November 19, 2010 |
Q: Users are constantly complaining about MOSS People Search. Any suggestions?
MOSS People Search, does indeed have limitations that can hurt user adoption:
No wildcard or Faceted Navigation support – This is by far the largest complaint that I’ve heard from people deploying People Search. Spelling someone’s name can be difficult. Sometimes you only know the persons first name. Adding a wildcard to the query will bring back close matches. After using wild card to query for a user, faceted navigation presents the user with metadata describing all of the users that came back in the result. The user can then refine their search by drilling into the metadata. As an example you know you are searching for John in the Seattle office. After running the query John* you would see Seattle listed as a facet.
No Connectors – SharePoint People Search requires that user profiles be stored in MySites. Very often, organizations have their employee information in an HR System, custom applications etc. SharePoint does not ship with connectors that would enable SharePoint to index the profiles in these systems.
So what are your options?
1. Use internal resources to develop Wildcard and Faceted Functionality – This option is typically attractive if a company has internal resources. This is one instance where this is not a viable solution however. The web parts available on the MOSS Search Result Page, are sealed. They can’t be programmatically extended. To provide wildcard card and faceted search capability would require re-writing the entire search results page.
2. Extend People Search with Open Source Software – An open source community exists that create software for Microsoft based technology. Two years ago, two separate group set out to develop wildcard support and faceted search for MOSS 2007. Initially the biggest problem was that the webparts, developed by different teams were not compatible (for the reason mention in above). The faceted search webpart was a project that was sponsored by a Microsoft employee that worked for MCS. With the release of SharePoint 2010, the support of these two initiatives has stalled.
3. Extend People Search with 3rd Party software – Microsoft has a large ISV partner eco-system that provides add-ons to their products. One extension called Longitude provides wildcard, faceted search, and a very useful feature called Parametric Navigation that enables users to search by skillset. This five minute video provides a quick summary.
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WRITTEN BY MARTIN MULDOON
 Martin Muldoon, Director of Product Marketing
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