FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 administration screenshots (Site settings)

Many times I get a question as to how granular can you make the administration of the FAST, what administrative options each level provides and what does it look like.

In this post I wanted to share the screenshots of Administration UI for FAST from the site collection admin level as well as Central administration.

Site collection administrators have ability to provide administration for:

1. Best Bets
2. Visual Best Best
3. Content promotion and demotion
4. User context

You do not need to make your business folks (that would be more suitable to customize the search experience) Search Admins and give them access to Central Administration site where they can become quite dangerous. you can get access to the following administration areas through the site settings page on the site collection level.

Here are some screenshots with explanations.

Site collection – Site Settings

Best Bets configuration

Keyword, Phrases and Synonyms configuration

Add site demotion

Add site promotion (boosting content from a site)

Add user context

Manage Use Context

Add visual Best Bet

In the next post I’ll put the screenshot of administrative interfaces that are available for the Search Admins from the Central Administration site

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST Search for SharePoint administration,best bets,visual best bets,user context,site demotion and promotion.

SPC 2011 : Making the Move to SharePoint 2010 - Search First

I’m speaking at the SPC in Anaheim, California in October. SPC had be always to me THE SharePoint Conference to attend. If you still did not register you might be missing the most important SharePoint event of the year.

If you are there, check out my session that I’ll be doing along side with Mark Stone (Microsoft) and Harry Jones (Arcovis) and learn one upgrade strategy for 2010 that no one told you about.

Here is the session abstract.

Most of us have heard about the enhancements and power offered by SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search, but many do not realize they can take advantage of it before upgrading their 2007/MOSS environment. In this session we will cover how to leverage Search for SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint today as part of your organizations roadmap to 2010. We'll demonstrate the integration of SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint Search 2010 from the end-user perspective and discuss the many benefits “Search First” offers to an organization and their users.

http://www.mssharepointconference.com/pages/sessiondetailsShort.aspx?sessionguid=90a461cd-d717-45be-b09b-c82a1f9fefdc

Technorati Tags: SPC 2011,Search First,SharePoint 2010 upgrade

Why Social Networking on SharePoint 2010?

I recently wrote an article on social networking on SharePoint platform and wanted to share it with you.

The SharePoint 2010 platform offers a wide variety of core features including document management, records management, BI, search, workflow and social networking to name a few. Microsoft and its partners have done a great job of showcasing the value of these features and have shared strategies to help organizations take advantage of them. However, of these core features, it is my observation that the Social Networking aspects of SharePoint 2010 are underutilized by customers and therefore the full potential of their implementations are not realized.

The most common objection I have seen to the notion of social networking within the enterprise has to do with a misconception that social networking platforms are not productive in the work environment. I often see is a misguided comparison made to Facebook and other external social networking sites which management views as time-wasters. Other barriers to adoption include uncertainties about allowing uncensored comments by users, a difficulty in justifying the investment and the struggle involved with getting buy-in from the business.

Read more on MVP blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mvpawardprogram/archive/2011/07/25/mvps-for-office-365-why-social-networking-on-sharepoint-2010.aspx

Technorati Tags: Social Networking,SharePoint 2010 Social Networking

Social Sites Demo on next Shoptalk: June 27th, 2011

Social Sites for SharePoint 2010
presented by: Rich Blank from News Gator

By integrating Social Sites directly into your SharePoint 2010 collaboration deployment, you can focus on delivering value to your users and unifying your technology infrastructure while fully leveraging your SharePoint social network - instead of building custom applications or learning and supporting additional technologies. Increase adoption among stakeholders, streamline communication, improve employee recruiting and retention, and boost overall productivity with Social Sites 2010.
Speaker Bio
For over 15 years, Rich Blank has worked with hundreds of organizations evangelizing, architecting and delivering social computing, collaboration & content management solutions. His passion is helping organizations change the way people connect, share information, and manage knowledge and his expertise includes information & systems architecture, end user adoption, governance, business process improvements, and technology strategy. Rich is a featured MS SharePoint expert and regular blogger on AIIM.org (Association of Information & Image Management) writing about collaboration, ECM, and social business. He's also has been invited as a guest speaker at the 2008 IT & Business Alignment Conference, 2010 SharePoint Summit, and regional SharePoint User Groups. He currently works as a Solutions Engineer for Newsgator and has held past senior technology and management consulting roles at EMC and IBM. Rich obtained his MBA from Babson College and BBA from the University of Michigan, and is a certified PMP and Six Sigma Green Belt. You can read some more of his insights on his personal blog: www.pmpinsights.com, follow him on Twitter: @pmpinsights, or connect with him on LinkedIn: www.richblank.com

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SharePoint ShopTalk is a live, dynamic, discussion held weekly amongst SharePoint Professionals.  It is an excellent source for users who need to discuss challenges or are looking for answers to pressing contemporary SharePoint questions. All are welcome to take advantage of this forum that features leading experts in the field.
You may register today and join the SharePoint ShopTalk Group on LinkedIn to submit questions prior to the event. You may also tweet your questions to @spshoptalk as well as ask questions live! We encourage participants to send questions in advance so our panel of experts may answer at their highest capacity.
For this event, you may also tweet your questions to pmpinsights & NewsGator.

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2010 Social Networking,SharePoint Shoptalk

Error installing FAST Search for SharePoint 2010

I’ve ran into a lot of installation errors in my experience, but this one definitely deserves a separate blog post. During the installation I’ve got the following error

06/13/2011 11:25:23 AM Warning Utility.Execute - "D:\FASTSearch\bin\ResourceStoreInstaller.exe" StdError - resourcestoreinstaller.exe - C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe SET config "ResourceStore" /section:requestFiltering /verbs.allowUnlisted:false /commit:apphost - ERROR ( message:Unknown attribute "verbs.allowUnlisted". Replace with -? for help. )

06/13/2011 11:25:23 AM Warning Utility.Execute - Return code for binary "D:\FASTSearch\bin\ResourceStoreInstaller.exe" is not 0. This may indicate that binary didn't execute successfully

And the FAST failed to install.

Let me step back a little bit, the installation was fairly simple, just 2 servers. And knowing the FAST hungry for resources reputation we usually recommend to beef up the servers as much as possible. The 2 servers were actually physical machines very powerful with about 16 CPU cores registered. That was the problem!

Christian Holslin shared his experience here, otherwise I’d be chasing the problem for hours. http://www.thesharepointblog.net/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=815f255a%2Dd0ef%2D4258%2Dbe2a%2D28487dc9975c&ID=48

Too many CPU cores, or logical CPUs can produce the failure for the installation as the CPUs compete for access to the web.config file.

TO resolve this problem do the following:

Before you attempt to run the configuration wizard, from the command line, run Mdconfig command:

1. Go to advanced tab

2. Under advanced go to “boot”

3. Select 4 processors

4. Restart the machine. Repeat this process for all servers in the FAST farm.

Once the installation process is done, revert your changes for the number of registered CPUs back to the original amount of registered Cores following the steps above.

You will be all set

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: FAST search for sharepoint 2010 installation

SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search isn’t just for SharePoint 2010–presentation is available

Most of us have heard about the enhancements and power offered by SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Search, but many do not realize they can take advantage of it without upgrading their 2007/MOSS environment. In this session we will cover how to leverage Search for SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search for SharePoint today, demonstrate the seamless integration of SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint Search 2010 from the end-user perspective and discuss the many benefits “Search First” offers to an organization and their users.

Here is a link to the presentation
http://www.slideshare.net/natalyvo/share-pointesug-searchfirst61011

Enjoy

Technorati Tags: Fast Search For SharePoint 2010,Enterprise search,SharePoint 2010,SharePoint Search,SharePoint 2007

Opportunity for Senior SharePoint Consultants

Arcovis is seeking Senior SharePoint Consultants to join its team of SharePoint and Enterprise Search experts. This position offers the opportunity to work with leading minds in the industry, exposure and access to Microsoft account and technical teams, C-level executives at fortune 100 companies, as well as broad industry exposure. This is an excellent opportunity to learn new technologies, latest trends in the industry, and develop influential relationships. For more information see the full job description.

Technorati Tags: Job Opportunity