Social Search #SPC09

These are my session notes from the SharePoint Conference 2009:

• Presenter: Jessica Alspaugh, Program Manager, Enterprise Search Group, Microsoft
• Business problems: Hard to find the right person; People working on redundant work; Enterprise search doesn't adapt.
• Social search is about connecting people to people, as well as, adapting dynamically based on usage patterns and available metadata.
• People search supports phonetic and common nickname match.
• With OCS, SharePoint supports contact card mouse-over.
• View recent content option opens AJAX window containing links to the most recent documents created by the person.
• Knowledge Mining provides keyword suggestions from Exchange 2010. Uses phrases that the person uses often in email. Person has complete control over what items are added to their profile page.
• In SharePoint 2010 colleagues are indexed for ranking purposes.
• Encourage photos. It makes a big difference in enabling interaction. People are less likely to engage with someone who doesn't have a profile photo.
• Microsoft makes it easy to add custom properties to the profile.
• Use the Managed Metadata Service to ensure consistency of terms. Manages metadata fields support dynamic type-ahead suggestions.
• Check out the "Go behind the Search Box" slide for a list of social search features.
• Vanity Search helps users build a profile and create search terms that other people find them in a search.
• Default search order was changed from relevancy to social distance, though you can override.
• If you add a new column and index it, SharePoint Search will automatically create dynamic pivots on the left navigator of the results page.
• If search quality is good, people have more confidence, which leads to increased usage, which further increases search quality.
• Pre-Query Suggestions are built from high click-through queries, and appear dynamically before the search button is pressed.
• Post Query Suggestions appear on the right side of the result set page, under Related Searches.
• Social definitions - "what people are saying about..."
• Check out Social Tag slide - Social tagging will improve search quality.