November, 2011

Date and time: December 6, 2011 | 8am-11am PDT | Live online training

What time is that in my time zone?

Join Symon Perriman (Technical Evangelist for Private Cloud) and Elden Christensen (Principal Program Manager Lead for Clustering) to understand how Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering with Hyper-V provides critical infrastructure for any datacenter with VM high-availability and mobility. This event will provide an introduction to clustering, then focus on the design, deployment and management considerations for your highly-available datacenter or Private Cloud. Topics include hardware, validation, deployment, host clustering, guest clustering, virtualization, live migration, multi-site clustering, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 & 2012, and offers a wealth of best practices. No prior clustering knowledge is needed.

Agenda:
• Module 1: Introduction to clustering
• Module 2: Hyper-V high-availability
• Module 3: Private Cloud HA (System Center, Multi-Site)

REGISTER HERE

FAST University would like thank all of you who attended our October free technical webcast on Visual Best Bets and Document Thumbnails. 

This webcast explored user interface features only available with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint:

• Managing and using Visual Best Bets
• Displaying Microsoft Office thumbnails using the out of the box web parts and custom web parts

 For your convenience, the recording of the webcast is now available online at the following location:

https://fast.omnisocial.mzinga.com/app/servlet/goTo?Page=CourseInfo&DirectLinkID=106771

Microsoft Learning Partners worldwide are now offering public and onsite classes on Microsoft Enterprise Search:

• 10805: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Search for Application Developers (3 days)
• 10806: Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint for Application Developers (2 days)

Information on upcoming classes can be found on the Microsoft Learning Class Locator website.  If you have any questions about finding training classes in your particular region, please contact the FAST University team at [email protected]. 

The cloud is all the rage now, and it seems inevitable, as if the gods have seemingly decreed the next phase in the evolution of the continuum of computing.  However, just four short years ago, when Nicolas Carr was writing “The Big Switch” ³ the concept of computing services as a utility was still controversial, but not to all.  In the prologue to his book, he wrote about his visit to VeriCenter’s data center:

“As I stood there surveying the data center, I might as well have been a cartoon figure with a big light bulb flashing above my head. I realized that what I was standing in was a prototype of a new kind of power plant – a computing plant that would come to power our information age the way great electric plants powered the industrial age. Connected to the Net, this modern dynamo would deliver into our businesses and homes vast quantities of digitized information and data processing might. It would run all the complicated software programs that we used to have to install on our own computers. And, just like the earlier electric dynamos, it would operate with the efficiency never possible before. It would turn computing into cheap, universal commodity.

            “This really is a utility,” I said to Sullivan.
            “He nodded, grinning.” This is the future.” ³

In just four short years, we have gone from the cloud being the future, to the cloud as being a standard deployment option for IT software services.  One of the key enablers of cloud computing is the drive to virtualize and consolidate hardware. Once your computing environment is virtualized, taking the next step to deploy your virtual machines to an off premise data center, seems like a logical next step.

We support your drive to virtualize your data center services. All our enterprise software is tested running in a Hyper-V Server environment.  For a list of our software and the supported virtualization environments navigate to: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006. This document is updated regularly.

As the march to the cloud continues, the way we define or model this service is typically as an “operations model”.  James Urquhart, summarizes it quite succinctly:  “The cornerstone of everything I believe about the cloud can be summarized in one simple statement:

Cloud computing is an application-centric operations model.”⁴

How will operations have to evolve to meet the needs of this model? Mr. Urquhart goes on to break down operations to the following roles.

As you are reading this you are probably asking, “So what does all of this have to do with SharePoint, and in particular SharePoint search?” I feel it is important to first define how I look at cloud computing, i.e. as an application-centric operations model.  We can now look specifically at SharePoint as one of the key applications.

In coming posts, I will look at SharePoint and its search services as part of Office 365 and as a SharePoint farm for a geographically dispersed application. In the mean time, I recommend you check out Jeff DeVerter’s series of blog posts on “Geographical SharePoint Redundancy” ¹. Jeff is a SharePoint Architect at Rackspace Hosting and has architected some of the largest distributed SharePoint farms on the planet.

Reference:

1) DeVerter J (2011)  Content Delivery Networks and SharePoint, SharePoint in the Cloud | LinkedIn Group

2) Wicklund, P. (2011) Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Deploying Cloud-Based Solutions, Microsoft Press

3) Carr, N. (2008) The Big Switch, rewiring the world, from Edison to Google. W. W. Norton and Company, page 5

4) Urquhart J (2011)   What cloud boils down to for the enterprise ,  Gigaom

We look forward to your comments. If you have a technical tip you would like to share with your colleagues, send it to [email protected] to be included in a Technical Tips blog.

To learn more about Microsoft Learning | FAST University classes and to register, visit www.fastuniversity.com or contact us at [email protected].

By Philip E. Helsel

80442A: Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 2011
This one-day instructor-led course provides an introduction to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. The course focuses on the user interface and working with the application and provides a foundation for other Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 courses. The course describes Microsoft Dynamics CRM concepts, the Web interface, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook® interface, searching, and reporting.
Audience Profile:
This course is intended for individuals who plan to implement, use, maintain, or support Microsoft Dynamics CRM in their organization. The course is also intended for anyone who wants to gain foundational knowledge of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.
Course Syllabus: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=80442A&Locale=en-us

Note: This course is available for download on the MCT Courseware Download Center and Partner Source. Thanks and hope you enjoy the courses.

Regards

Kevin Schimke,
Content Project Manager || Microsoft Learning

Thanks to everyone who provided some suggestions for how we can improve the information provided in the score reports! A few people suggested that no changes were necessary (people who don't like the score report will continue to dislike it because they want a level of feedback we will never be able to provide (i.e., item level performance)), but I think your ideas could make the score report more informative even to those who are predispositioned to dislike it.

Here's what I boiled the suggestions down to:

• Include the proportion of the exam covered by each section or what we fondly refer to as "functional group" (e.g., Function Group A is X% of the exam; Functional Group B is Y% of the exam)
• Change the bar information from a "needs improvement/strength" scale to something more meaningful, such as percent of items answered correctly (one suggestion here was to include pass/fail information for that section/functional group, but candidates don't pass/fail sections of the exam--you either do well or you don't; poor performance in one area can be compensated by great performance in another)
• Provide performance information at the objective level...to be honest, this is highly unlikely because some of our objectives are measured with a very small number of items, and this gets too close to item level reporting. I can't think of a good way to get around that potential challenge. Granted, this doesn't happen very often, but we do have some exams with objectives that are only measured by one or two items.
• Provide information about how your score compares to the scores of others... in the psychometric biz, this is known as "norm-referenced scores" It is very complicated to maintain and, more important, may lead to some incorrect assumptions about the ability levels of those who have higher percentile scores than others. Keep in mind that certification exams are designed to differentiate unqualified from minimally qualified candidates; people with higher scores are not necessarily more qualified, have more skills, or possess more knowledge than those with lower scores. We can't make those judgments based on your score because the exam is not designed to make those types of differentiations. This is true of all certification exams, but people do make these assumptions anyway. I fear that adding normative information to the score report would only exacerbate this problem.
• Provide test taking tips
• Provide specific exam preparation resources

Some of these are easy to implement, and I'll work to incorporate what I can. I also have some ideas that I'd like your opinion on, but I'll save that for a future post. For now, what do you think of these ideas? Do these thoughts give you other ideas on what you'd like to see included in score reports? Did I miss anything that you suggested and would like to see considered?

By the way, I loved Zeshan's idea about tying score reports to your MCP account and then linking those results to available training resources that could help someone improve in areas of weakness. I passed his idea on to the person who owns the MCP site to see what's possible. She's looking into it (she liked the idea too!), but she did say it's likely to take years rather than months.

One question that often comes up when I’m teaching a FAST Search for SharePoint class is this one: How can I remove an item from the index immediately? Why would you want to do this? The item could be confidential and you cannot wait until the next crawl.  Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Search provides an easy way to do this. By following the method described below, you can do this in Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, as well.

In order to remove an item from the index, the first thing you need to do is determine its identifier. Follow the steps below for the full procedure on how to remove an item from the index:

1 - Execute a query that will return the result you want in the Search Center and locate its URL, as shown below.

2 - Next, go to the Crawl Logs in the FAST Content SSA and search for the crawl log of the URL identified in the previous step. The information you are looking for is its Item ID.

Note: Another way to obtain the Item ID is to follow the instructions in the tutorial on How to View Search Results XML Data and add <Column Name="contentid"/> <Column Name="contentids"/> to the list of Fetched Properties.

3 - Now that you have the Item ID, all you need to do is execute the proper command to remove the item from the index. The command you will use is docpush, with specific parameters for content removal:

docpush -c sp -U -d ssic://<Item ID>

For my example above, this is the full command executed, along with its callback stating that the delete operation was successful:

At this point your item should be removed from the index. Return to the Search Center and execute another query to confirm that your item no longer appears in the search results, as shown below:

To learn other useful procedures, navigate to www.fastuniversity.com and register for the 5-day Microsoft Enterprise Search for Developers class or use the Microsoft Learning Course Locator to find a class in your area. For more information, contact a Microsoft Learning FAST University Education Consultant at [email protected]. See you in class!

By Leonardo Souza, MCT

If you’re looking for the latest courses on Microsoft technologies, enhanced training, and best offers, look no further than the authorized source – Microsoft Learning partners. With Microsoft Learning partners, you get training you can trust.

Find classes delivered by a Microsoft Learning partner in your area.

It is with great pleasure that MSL announces the release of course 80311A: Service Industries in Microsoft Dynamics® AX 2012.

About this Course

This two-day instructor-led course provides students with an overview of the Project management functionality in Service Industries in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.This course covers the most important functionality in the module, including its setup and processes. It assumes course participants have baseline knowledge of the earlier version.
 
Audience Profile

This course is intended for partners and customers with moderate to extensive knowledge of Project Management functionality in Service Industries.
 

Course Syllabus: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=80311A&Locale=en-us

Note: This course is available for download on Partner Source, and will be available on the MCT Download Center 28 Nov 2011.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the course.

Kind regards

Claire Bremer Nielsen,

Content Project Manager || Microsoft Learning

It is with great pleasure that MSL announces the release of course 80318A: Reporting in Microsoft Dynamics® AX 2012.

About this Course

This two-day instructor-led course provides students with an introduction to the reporting and business intelligence features and functionality in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. The purpose of this course is to introduce key features, explain the reporting architecture, and describe the procedures for common reporting tasks.

Audience Profile

The intended audience is customer system administrators, high level users, and consultants typically working for a Microsoft Dynamics partner that is selling, consulting, implementing, and supporting Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012.

Course Syllabus: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=80318A&Locale=en-us

Note: This course is available for download on Partner Source, and will be available on the MCT Download Center 5 Dec 2011.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the course.

Kind regards

Claire Bremer Nielsen,

Content Project Manager || Microsoft Learning

If you’re reading this blog post, chances are you’re already a seasoned professional in the industry, or maybe you’ve been thinking about Microsoft certifications as your next career move. Either way, you want to be proud of your credentials, and know that all the time, energy and money you invest will pay off in recognition, respect, new opportunities and more. We have worked hard to make world class technology training available, and we’re working even harder now to make sure it speaks to your knowledge, skills, abilities and experience, and that being Microsoft Certified sets you apart from the rest.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with the Microsoft News Center (MNC) about how we maintain our MCP program’s relevance, integrity and rigor, and I want to share that conversation with our community here. After reading through my responses, please do share your thoughts or further questions by commenting below. I look forward to hearing from you.

MNC: Technology is advancing at a record pace these days. In light of the rapidly changing IT landscape, what is Microsoft’s vision for its certification program?

DON: Our goal is to provide a valid and reliable way for people to demonstrate their skills and to help employers see the value of Microsoft Certification as a way to verify those skills among candidates they’re considering for a particular position.

As technology changes, the way we approach validating those skills needs to change as well. For example, as Microsoft continues to move into cloud computing, we need to think about ways to help people demonstrate the capabilities they have that are relevant to cloud-based solutions.

As part of that effort, we're always striving consciously to assure the integrity and rigor of our certifications. The goal here is to make sure we're certifying only those people who truly have the requisite skills — as opposed to those who still have a ways to go before they’ve fully acquired them.

MNC: What is the IT and certification industry doing to address certification in light of these rapid changes?

DON: As an example, Microsoft’s product offerings related to the cloud, such as Windows Azure and Office 365, don't have version numbers. This is a change from traditional on-premise products, where an IT professional works with a particular version of Windows Server, for example. In the past, we’ve certified people based on a particular version of a product, but because that is changing with the delivery of products through the cloud, we've looked at other ways to assure people have the relevant skills as our cloud offerings evolve.

MNC: What is Microsoft hearing from its MCPs?

DON: This past summer, we surveyed MCPs and hiring managers who might consider hiring or promoting MCPs for their take on a number of issues, including recertification.  Recertification is one way that others in the certification industry are responding to the rapidly evolving pace of technology.

The response to recertification as a part of the solution was largely positive: 65 percent were positive or very positive about requiring candidates to demonstrate continued competence and 84 percent were neutral or positive on the idea.

Seventy-five percent of survey participants thought recertification would have a positive or very positive impact on the value of the program. An overwhelming 93 percent answered that recertification would have either no impact or a positive impact on the value of the program.

Respondents also agreed, for the most part, that a two- to three-year interval between exams would be about right for recertification.  There is additional information about recertification on our website here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/exam-prep.aspx#recert.

MNC: What is Microsoft doing to maintain the value of its certifications?

DON: Internally, we refer to our approach as the ‘four Ds’ - how we design our certifications and exams, how we develop them, how we deliver them, and how we defend them.

With design, we work to make sure our certifications are testing the range of skills most needed in the marketplace.  We consider the skills that employers and hiring managers acknowledge as most essential to their employees’ success on the job.

Then, as we develop our exams, we examine the complexities of our own technologies to determine the depth of knowledge and skills needed to manage them, focusing on the real world use of our technologies in organizations.

In terms of delivery, we know that individuals have been trying to pass our exams without acquiring the requisite skills for as long as we’ve been granting certifications by finding illicit access to our questions. This is something that all certification organizations struggle with. One way to control illicit access to our exam content is by implementing appropriate security measures during delivery. Working closely with Prometric, our exam delivery provider, we've established a range of security measures to ensure that neither candidates nor test centers can steal our exam content or cheat in any way. By doing this, employers and candidates know that a certification earned carries solid value in the marketplace.

Perhaps most important, we actively defend our exams. We take security breaches seriously; we do everything we can to bring violators to justice and bring closure to any situation where the integrity of the test design, development or delivery process has been compromised. We look carefully at how we can best secure exam content against the threat of exam piracy during development and delivery and we research and apply new forensic techniques every day, making it increasingly difficult for examinees who lack the legitimate skills to pass our exams.

Combined, these four elements ensure a comprehensive approach to preserving the value and integrity of Microsoft certifications for employers who are hiring certified candidates as well as those who hold the certification.

MNC: Microsoft recently won a $13.5 million judgment against a web enterprise that illegally provided test questions and answers under several “testinside” domain names.  What’s the significance of that win?

DON: Throughout the certification industry, there is concern that someone who acquires test questions—or at least claims to have acquired them — can post them on the Internet, and attract people looking to gain an edge in taking certification exams. These “brain dumps” are illegal and ultimately cast a negative light on the integrity of certifications.

To date, we have been able to shut down thousands of links to these sites due to our aggressive efforts to combat brain dumps. We’ve also banned candidates from taking our exams who are found to have used such a site to gain an advantage.

The $13.5 million decision against the “testinside” domain names broke new legal ground in terms of the size and scope of judgments against these brain-dump sites. By awarding the maximum statutory damage allowable under the Copyright Act, the court validated the significance of this type of fraud for both Microsoft and the certification industry.

To support the standard established by our legal system, Microsoft plans to reinvest the proceeds we receive from judgment in continuing to fight exam piracy and copyright infringement. We have one single-minded purpose: To give those who have earnestly achieved a Microsoft certification the assurance that it has value and integrity in the eyes of their employers and peers around the world.

MNC: How else is Microsoft ensuring the integrity of exams to protect the value of the MCP credentials?

DON: Well, it would undermine some of our security procedures if I shared all of them publicly. But I can tell you that we have a world-class, full-time investigative team that actively pursues fraudulent activities. They carefully monitor test-center processes and scour mountains of data to uncover fraudulent exams, altered test transcripts, and test sites with bad business practices.

Every falsely earned certification damages the value of Microsoft credentials, causing collateral damage to the millions of MCPs. This is why we take vigorous measures to expose and disqualify those who would come by these certifications dishonestly or help others to do so.

To learn how to attain Microsoft certifications and find out more about the Microsoft certification and training program, visit the Microsoft Learning site.  For more news about Microsoft Learning, visit the MSL Newsroom.

Microsoft Learning hosted a brand new class in the popular “Jump Start” series back on October 6, 2011. Because we received such rave reviews and demand for more options to take the class, we've added a few new dates and times. For those of you who have been asking for class times more appropriate for APAC and EMEA time zones, please note that the December 1, 2011 class runs from 10:00 PM to 06:00 AM PST! We're excited to see all of you online on December 1! Here are the details:

• Course: Exam 70-659: Windows Server 2008 R2, Server Virtualization Jump Start
• Target Audience: IT Pros with some Microsoft Virtualization experience who want to be sure they're ready to pass exam 70-659
• Instructors: Microsoft Technical Evangelist, Symon Perriman & Microsoft Technical Instructor, Philip Helsel
• Cost: $99 (includes an exam voucher valued at $150 and valid at any Prometric testing center worldwide)
• Date #1: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 12:00 PST (12:00 PM - 08:00 PM PST)
• Date #2: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 08:00 PST (08:00 AM - 04:00 PM PST)
• Date #3: Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 00:00 PST (12:00 AM - 08:00 AM PST)

Register Now

Why get certified in Microsoft Virtualization?
In just three short years, Hyper-V marketshare has grown over 16% (IDC WW Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, March 2011). This shift to Microsoft Virtualization has been clear the past six months as IT Professionals are flocking to the Hyper-V certification and Microsoft Private Cloud solutions. It’s easy to see that organizations who invest in IT Professionals with proven skills in current virtualization and Private Cloud skills will be a step ahead in this ever-changing cloud world.

Why is this Jump Start a good time investment?
This accelerated Jump Start is tailored for experienced IT professionals who are familiar with Microsoft server technologies, Hyper-V, Virtual Machine Manager and Remote Desktop Role Services. Taught by highly-respected technologists, Symon Perriman and Philip Helsel, this course will be a fast-paced and demo-rich experience covering the skills domain required to ensure students have the expertise and confidence to become a MCTS: Windows Server 2008, R2, Server Virtualization. You’ll also receive the opportunity to register for a weekly Virtualization coaching newsletter and exam voucher activation instructions during the training.

Coming from VMware to Microsoft Virtualization?
Check out the “Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals” Jump Start delivered earlier this year, Symon Perriman and Corey Hynes were a hit!

This article discusses the deployment options for the FSIS components, specifically, the IMS UI Toolkit, the IMS and CTS engines, the Content Distributor Emulator and the FSIS Admin components.

Production Minimum:

The graphic above describes the minimum number of servers required for the FSIS components in a production environment.

• One server running IIS will host the IMS UI Toolkit components
• A second server will host FSIS Services in standalone mode. This server will host the IMS and CTS engines, the Content Distributor Emulator and the FSIS Admin components
• A third server will host the ESP search core and the FSIS Feeding Overlay

Production with Multiple Servers:

The graphic above describes a more likely production environment.

A multi-host (distributed) FSIS constellation consists of the following:

• A primary administration host
• Zero or more fallback administration hosts
• Zero or more worker hosts  

Fault Tolerant FSIS Administration

The Primary Admin service is the only service capable of generating security certificates used for communication between FSIS server and FSIS and the IMS UI Toolkit. Fallback Admin services perform all functions of a Primary Admin service except generate certificates. To achieve fault tolerance the admin service uses a majority rule; the majority of the services must be running to continue processing. Therefore, an environment which can sustain a single failure needs three Admin services, a primary and two fallback services. Five admin services would be required to handle 2 server failures.

Worker Services

CTS, CDE and IMS are collectively called the Worker Services or Nodes

Nodes are configured as follows:

• CTS and IMS are installed and configured on Worker servers. Either service can be removed after installation
• CTS and IMS can be configured on any Admin service server after installation
• CDE must always be configured after installation on any server
• Up to 9 Nodes in any combination can be configured on a host.

Depending on feeding rate, batch size, document size and flow complexity multiple CTS services may be required. Also, the CTS service can be configured to use more memory. Because the CDE is used by CTS and it requires less than 500 MB of memory CDE is normally configured on the same servers as CTS.

IMS is configured on the same servers as CTS by default. To free memory for CTS the IMS services can be moved to the Admin Services servers. IMS services use less than 1 GB of memory while Administration services use 500 MB. To increase throughput for IMS additional Nodes can be added to a host.

Fault Tolerance is achieved by adding additional Worker Service servers.

To learn more about FAST University, and register for classes please visit www.fastuniversity.com or contact an Education Consultant at [email protected].

I was at the MCT Summit in San Francisco a few weeks ago, and as soon as the I walked in the door, I was bombarded with questions about that pesky conflict of interest statement that you're asked to sign if you are interested in participating in MCP exam development (this doesn't apply to all of our exams, but it does apply to most of our TS and Pro exams). To clarify the requirements, I was asked to blog about what this COI really means. It really boils down to two restrictions:

• Teaching restriction: Any SME who participates in the alpha session cannot teach a course that is considered preparation for that exam for 12 months after the alpha. This ONLY applies to those who participate in the alpha.
• Learning content development restriction: SMEs who participate in any phase of exam content development and/or an item idea generation session (usually a part of the development of the content, or objective, domain) are prevented from developing any learning materials that would be considered part of the learning path for that exam. SMEs can develop training and other learning materials that are related to the use and functionality of the technology as long as their primary purpose is not exam preparation.

Why do we have these restrictions?

1. Our exams are intended to be independent evaluations of your skills. From a certification perspective, we don't care how you get those skills as long as you have them. If someone writes content for our exams as well as learning materials that are considered exam preparation, we may unintentionally create exam content that is actually a post-training test rather than that independent evaluation of your skills. One way to ensure that doesn't happen is to restrict exam authors from being courseware authors and vice versa.
2. This separation is required by most accrediting bodies and the standards that they use to evaluate the quality of a certification or testing body. As you know, some of our certifications have been accredited by ANSI and a few other similar organizations around the world. To maintain those accreditations, we have to maintain this separation. However, even if we didn't have this accreditation, we would still maintain this separation (see point #1).

What other questions do you have about this?

The happy ending to this story is that I was able to clarify the requirements with the MCTs who were interested in helping us create the SQL Server 2012 exams and our content development vendors as soon as I knew there was a misunderstanding... if I know there's a problem, I'll do everything in my power to fix it, but I can't fix it if I don't know. You have to tell me if something's broken, seriously. Reach out to [email protected] if you can't figure out who can solve your problem. We'll figure it out.

Want to develop exam or learning content for Microsoft's Certification program? We'd love to have your help! To get involved, sign up for our SME database. You can click here to go directly to the survey on Microsoft Connect, or click here for a link to a post with more complete instructions.

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 can create a searchable index of documents stored either in a file share, in SharePoint Server 2010, or various other file repositories. The process of indexing new documents or content is called Crawling. Crawled properties are metadata (such as author, title, or subject) that are extracted from documents during crawls. Managed properties are metadata that can appear in refined searches.

Searches can be performed only on managed properties, not crawled properties. To make a crawled property available for search queries and display in Advanced Search and search results, you must map it to a managed property. You can map multiple crawled properties to a single managed property or map a single crawled property to multiple managed properties. If a managed property has multiple crawled properties mapped to it, and a document contains values for more than one of the crawled properties, the order in which the properties are mapped and their priority determine the value of the managed property.

For example, three different document types might have different names for the property that identifies the author. One document type might name this property Author, another Writer, and a third Property3. Although all three are crawled properties, only the documents with the Author property appear in search results when a user queries by author. To ensure that all documents appear in search results, map each of these crawled properties to the Author managed property.

Crawled and Managed Properties are managed by the Search Service Application.  By default, or when you create a new Search Service Application, there are 11 crawled property categories available in a SharePoint Server 2010 installation.

To learn more about Crawled and Managed Properties, register for the 3-day 10802 Microsoft Enterprise Search for IT Professionals course that covers SharePoint Server 2010 Search and also FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. To register, navigate to www.fastuniversity.com or contact an Education Consultant at [email protected].

By David Codrington