The inaugural Share conference in the United States is almost done. There is one final track session, the keynote, and then the SharePint (thankfully there will be Sprite available) – don’t forget the post-conference workshops tomorrow though. I’m attending Mike Brannon’s session on SharePoint search. Mike is the Director of Infrastructure and Security.

Key points:
– National Gypsum is a drywall, cement board. Has 34 locations in North America. 900 employees. More than 10,000 partners and customers. Heavy use of Microsoft products, as well as IBM z/OS and SAP. Key go-to-market strategy: great customer service.
– the situation – information overload, e-discovery (for law suits).
– SharePoint search – do it well, plan for it, manage it
– … SharePoint 2010 is a big step past 2007. Very often, people forget about search. Need to get metadata working well.
– project management considerations
– … there are lots of search options. Work through them, and figure out what to do.
– … collect requirements as part of the solution (what business process does this map to?, what are they searching for? etc)
– … … go for specific requirements, not general ones. “Better search results” means nothing – you need to be more specific.
– … allow time to configure crawled metadata.
– … plan for user adoption and education – so people know how to save it to find it.
– information architecture – bring metadata and search together.
– Mike described some of the search capabilities in SharePoint 2010 – eg., scopes, sorting, advanced search, people matches, and more.
– find ways to set metadata easier.
– key user actions needed to maximize flexibility.
– you get what you measure – are seeking feedback from people. What’s working well?