Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane

Summary:  Learn how to expose Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 by using Internet Explorer 7 and the Microsoft Office Research pane.

Office Visual How To

Applies to:  Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, 2007 Microsoft Office Suites, Microsoft Office 2003 Editions, Windows Internet Explorer 7

Patrick Tisseghem, U2U

July 2007

Overview

In this Office Visual How To, you are guided through the steps to configure the Microsoft Office research task pane that is available in the 2007 Microsoft Office suites and in the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions. In this way, you can enable information workers to execute search queries in their familiar environment. You also learn how to configure an additional search provider in Windows Internet Explorer 7 to access Enterprise Search in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Code It

This Office Visual How To involves no coding! You can, however, accomplish the support for executing search queries through several configurations.

Configuring the Research Pane

Both the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions and the 2007 Microsoft Office suites have the research task pane that information workers can use to consume research Web services. Examples include Web services that perform look-ups in a thesaurus or that translate text from one language into another. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides the search.asmx file, which follows the request and response guidelines for an Office research service.

The first step is to register the search.asmx file. Open one of the Office 2003 or 2007 Office system clients, and then activate the research task pane. In Office 2007 clients, you can open the pane by using the button on the Office Fluent Ribbon user interface associated with the Review tab, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. The research task pane

The Research Pane

At the bottom of the pane, you click the link to add or remove services. A dialog box opens in which you can add a new service. Enter the URL to the search.asmx file. In the following example, moss.litwareinc.com is the URL of a collaboration portal.

http://moss.litwareinc.com/_vti_bin/search.asmx

A call is made to the Registration Web method of the Web service, which returns the "green light" for the Office environment to continue and create the registry key that stores all of the information to communicate with this new research service from all of the Office applications (and also from Internet Explorer).

Figure 2 shows how information workers can type in a search query and click the button to have the Office SharePoint Server 2007 search engine execute the query.

Figure 2. Search results in the research task pane

Search results in research task pane

Configuring an additional search provider in Internet Explorer 7

Internet Explorer 7 introduces search providers. A user is able to register one or more search providers and use one as the default. Configuring Internet Explorer 7 to include the Enterprise Search functionality provided by Office SharePoint Server 2007 is not a difficult task. For example, you can perform a search query on the keyword TEST by using the search page in a collaboration portal, and then copy the URL that points to the results page that shows the items returned by the search engine.

You add the copied URL to the Find More Providers page, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Adding a custom search provider in Internet Explorer 7

Custom search provider in Internet Explorer 7

When you do this, a user can employ the search box to activate the Office SharePoint Server 2007 search engine to execute the entered search query.

Read It

In this Office Visual How-To, you are guided through the steps to do the following, without writing code:

  • Configure the Office research task pane in Office 2003 Editions and 2007 Office suites so that information workers can execute search queries in their familiar environment.

  • Configure an additional search provider in Internet Explorer 7 to access Enterprise Search in Office SharePoint Server 2007.

See It Exposing Search video

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Length: 06:16 | Size: 3.24 MB | Type: WMV file

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