Share Your Projects

Yes, you can now easily share your projects with everyone with just a click (three to be precise)

Once you click the Share Project icon, you will asked for your permission to share

Once you click Share button, you will be given a short URL link which you can share with your colleagues or anyone you wish

[You cannot share with specific people though]

As you can see in the dialog above, you can stop sharing the project anytime.

The shared project will be opened Read Only

However, users can choose to Edit a Copy as long as they have signed up for an Office 365 preview account:

Link to my Top 10 Movies App Sample

My previous blog post discussed how to quickly build a simple movie app in Napa.

You can view the full sample here - https://aka.ms/yojdqj

For the sample to work, you need to update the API key to access the Rotten Tomatoes API. You can get a key here - https://developer.rottentomatoes.com/

Once you have the key, open Scripts\App.js and Scripts\ClientWebPart.js and insert your key where it says "<your api key>"

Have you used the Share Project feature yet? Do leave your feedback in the comments!

• Introducing Apps for Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013

Getting Your Office 365 Preview Account

To build apps using the new “Napa” Development Tools, you first need to sign up for the Office 365 Preview which includes the new SharePoint 2013 Preview.

You can find the instructions to do so here - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/apps/jj220030(v=office.15)

Introducing “Napa” Development Tools

“Napa” is a browser based code editor to build quick and easy apps for Office 2013 (Word, Excel, Outlook and Project) and SharePoint 2013. If you haven’t guessed it already, “Napa” itself is a cloud app hosted in Windows Azure!

Once you have signed up and logged into SharePoint 2013 Online, you can add “Napa” app to your SharePoint Developer Site from the SharePoint Store.

NOTE: You can only test and deploy SharePoint apps in a Developer site. You have to wait for Office 365 to provision it before you can add the “Napa” tools.

Once added to your SharePoint developer site, you will be able to access the “Napa” tool from the App Collection:

Once you are in “Napa” you can now create and manage projects

The editor is also simple and intuitive

Ok, so lets create our Movie App!

Introducing Movie App

We will be building a simple movie app that displays top 10 movies from Rotten Tomatoes.

Below is the final app screenshot:

We will use the following technologies:

• JavaScript
• jQuery
• JSRender
• HTML

For this demo, we will not be using any SharePoint capabilities such as lists, libraries.

Creating the SharePoint App

Click on Add New Project and select App for SharePoint

Lets call our project Top 10 Movies and click Create to create the project

Napa creates the project some default files.

Hit the play ( )button to run project and test the app.

Napa will build, package and deploy the app to your developer site.

Exploring Project Contents

Napa by default creates the following files:

• Default.aspx is the Start Page and provides the full page app experience which is what you saw when you deployed the app.
• ClientWebPart.aspx provides the App Part experience
• App.css contains the default styling and can be used to add any custom styles required
• App.js contains the required JavaScript required and has some default code to kick start your SharePoint development. (This blog post will not be covering any of those)
• AppIcon.png is the default app icon

Modifying App.js

In order to get the top 10 movies, we will be using www.rottentomatoes.com API. You can find the full documentation here. You will also need a API key to query the service.

As mentioned in my earlier blog post, we will be using JavaScript as our development language to query and parse the movie data.

Open App.js, delete everything and add the following code:

// rotten tomatoes variables
var apikey = "<your api key">; 
var baseUrl = "https://api.rottentomatoes.com/api/public/v1.0"; 

var moviesSearchUrl = baseUrl + '/lists/movies/box_office.json?apikey=' + apikey; 

// This code runs when the DOM is ready.
$(document).ready(function () {
    getMovies();
});

// This function gets the movies
function getMovies() {
    
    $.ajax({url: moviesSearchUrl,
            dataType: "jsonp",
            success: searchCallback});
}

// callback for when we get back the results
function searchCallback(data) {
    
    
} 

The getMovies function performs a jQuery asynchronous AJAX HTTP call to the rotten tomatoes web service. Note we are expecting JSONP data type back from the web service.

Modify Default.aspx

Open Default.aspx and include the following inside PlaceHolderMain

<div class="intro">
    <img src="../Images/movie-banner.jpg"/>
    <p><h1>Top 10 Movies</h1></p>
    <p>Powered by <a href="www.rottentomatoes.com">www.rottentomatoes.com</a></p>
</div>

<div id="movieContainer">
   
</div>

<script id="movieTemplate" type="text/x-jsrender">
  <div class="movie">
      <div class="movieIntro">
          <div class="movieTitle"><a href="{{:links.alternate}}">{{:title}}</a></div>
        <div>Critics Ratings: {{:ratings.critics_score}} / 100</div>              
    </div>
    <div class="movieDetails">
        <p class="movieImage"><img src="{{:posters.detailed}}"/></p>
        <p class="movieSynopsis">{{:synopsis}}</p>
        <p class="moreInfo"><a href="{{:links.alternate}}">Read More</a></p>                    
    </div>
  </div>
</script>

As you can see we are using JSRender to build our UI.

If you are not familiar with JSRender, I would highly recommend reading the following two articles to get familiar with JSRender.

• Using JsRender with JavaScript and HTML
• Advanced JsRender Templating Features

It is powerful and saves heaps of times to render HTML content!

As we are using JSONP format, note how easy it is to specify the object you want to display:

<div>Critics Ratings: {{:ratings.critics_score}} / 100</div>

Telling the app to render the contents into this template is very simple – Open App.js and add the replace the callback function searchCallback with the following:

function searchCallback(data) {
    
    $("#movieContainer").html($("#movieTemplate").render(data.movies));
} 

The code says to render the search result object data.movies, which is the collection of movies into the movieTemplate template and insert the output into the movieContainer which is a div.

Some things to note in the Default.aspx are:

• It already references the required JavaScript files including App.js and jQuery
• It also has the required ASP.NET directives needed if you want to use SharePoint components

Adding JSRender

You can download the JSRender here - https://github.com/BorisMoore/jsrender

To upload the jsrender.js to our project:

• Right click on Scripts folder and select upload

• Upload your jsrender.js file

Now that we have uploaded the jsrender.js file, we can reference it in the Default.aspx by adding the following in the PlaceHolderAdditionalPageHead:

<script src="../Scripts/jsrender.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Adding Styles

Open App.css in the Content folder and replace the contents with the following:

.partBody
{
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    border: 0;
}

.partDiv
{
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    border: 0;
    position: relative;
    width: 300px;
    height: 200px;
    background-color: #0000FF;
    font-family: 'Segoe UI', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    color: #FFFFFF;
    font-size: 14pt;
}

.partContent
{
    position: absolute;
    top: 5px;
    left: 5px;
}

.movie {    
    border:1px;
    clear:both;
    border-style: solid;
    padding-bottom:20px;
    margin-bottom:10px;
    width:auto;
    height:320px !important;
}

.movieIntro {
    margin-left: 10px;
    position:relative;
}
.movieImage {
    float:left;
    margin-top:10px;
    margin-left: 10px;
    width:auto;
}

.movieSynopsis {
    width:auto;
    font-size:large;
    margin-left: 200px; margin-top: 5px;
}

.movieTitle {
    margin-top:10px;
    font-weight: bold;
    height: 20px;
    position:relative;
}

.moreInfo{
    width:auto; 
    margin-left: 200px; 
    font-size: large; 
    margin-top: -10px;
}

.spacer {
    clear:both;
}

Deploy and Test Your App

Hit the play button to run the project and test the app. If everything is right, you should see the following:

NOTE: I have not provided the banner image used. Feel free to include your custom image instead. You can upload your custom image into the Images folder.

Modifying Project Properties

Hit the properties ()button To modify any project properties:

As you can see we have chosen a custom icon for our app and modified the title and name.

NOTE: I have not provided the custom icon image used. Feel free to include your custom icon image instead. You can upload your custom icon image into the Images folder.

Hi the play button to deploy again. Once the app is loaded, click on the Developer Site to go back to your site

Navigate to Site Contents and you should see the movies app

What we have seen so far is the full page experience, lets look at how to modify and use the App Part.

Building App Part

With app parts, you can show your app user experience right in the host web. An app part displays your app content using an IFrame.

In order to build the App Part, we need to modify the ClientWebPart.aspx

Open ClientWebPart.aspx , replace the content below WebPartPage:AllowFraming tag with the following:

<html>
    <head>
        <!-- Add your CSS styles to the following file -->
        <link rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../Content/App.css" />

        <!-- The following scripts are needed when using the SharePoint object model -->
        <script type="text/javascript" 
              src="https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/4.0/1/MicrosoftAjax.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" 
              src="/_layouts/15/sp.runtime.debug.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript"
  src="/_layouts/15/sp.debug.js"></script>
        
        <script type="text/javascript" 
            src="https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript" 
            src="../Scripts/jsrender.js"></script>
        <script type="text/javascript"
 src="../Scripts/ClientWebPart.js"></script>
    </head>

    <div id="movieContainer">
       
    </div>
    
    <script id="movieTemplate" type="text/x-jsrender">
      <div class="movie">
          <div class="movieIntro">
              <div class="movieTitle"><a href="{{:links.alternate}}">{{:title}}</a></div>
            <div>Critics Ratings: {{:ratings.critics_score}} / 100</div>              
        </div>
        <div class="movieDetails">
            <p class="movieImage"><img src="{{:posters.detailed}}"/></p>                                
        </div>
      </div>
    </script>
    
</html>

Pretty much the same code as in Default.aspx

Right click in the Scripts folder and select add new item. In the New File dialog, select JavaScript File

Enter ClientWebPart.js for the File name and click Create.

Napa will create a JS file.

Replace the contents of the JS with the following:

// rotten tomatoes variables
var apikey = "<your api key>"; 
var baseUrl = "https://api.rottentomatoes.com/api/public/v1.0"; 
var moviesSearchUrl = baseUrl + '/lists/movies/box_office.json?apikey=' + apikey; 

$(document).ready(function () {
    $.ajax({url: moviesSearchUrl,
            dataType: "jsonp",
            success: searchCallback});
});

// callback for when we get back the results
function searchCallback(data) {    
    $("#movieContainer").html($("#movieTemplate").render(data.movies[0]));
} 

Again similar to App.js but notice we render only the first movie in the function searchCallback

Hit the play button to deploy the app

To test the App Part:

• Go to your developer site home page
• Edit the page
• In the ribbon, click on Insert | App Part
• Select Movie App
• Click Add

SharePoint will add the movies app App Part to the page, which should just render the first movie in the top 10 movies collection

Clicking on the Movie App will take users to the full page app experience.

To modify the app part properties:

• Click on the properties button to open the Project Properties
• Select Client Web Part
• Modify properties such as IFrame’s initial width and height

Conclusion

Congrats! You have now used Napa – browser based code editor - to build a fully functional SharePoint App!

In the next post, we will build SharePoint app that interacts with SharePoint data and assets like libraries and lists.

However Visual Studio 2012 RTM does not include the Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 Developer Tools Preview with it. So, to install the preview tools, you need to grab the Microsoft Web Platform Installer

Download the web platform installer, search for SharePoint and you have it there:

So, “What amazing SharePoint app will you build today”

Below is a video introducing apps for Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013

Why build apps?

Internet is filled with many services today and people are always connected. People today tweet, facebook, yammer, blog, flickr etc., In fact, people rely on Internet to even buy a house, rent a house and even store their personal data in the cloud using services like SkyDrive, Dropbox. So, shouldn’t it be easy for developers to integrate these services into SharePoint and Office? That’s exactly what apps can do – enable developers easily build apps to consume services and build solutions that solves specific user needs.

Today with SharePoint 2010, developers have two choices to customise and extend SharePoint 2010 by building:

• Farm (full trust) Solutions
• Sandboxed Solutions

Most of the time developers have to decide on whether to build:

• Sites and sub sites
• Custom pages
• Web Parts
• Custom User Controls

This involves developer being familiar with the SharePoint development methodologies and stick with what SharePoint platform provides. For example, it is impossible to write a custom SharePoint 2010 solution using ASP.NET MVC even though SharePoint is based on .NET 3.5. This becomes more complex if developers want to build solutions for SharePoint Online.

Now with SharePoint 2013 developers can just say “I will build an App!”

Using the new app model, developers can now choose how they want to build the app and where they want to host the app so that the app and SharePoint 2013 can talk to each other if required.

Building an app

To build apps, developers have two choices to choose from:

• Visual Studio 2012
• “Napa” Office 365 Development Tool

While Visual Studio 2012 provides great in-depth support for building apps, the new “Napa” tool provides quick and easy way to build apps for the cloud! With “Napa” developers do not require any tool and build apps straight from the browser. Developers can export and import the app into Visual Studio 2012 with one click to leverage the powerful Visual Studio capabilities.

Hosting an app

To host an app, developers have two choices to choose from:

• Cloud Hosted App
  • This may refer the app being hosted in a custom hosting provider or in Windows Azure
• SharePoint Hosted App
  • This refers to the app being hosted within SharePoint whether on-premises or Office 365 SharePoint 2013 Online

Below is a simple comparison between Cloud Hosted and SharePoint Hosted apps:

Getting Started

In the next blog post we will build our first SharePoint ‘Movie App’ using “Napa”.

Meanwhile, below are some great links to get you started:

• Office Development Portal
• Start Building apps for Office and SharePoint
• Apps for SharePoint Overview
• Apps for SharePoint References – .NET client API reference, JavaScript Object Model reference
• Developer Training
  • Developer-focused how to training and walkthrough videos about Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013 including changes and new features for search, social, ECM, WCM, and REST

If you are in New Zealand, you can use the app to browse local events in your region from the Event Finder web site – https://www.eventfinder.co.nz

For the rest of the world, the app should still work. So if you are planning to visit New Zealand, make sure you have the app to find what’s going on!

Home Screen

Below is the screenshot of the home screen:

The home screen lists events that are featured, events happening today, tomorrow and this weekend

The events are categorised by Category which is available as Jump List.

[If you don’t know what a Jump List is, just click on the Category, which in the above screen shot would be ‘Comedy’.]

You can also tap and hold on an event to reveal the context menu – where you can add the event to your Wishlist or create Reminders or share the event via email (See Full Version for more details)

Below is the event page showing the event information:

The event page gives you information about the event schedule, ticketing, location and small blurb about the event. For the full information about the event, you can browse the event web site from the ‘Tap here for event website’

Search Events

In the current version, you can search events in your selected region. In the trial version, this is always your current region.

Trial Version

With the trial version you are able to browse and search events from your current region. You cannot change or choose your current location. You can still get event information from the event page. Below is a screenshot of the home screen in the trial version:

Full Version

Following features are available in the paid version:

Browse events by your preferred location

The following regions are available:

1. Auckland
2. Hamilton
3. Rotorua
4. Palmerston North
5. Wellington
6. Christchurch
7. Dunedin

You can choose and change your location anytime and the app will remember it when it launches next time.

Browse events by category

You can view events by category by choosing your category:

Event Reminders

Don't miss another event, create reminders for events!

Reminders are fully integrated into Windows Phone, so you will get reminded the same way as your meeting reminders

Pin your favourite events to Start

Yes! You can pin your favourite events to the Start Screen!

Event Wishlist

You can also create a wishlist of events you want to go to!

Just go to an event page and hit the Wishlist icon to add events to your wishlist

Feedback and Review

Last but not the least, don’t forget to try/buy the app and please do leave your review in the Marketplace!

You can send any feedback directly from the app too!

It is true that workflows do not get published along with the content type from the hub. That means, if you have associated a workflow to a content type and publish the content type, only the content type is published and not the workflow.

So how do I approach this problem if I want to associate my workflow with the published content type?

The key thing here is installing your workflow in the hub and in all the subscriber site collections.

• Create a workflow and associate it with your content type in the hub.
• Before publishing this content type, export the reusable workflow and import it in all the subscriber site collections or deploy your workflow to the farm if it is a farm solution
• Activate your workflow feature
• Now, your workflow is available in the hub as well as all the subscriber site collections.
• Publish the content type. The workflow association will be published.

To test this:

In the subscriber site collection:

• Add the published content type to a document library (or list)
• Go to the library’s Workflow Settings Page
• Select the published content type and click on Add Workflow
• It should navigate you to the Workflow Settings page of that content type
• Notice your workflow associated with the published content type available to choose in the Workflow Template choices.
• The association still exists even if you republish the content type.

Some good links to bookmark re. workflows:

SharePoint 2010 Workflow Resource Center

Building Effective Workflows using SharePoint Server 2010

SharePoint Server 2010 Workflow Administration

It will be great if you can leave any comments if you are using workflows with the content types published from the hub. Love to hear your experiences.

TFS Express 11 is a new product line-up in the Visual Studio Express Editions giving you the capability to utilise a subset of TFS features such as:

• Source code control
• Work Item Tracking
• Build Automation

I would recommend reading Brian’s blog post to understand what is included in TFS Express.

In short, if you are a small team, want to explore what TFS offers, then this is a great way to start as it is FREE!

Some key things to note are:

• TFS Express only supports SQL Express Edition
• Visual Studio Express Editions support connecting to TFS Express

Installing TFS Express 11

Installing TFS Express is very easy. Consider this as the TFS Basic Install.

You can install it in almost any system you have. It does not require you to have a domain. Workgroup will be used if no domain. That means, you can just turn that small little server lying in the corner to be as your TFS Express

The installer also installs SQL Server Express Edition. TFS Express only supports SQL Express as its data tier.

Once installed, you get the familiar TFS Configuration Wizard to configure TFS

Once configured, you can then open the Administration Console to configure your Application Tier

TFS Express also installs web access at - :8080/tfs">:8080/tfs">:8080/tfs">:8080/tfs">:8080/tfs">https://<tfs-server>:8080/tfs

Connecting from Visual Studio Express

Microsoft has added the TFS integration with the Express 11 Editions, meaning that you can connect to a TFS instance.

I have installed Visual Studio 11 Express Beta for Web.

You can connect to TFS Express instance from the Team menu:

Once connected, you can do the usual things you will normally do with any TFS connection.

TFS Process Templates

The process template now includes the Scrum template by default and it is the default when you create a new team project - Microsoft  Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 – Preview3

On the whole, TFS Express is a great way to start your TFS journey if you are new to TFS.

You can download the TFS Express 11 Beta here

When customers ask me what they should be doing with their newly deployed SharePoint environment, I say Put People First! – Let users find their peers, colleagues. Let them share information with their peers/colleagues. Redirecting your users to search page doesn’t count. It is just a blank white page! You should see how you can show the available options to users so they get interested with the content and come back often to search for people. Sometimes, small change can drive user adoption!

Building a simple Staff Directory

Customising the Refinement Panel

Customising the Search Options Popup

Building a simple Staff Directory

Building a Staff Directory, listing all users and allowing to filter according to metadata properties such as department, office would be a good start.

To do so, create your search center (as a separate site collection or sub site).

Once created, click on Site Actions | View All Site Content

Click on Pages library under Document Library

Create a new Page

Enter Staff Directory for Title and select People search results as the page layout and click Create to create the page

Click on Staff Directory page to open the page and click on Site Actions | Edit Page to edit the page

Edit the People Search Core Results web part

In the web part properties, expand Results Query Options

Enter the following in the Append Text To Query:

contentclass:spspeople

In the web part properties, Click Ok

Edit the People Search Box web part

In the web part properties, expand Miscellaneous

Change the Target search results page url to your staff directory page. In my case it was: Staff-Directory.aspx

Click Ok

Save the page

You should now see the page displaying people results automatically and also the refinement panel filled with metadata values

You can use the refinement panel to filter your results

Search Site Clean-up

Now that we have our Staff Directory page working, we can clean up few things like:

• Removing the search tabs
  • Go to Site Actions | View All Site Content
  • Delete all the items in the the following lists:
    • Tabs in Search Pages
    • Tabs in Search Results
• Make Staff Directory page home page
  • Navigate to the staff directory page
  • In the Ribbon, click on Page tab and then click on Make Homepage

Customising the Refinement Panel

We would now like to customise the refinement panel where we would like to show and allow users to filter by, say, Department.

In order to add the department metadata in the refinement panel, we need to create a new Managed Property under Search Administration

NOTE: The out of the box Department managed property does not work well with refinement panel. This is a known issue.

Open Central Administration and navigate to your Search Service Application

In the Search Administration, click on Managed Properties in the left hand navigation

Click on New Managed Property

Enter the following:

Choose Text for the type of information

Click on Add Mapping

Search for department and then choose People: Department(Text) from the results and click Ok

Optionally you can select this property to be used in scopes

Perform a full crawl on the people content source

Navigate to the staff directory page and click on Site Actions | Edit Page

Edit the People Refinement Panel web part

In the web part properties, expand Refinement

The Filter Category Definition is responsible for showing the filters in the refinement panel. We need to edit this and add our department metadata. Below is the XML text for the department metadata:

<Category Title="Department"
  Description="Use this filter to restrict results to a specific department"
  Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator"
  MetadataThreshold="5"
  NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4"
  MaxNumberOfFilters="50"
  SortBy="Frequency"
  SortDirection="Descending"
  SortByForMoreFilters="Name"
  SortDirectionForMoreFilters="Ascending"
  ShowMoreLink="True"
  MappedProperty="DepartmentNames"
  MoreLinkText="show more"
  LessLinkText="show fewer"/>

Notice the highlighted property which defines our managed property we created earlier. Make sure the value matches the managed property name.

Below is the full XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><FilterCategories> 
<Category Title="View" Description="View matches by" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.RankingModelFilterGenerator"    MetadataThreshold="3"    NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="3" ShowMoreLink="False"  MappedProperty=""/> 
<Category Title="spshjobtitle" Description="Use this filter to restrict results to a specific job title" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator"  MetadataThreshold="3" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="3" MaxNumberOfFilters="50" ShowMoreLink="True" MappedProperty="ows_MetadataFacetInfo" MoreLinkText="show more" LessLinkText="show fewer"/>  
<Category Title="Organization" Description="Use this filter to restrict results to a specific organization"  Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator"  MetadataThreshold="5" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4" MaxNumberOfFilters="50" SortBy="Frequency"  SortDirection="Descending" SortByForMoreFilters="Name" SortDirectionForMoreFilters="Ascending" ShowMoreLink="True" MappedProperty="OrgNames" MoreLinkText="show more" LessLinkText="show fewer"/>  
<Category Title="Department" Description="Use this filter to restrict results to a specific department"  Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator"  MetadataThreshold="5" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4" MaxNumberOfFilters="50" SortBy="Frequency"  SortDirection="Descending" SortByForMoreFilters="Name" SortDirectionForMoreFilters="Ascending" ShowMoreLink="True" MappedProperty="DepartmentNames" MoreLinkText="show more" LessLinkText="show fewer"/>  
<Category Title="Managed Metadata Columns" Description="Managed metadata of the documents" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.TaxonomyFilterGenerator" MetadataThreshold="3" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="3" MaxNumberOfFilters="50"        ShowMoreLink="True"    MappedProperty="ows_MetadataFacetInfo" MoreLinkText="show more" LessLinkText="show fewer"/>
</FilterCategories>

Uncheck the Use Default Configuration

In the web part properties, click Ok and Save the page

We should now see Department in the refinement panel

If you want to add any other property to the refinement pane, make sure you have a managed property associated with it.

Customising the Search Options Popup

Search options is a popup that comes up with when you click the 'Search Options’ link

You can customise this popup to include your option, say Department so we could search by department

Navigate to staff directory page and click Site Actions | Edit

Edit the People Search Box web part

In the web part properties, expand Miscellaneous

The Properties XML defines what appears in the popup. Below is the XML to add Department property:

<Property Name="Department" ManagedName="Department" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:Department"/>

Make sure the highlighted values are same as the managed property in the search administration. The text in bold should match the user profile property.

Below is the full XML which you can replace for the Properties XML

<Properties>
<Property Name="LastName" ManagedName="LastName" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:LastName"/>
<Property Name="FirstName" ManagedName="FirstName" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:FirstName"/>
<Property Name="JobTitle" ManagedName="JobTitle" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:SPS-JobTitle"/>
<Property Name="Department" ManagedName="Department" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:Department"/>
<Property Name="PersonKeywords" ManagedName="PersonKeywords" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:SPS-PersonKeywords">
<EffectiveProperty Name="Responsibility" ManagedName="Responsibility" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:SPS-Responsibility"/>
<EffectiveProperty Name="Skills" ManagedName="Skills" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:SPS-Skills"/>
<EffectiveProperty Name="Interests" ManagedName="Interests" ProfileURI="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:sharepoint:portal:profile:SPS-Interests"/>
</Property>
</Properties>

In the web part properties, click Ok

Save the page

Click on Search Options and you should see the Department option in the popup

We just announced the beginning of the “Office 15” Technical Preview and a public beta later this summer! (Summer in the USA, Winter here in NZ)

While the Technical Preview program is already full, everyone will have the opportunity to try the Office 15 public beta later this summer, and we'll have more to share about the release then. In the meantime, I do want to thank everyone who is participating in the Technical Preview for their contributions and all our customers for their continued support.

Phonetic search

Below is a screen shot of the nickname search:

How does this work?

This is an enterprise search feature, meaning you should have SharePoint Standard (or SharePoint Enterprise) installed. It works in conjunction with the Microsoft Speech Server platform. This is one of the pre-requisite for SharePoint 2010. The pre-requisites installer installs the speech server for English US by default.

It basically has a list of ‘names’ and their associated ‘nicknames’ which is fed to the SharePoint 2010 Search to index. Once indexed, the search can then yield results for a nickname.

Configuring Phonetic Search

SharePoint 2010 already has this configured for you, but only for English US (en-US) locale. This means that if you are not using English US as your locale, you will not get any results for ‘nickname’ search.

To check your current phrases (names and nicknames) you can use the following PowerShell cmdlet – Get-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase – This will display everything including QuerySuggestionBlockList, SpellingSuggestionBlockList etc.,

Below is how you can use the cmdlet to display all language resources:

$searchApp = Get-SPServiceApplication | where{$_.DisplayName -eq "Search Service Application"}
Get-SPEnterpriseSearchLanagueResourcePhrase -SearchApplication $searchApp

Below is the output:

To get all phrases of ‘names’ and ‘nicknames’ for English US (en-US)":

Get-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -Type NickName -Language en-US -SearchApplication $searchApp | Format-Table -Property Phrase,Mapping

Default Phrases

The list of default phrases are stored in a large text file which you can find here:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Bin\languageresources.txt

The catch here is that if your locale is not en-US or if your browser locale is not set to en-US, the phonetic search will not work. This is because search does not have any nicknames registered for your locale (and/or language).

You can find your browser locale (in IE) by navigating to Tools –> Options and clicking on Languages button under Appearance:

Configuring Phonetic Search for your different English Locale (like, en-NZ/en-AU)

To make phonetic search work for your locale, you need to register your phrases for your locale.

One good place to start would be to extract the phrases from languageresources.txt file, corresponding to English language and register for your locale.

• Open the languageresources.txt in Excel
• Accept as Tab delimited file
• Select the Column D
• Navigate to Data tab in the Ribbon and click on Filter button

• In the Column D, click on the dropdown and select only ‘1033’

• This will show only the English phrases
• In the filter dropdown, select everything except ‘1033’
• Right click in the workbook and select Delete to delete all rows
• You should now see only the English phrases
• Delete Column C, D, E, F
• Insert a column in the first row and type name in Column A and nickname in Column B
• Save the file as .CSV and call it languageresources-<your-locale>.csv. I called it languageresources-en-NZ.csv

You can add your own phrases if you cannot find one in the list.

I wrote a simple PowerShell script Set-SPPhoneticSearch.ps1 to register the phrases:

param(
    [string]$SearchServiceApplication = $(throw "please specify the Search Service Application display name!"),
    [string]$LanguageResources = $(throw "please specify the full path of the language resources csv path!"),
    [string]$Language = $(throw "please specify the language")
)

# Get the search service application id
"Getting the search service application ..."
$searchApp = Get-SPServiceApplication | where{$_.DisplayName -eq $SearchServiceApplication}

# Impmort the CSV
"Importing the names and nicknames from $LanguageResources ..."
$phrases = Import-CSV $LanguageResources

# Register every name and nickname
"Registering the available names and nicknames ..."
"This will take some time. Please be patient!"
foreach($phrase in $phrases)
{
    New-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase -Name $($phrase.name) -Language $Language -Type "Nickname" -Mapping $($phrase.nickname) -SearchApplication $searchApp
}

# Start the timer job
Start-SPTimerJob -Identity "Prepare query suggestions"

Now I can call this script by:

.\Set-SPPhoneticSearch.ps1 -SearchServiceApplication "Search Service Application"
     -LanguageResources (Resolve-Path .\languageresources_en-NZ.csv)
     -Language en-NZ

This will take at least an hour to complete, so just sit back and relax. I would suggest to go out for a coffee

The PowerShell cmdlet New-SPEnterpriseSearchLanaguageResourcePhrase adds a language resource phrase to the search application. Our script reads the phrases from the CSV file. The script also starts the timer job Prepare query suggestions – This timer job is responsible for preparing query suggestions.

Similarly you can use Remove-SPEnterpriseSearchLanguageResourcePhrase to remove language resource phrase from the search application.

Once the script completes registering the phrases, you should do a full crawl on the people content source. The phonetic search should now work for your locale!

What about other Languages?

You need to download the appropriate Speech Server runtime for your language. You can download them here. Once installed you can follow the steps above.

You can download the PowerShell script used in this post here: https://bit.ly/wqEW4w