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Service Registry Settings

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Service information appears under the following registry subkey:

      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\Research\Sources\{Provider}

For each service, a subkey appears under the appropriate Provider subkey. A provider can provide multiple services. The name of each service subkey is the globally unique identifier (GUID) that uniquely identifies the service. Each service subkey has the entries and values shown in the following table.

Note  The "Default value" column indicates the value used for this setting if the setting is missing or corrupt. The "Equivalent Registration parameter?" column indicates whether this registry setting has an equivalent XML parameter in the Microsoft.Search.Registration.Response namespace.

Entry name Value type Value data Required? Default value Equivalent Registration parameter?
AboutPath String URL that points to a description of the service. No None Yes
CategoryID DWORD Category under which the source is listed in the user interface. This is an index into the list of built-in categories. For possible values, see Service Categories. Yes None Yes
Description String Short description of the service. No None Yes
Display String Values include:
  • On. The provider wants this service turned on in the user interface.
  • Off. The provider wants this service turned off in the user interface.
  • Hidden. The service does not show up in the Research task pane user interface. This means that only an internal process can use the service, as there is no external way to call it.
 No Off Yes
OptionsPath String URL that points to the user interface to change the service's settings. No None Yes
Parental String Values include:
  • Supported. The service supports parental control (that is, filtering of results to remove potentially offensive content).
  • Unsupported. The service does not support parental control.
 No Unsupported is assumed if absent or set to anything other than Supported. Yes
PersistData DWORD Internal use only. This value should not be set by a custom research service. No None No
ServiceName String Friendly name of the service, for use in the user interface. Yes None Yes
SortOrder DWORD Integer indicating where the service ranks within its category. The lower the number, the higher the ranking. Sources are sorted first by Category (see Service Categories), then by SortOrder value, then alphabetically. No 0 No
SourceData String This is an arbitrary BLOB (binary large object) of data, available for use by the developer of a custom service. No None Yes
Status String Internal use only. This entry should be set to "Enabled." Indicates that the service provider is enabled. Note: Office may temporarily change this value when performing update operations. Yes None No. This is set by Microsoft® Office 2003 automatically when adding a service through the Registration interface.
TermsOfUse String Copyright string for the service. No None Yes
TermsOfUsePath String URL that points to the terms of use. No None Yes

Caution  A translation service uses some of these settings in a distinctive manner. For more information, see Building a Translation Service.

Typical Registry Settings

The following screen shot displays typical service registry settings for the Factiva News Search research service, available from the Dow Jones and Reuters provider.

Typical service registry settings

Figure 1. Typical service registry settings.