Webpart: Advanced Search

In order to use the smart navigation part of the Advanced Search webpart, a taxonomy needs to be set up in the customer's Office tenant term store. In the example from the introduction, a worker needs to be able to quickly find an assembly guide for an item. A supporting taxonomy structure could be a Term set called "Document Category", and underlying terms called e.g. "Assembly Guides", "Design Documents", and possibly more categories as needed.

This can be set up by following these steps:

1. On the WorkPoint solution, click the Apps button in the top left corner of the page.
2. From the "Apps" section, click "Admin".

3. In the left side menu of the Admin center, click "Show all".

4. Under "Admin centers", click "SharePoint".

5. In the left side menu of the SharePoint admin center, click "More features".

6. For "Term store", click the "Open" button.

7. Right-click the upper-most level of the taxonomy structure.
8. Click "New Group".

9. Give the new term group a name. In this case, because we are working with a Project Management system, the group is named "Project Management System".

10. Right-click the newly created term group.
11. Click "New Term Set".

12. Give the new Term Set a name. In this case, the Term Set is named "Document Category". Using this term set, we can set up term categories for documents, e.g. "Assembly Instructions", "Design Documents", etc.

13. Right-click the newly created Term Set.
14. Click "Create Term".

15. Give the new Term a name. In this case, we use the name "Assembly Instructions". In the same way, we also create a couple of other terms for demonstration purposes. The finished term set can be seen in the following image:

Selecting the Term Set or specific Terms will reveal settings and more information about the item selected. One of these pieces of information is the unique identifier for the Term Set or the Term itself. These are important for further configuration of the Advanced Search webpart, so one must know how to find these. Follow these steps to find the unique identifiers:

16. Click the Term Set (or one of the Terms themselves).
17. Find the Unique Identifier header in the information panel. The key below the header is the unique identifier for the item selected. Please note that each item (Each Term Set and each Term) has a unique identifier.

In order for the Advanced Search webpart to be able to identify documents and/or entities which fit a search query, the system needs to know what to look for. Now that we have made a Term Set with various document categories, a corresponding list column needs to be present on the document libraries which contain the documents. For this we create a managed metadata field, using the following steps:

18. Since we want to use the Term Set and Terms  we created previously to search for documents related to our various projects, we will add the managed metadata column for this purpose on the document libraries of the Projects module on the solution. Click the "Home" button of the solution.
19. Click the "Projects" module to navigate to the Projects list.

20. Click the site icon for the Master entity of the Projects module.

21. Click the Documents library in the left side menu.

22. Click the Settings icon in the top right of the library.
23. Click "Library settings".

24. Scroll to the "Columns" section of the settings page and click "Create column".

25. Provide a name for the new column. In this case, we call it "Document Category", but please visit this article for information on best practices for naming columns.
26. Set the column type to "Managed metadata".
27. In the Term Set Settings, select the Term Set created previously, called "Document Category".
28. Click the "OK" button.

Next, we will need to run a Master Site synchronization to synchronize the newly created column onto the document libraries of already existing entities on the Projects module:

29. In the WorkPoint Administration dashboard, click the header of the Projects module.
30. Click "Master Site Synchronization".

31. As the only setting, enable "Documents" under Master Site Lists Synchronization.
32. Click "Synchronize all".

The newly created column is now present on the document libraries of all entities on the Projects module:

Since we paired the Document Category list column with the Document Category Term Set, we can use the Terms from the Term Set as document categories in the Document Category column:

33. Click to select one of the documents in a document library.

34. In the right side of the page, click the Details panel icon.
35. Click the value field for "Document Category".

36. Click the Term icon to select a Term from the Term Set as category.

37. Double-click the Term you wish to use as category for the document.
38. The Term should appear in the selection field.
39. Click the "OK" button.

40. Click the Details panel icon again to close it and save the category.

The document should now have the designated category shown in the documents list:

Before we can use the Managed Property created with the Managed Metadata column "Document Category", we need to map it to a Crawled Property. This is done  from the SharePoint Admin Center:

41. In the SharePoint Admin Center, in the left side menu, click "More features".

42. For the "Search" feature, click the "Open" button.

43. Click "Manage Search Schema".

44. Click the "Managed Properties" tab if you are not already on this.
45. Search for the managed metadata column. In this case, we simply search for "category" as this should find the "Document Category" column.

46. Look for and click the property that starts with "owstaxid", followed by the name of the managed metadata. Note that if spaces were used in the name of the column during the creation process, that space is here substituted with the text "x0020". The property we are looking for is therefore the "owstaxidDocumentx0020Category" property.

47. In the "Mappings to crawled properties" section, click "Add a Mapping".

48. In the "Crawled property selection" window, type in "ows_taxid" in the search query field.
49. Click the "Find" button.
50. Select the crawled property which matches the managed property. In this case, the "ows_taxid_Documentx0020Category" matches our managed property, so we select that one.
51. Click the "OK" button.

52. The mapped crawled property should now be displayed in the "Mappings to crawled properties" section.
53. Click the "OK" button in the bottom of the page.

Search Settings are used for customizing ones search experience in the Express Panel and the Advanced Search webpart. It can be used to set up result groups, saved searches, and predefine whether specific search settings are used for searching for entities or documents.

Multiple Search Settings can be configured, and can be used by the Advanced Search webpart to search through predefined criteria or Term Sets. Building upon the previous example, we will set up a Search Setting which can be used to search for Assembly Instructions.

In the following steps we will set up a Search Setting which searches for documents, and uses the Term Set and Terms we created earlier.

53. In the WorkPoint Administration, in the left side menu click "Search settings".

54. Note that there are already two Search Settings set up. These are default settings which are set up during the installation of the WorkPoint solution. these are by default set to "Primary". Primary Search Settings cannot be deleted. Custom Search Settings can be set to primary instead of the default Search Settings, after which the default Search Settings can be deleted.
55. To add a new custom Search Setting, click "Add search setting".

56. Select whether this Search Setting is enabled or disabled. If it is enabled, it will be usable in the Express Panel and Advanced Search webpart.
57. Select whether this Search Setting should be the primary search setting of this type (Entity search or Document search).
58. Provide a name for the Search Setting. This should ideally relate to the function of the search setting.
59. Select the operator for the search setting. Available options are:

• Equals: Using this setting, the search will look for an exact match between the query and the results and return the result if the match is true.
• Starts with:

60. Select whether this search setting is used for Entity search or Document search.
61. Insert a URL for the icon to be used for this search setting. This icon is used in the search settings tab. An example of these icons in the search settings tab is shown in the following image:

62. Select how many search results to show on each result page.
63. In the Term Set Filter field, you can insert the unique ID of a Term Set if you wish to use this search setting to only search within that Term set or underlying terms. In this example, we have inserted the unique ID of the Term Set called "Document Category" created in section 3.1.
64. If you want to further scope the search, you can use the unique ID of one of the Terms from the Term Set to only search within that Term.
65. In the "Term Filter Managed Property", add the managed property you wish to use with the Term Set and Term ID. In this example, we use the managed property we mapped to a crawled property in section 3.3.
66. If no result groups are present for the Search Setting, click the "Add new result group" button.
67. Provide a name for the result group. In this example, since this result group will display all results, we call it "All".
68. The ordering column can be used to order the result groups, if you have more than one. You can e.g. have different result groups for different file types in a document search Search Setting. An example is shown in the following image:

In this example, there are two different result groups; DocX and PDF. These can be selected in the drop down selector. The DocX result group is set up to only show results of file type "docx", using a base query of "filetype:docx" in the result group. Similarly, the PDF result group uses a base  query of "filetype:pdf" to only show PDF files.

69. The "Indentation" column determines the indentation of the result group. Indentation can be used to display a hierarchical structure of e.g. business modules in the selector, using Entity Search. An example is shown in the following image:

In this example, the "Companies" module has an indentation of 0, meaning it is not indented at all. The "ProjectsArchive", "Projects" and the "Contacts" modules have an indentation of 1, meaning they are moved slightly to the right of the Companies module. This can be useful for displaying if certain modules are parent. or child modules. This selector is only shown if the Search Setting is not utilizing Smart Navigation using Term Sets and or Terms.

70. Select a column group to use for this result group. Column groups specify which columns to show for the displayed results. Column groups can be created from the Search Settings main configuration page.
71. The Content Types field can be used e.g. if only items with a certain content type should be  displayed in the results. An example of this could be if setting up an Entity Search Setting and only projects in a certain stage should be displayed in the results.
72. In the "Refiners" field you can add the fields which should be available as refiners in the refinement panel in the webpart. If e.g. you wish to be able to refine results based on the date items were created, you can add the "Created" column in this field.
73. If you wish to remove a result group, click "Remove".
74. In the "Base Query" field, you can type in a filter query to use to filter out any results not matching the query. Only results matching the base query will be displayed in the results. This can be left empty to show all results.
75. If no saved searches are set up, you can add one by clicking "Add new saved search". Saved searches makes it possible to save commonly used search queries, including result group and search scope and quickly access them in the webpart.
76. Provide a title for the saved search.
77. Provide a search query for the saved search.
78. Select which result group should be used to display the results of the search.
79. Select the scope to search within. In this case, we have selected "Current entity", this saved search will only search within the current entity. Available options are:

• Search in everything
• Current entity
• Current entity and below

80. Click "Remove" to remove the saved search.
81. Click the "Save" button to save the Search Setting.

82. On the WorkPoint solution, click the "Home" button.
83. Click "Need help?"
84. Click "Clear WorkPoint 365 browser cache".

As previously mentioned, column groups specify which columns to show for the displayed results. Custom column groups can be configured from the Search Settings page:

85. In the Search Settings page, under Column groups, click the "Add column group" button.

86. Provide a name for the new column group. This column group will be used for displaying documents, so we call it "Document columns".
87. Click the empty columns field.
88. Select from available columns the one you wish to add to the column group.

89. Click the "Add" button to add the selected column to the column group.

90. Provide a title for the column. This will be the displayed title if the column in the webpart.
91. The Field column displays the field used for this column. This will be the column selected in pt. 85.
92. Use the Ordering column to order the columns in the column group.
93. Select the column type. this determines how to display the information in the column. Available options are:

• Text
• Text and location
• Icon

94. Click "Remove" to remove the column from the column group.
95. You can add more columns to the column group by selecting a new column and clicking the "Add" button again.
96. Click the "Save" button to save the column group.

In the following image is an example of the column group created for this example:

This newly created column group can now be used in Search Settings result groups.

This section will describe how to add the Advanced Search webpart to a page:

97. When editing the page on which the Advanced Search webpart should be added, click the "+" icon to add a new webpart.
98. From the list of available webparts, select the "WorkPoint 365 - Advanced Search" webpart.

99. In the left side of the webpart, click the edit icon.

100. Provide a title for the webpart. This will be displayed on the webpart itself.
101. Select which Search Setting to use by default for the webpart. In this example, we use the one created in section 3.4.
102. Preview
103. Set the display of the Search bar  in the webpart on or off. In this example, we set it on.
104. Set the display of tabs in the webpart on or off. In this example, we set it on.
105. Set the display of the favorites tab on or off. In this example, we set it off.

With these settings, if the configuration guide was followed from start to finish, the webpart should now look approximately like in the following image:

106. The webpart title is displayed in the top left of the webpart.
107. The tabs for individual Search Settings are displayed in the gray bar. The tab with the blue background is the currently selected Search Setting.
108. The search bar can be used to input a search query.
109. The breadcrumb, informing you won which level of the Term Set you are currently searching in, is displayed below the search bar.
110. the Smart Navigation window allows you to navigate up and down through the Term Set associated with the current Search Setting. Clicking one of the Terms (Assembly Instructions, Design Documents, or Process Descriptions) will move the user down onto that level and results with the corresponding term as document category will be shown in the results section (pt. 109).
111. The columns shown in the results section are the ones from the column group selected for the current Search Setting.
112. Search results are shown in the results section. In this example, all documents of a certain document library are shown, since we are currently located at the very top of the Term Set in the navigation.
113. Saved searches can be selected using the drop down menu above the results section. The saved search called "Design" created in pt. 76 is available from here.
114. Click the filter icon to open the refiner panel. From here you can further refine the results shown based on a set of default properties, as well as whichever custom properties added in pt. 72.

As may have been noticed in the previous example of how the Advanced Search webpart may look, a set of icons have been associated with the Terms used. Icons can be added to the individual Terms. Doing this makes it possible to dynamically use the icons wherever the Terms are used.

The following steps describe how to add icons to Terms:

115. In the Term Store where the Terms were created, select the Term which you wish to add an icon for.
116. Click the "CUSTOM PROPERTIES" tab.

117. In the "Shared Properties" section, click "Add".

118. In the "Shared Property Name" field, type "wpIconUrl".
119. In the "Value" field, provide a link to the icon you wish to use for the Term. In this example, we have created a folder on the WorkPoint solution under Site Assets to contain the icons used for the Terms. The path used in this example is "https://workpoint365test.sharepoint.com/sites/anm0004/SiteAssets/Icons/AssemblyInstructions_256.png" (AssemblyInstructions_256.png is the name of the icon file)

120. Click the "Save" button to save the property.

This process can be used for adding icons to all Terms.

In order to make the icons appear in the Webpart, you need to clear the WorkPoint 365 Browser Cache. Follow these steps:

121. On the WorkPoint solution, click the "Home" button.
122. Click "Need help?"
123. Click "Clear WorkPoint 365 browser cache".