scroll down to the next two charts in the browser window.

• The third view shows the origin of queries across the server farm for the last 30
days as a pie chart. In a multi-server enterprise environment, this view would
show the breakdown of searches with results for each site collection. This
provides a quick measurement of usage.

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• The fourth view shows the queries per scope over the last 30 days. This view is
also displayed as a pie chart. Scope usage can help determine the relevancy of
scopes that have been created.

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• Scroll down until the last table is displayed in the browser window. The last view
displayed in the queries report is the Top Queries over the Previous 30 Days
table. This table lists the query string, scope, and number of occurrences of the
most frequently used search terms.

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The Search Results report provides administrators with five different
views that represent the successes and failures of user search queries.
All data is displayed from the last 30 days, but as with query reports, all
the data can be exported to Excel or a PDF file for archiving or further
analysis.
• Click Results report.
• Note: Since this is a new server and no searches have been performed, some of
these reports may be blank or the screenshot examples may differ slightly.
• View Queries With Zero Results.

The first view lists the most-visited pages that are returned from a
search query and the number of times each was visited.

The second view shows queries that did not return any search results,
and also identifies the scope from which they were performed and the
number of times the query occurred. This view can be helpful in
determining the success of custom search keywords. When a particular
search query has a high occurrence rate, administrators can add the full
query and the individual words in the query as keywords that bind to a
specific document, share, or site collection.

By identifying high-occurrence spelling errors, administrators can create

custom corrections to commonly misspelled words that the default
search system might not capture. • View Queries With Zero Best Bets.

The third and fourth views provide query analysis on Best Bets. Best
Bets are administrator-configured results that are connected to particular
keywords or keyword phrases. These views provide analysis of the
success of the Best Bets assigned to user searches.

The fifth view shows the click-through rates of queries and sorts them
according to scope, occurrence, and percentage. When cross-compared

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with the top queries listing (which is viewed in the query report), an
administrator can quickly identify whether or not high-volume queries are
properly connected to the right documents or sources.

Earlier you learned that the Scopes and Keyword/Best Bet settings were • Click Search Administration.
housed in the Search Center’s Site Settings. By default, Search Server • Click Search Center Site in the Shortcuts section at the upper-right corner of the
2008 Express installs a “Search Center“ (a site configured to enter dashboard.
queries and display results). The Site Collection Administration section
contains many links that allow the administrator to manage the current
Search Center.

• From the Search Center, click Site Actions | Site Settings.

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 • Under Site Collection Administration column, notice several search-related
options:
o Search settings – Allows you to designate a specific results page
o Search scopes – As described above
o Search keywords – Keywords and Best Bets as described above
o Search queries – The Search Queries report described above, scoped to
the current site collection rather than the entire Search Server
o Search results – The Search Results report described above, scoped to
the current site collection rather than the entire Search Server

Conclusion

I. Conclusion

In this lab, you learned about the installation and administration options available in Microsoft Search Server 2008, such as the Search
Administration Bar, Content Sources, Crawl Rules, Scopes, Authoritative Pages, Keywords and Best Bets, and Reporting.

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