Administrator Guide

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Accessing SharePoint Items and the SharePoint Console

SharePoint items crawled into the portal can be accessed using standard portal methods, such as browsing the knowledge directory or using search. If a user runs a general search in the portal, they will see SharePoint items along with results from other sources.

The SharePoint Console is provided to allow users to run simple searches that return only SharePoint items.

 


SharePoint Console

The SharePoint Console is a community that contains portlets to search and access SharePoint items. It is meant as a starting point to access SharePoint resources; however, the SharePoint Console portlets are not bound to the console community. The portlets can be used in any community or user My Page.

The SharePoint Console community can be customized like any other portal community.

 


SharePoint Search Portlet

The SharePoint Search portlet allows users to enter a search term and returns the results in the portlet body itself.

Opening SharePoint Items Through the Portlet

When users click on the name of a SharePoint item in the portlet, the SharePoint item is opened using the WSS Document URL property. How the SharePoint item is finally displayed is controlled by MOSS or WSS and not the portal. Security is also handled by the interaction of the browser and MOSS or WSS and is not controlled by the portal or portlet.

Note: This portlet does not follow the Document Display Options setting in My Account -> Display Options. This is to mimic the behavior of WSS and MOSS more closely.

SharePoint Search Portlet and Overriding Click-through Options

If the SharePoint Search portlet is accessed through a community, the portlet can be configured to override the clickthrough behavior specified in the SharePoint content source and set by the crawler. This can be set in the portlet's community preferences.

Since this a community preference, the setting can be different for each community where this portlet is used. This setting only applies when the portlet is accessed from a community: if the portlet is on a My Page, it will follow the setting on the documents' content source.

Customizing the SharePoint Search Portlet

The SharePoint Search portlet is essentially a pre-concerted advanced search portlet that allows end users to specify the actual search term. These search settings can be configured via the administrative preferences of the SharePoint Search portlet. The search settings can be modified to meet the specific needs of the deployment.

While most of the criteria that can be specified are the same as in an advanced search, the default WSS Site criteria is special to this portlet. The criteria "WSS Site Contains Text" indicates that only items where the value WSS Site is not blank are returned. The SharePoint crawler automatically populates the WSS Site property during import. Non-SharePoint items will not have the WSS Site value populated. If this criteria is removed, searches from this portlet will return non-SharePoint items as well.

Results can be narrowed even further by adding criteria such as WSS Object Type. For example, if the criteria "WSS Object Type Contains Document" is added, only SharePoint documents will be returned.

Administrative preferences are specific to an instance of a portlet, and can be different for different copies of the portlet. For example, if there are five copies of the portlet object, they can all be configured to search based on different criteria.

Most Recently Used SharePoint Items Portlet (MRU)

The Most Recently Used SharePoint Items portlet displays the last ten items that were accessed by a specific user through all SharePoint Search portlets or the MRU portlet itself. The last item accessed will be placed at the top of the list. The portlet displays the last ten items accessed by the current user, not by all users who access SharePoint items through the portal.

Clickthrough behavior is determined by the content source. The clickthrough behavior override settings of the SharePoint Search portlet do not apply to the MRU portlet.

Note: This portlet does not follow the Document Display Options setting in My Account -> Display Options. This is to mimic the behavior of WSS and MOSS more closely.

Even though there can be more than one SharePoint Search portlet, there should only be one MRU portlet. The MRU portlet will display the last items accessed by a user from all SharePoint Search portlets.


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