Targeting SharePoint search scopes to different audiences

Part 1 – Creating a Content Source and Scope

This blog post series details how to target search tabs in SharePoint enterprise search to specific groups of people. I have provided a guide as to how to set this up from start to finish.

The search tabs in SharePoint relate to pages where scopes can be defined for narrowing down results as shown below.

Firstly you need to create a content source for the scope to use of the site you wish to crawl / index. In my case this was a non SharePoint website. So for the purposes of the demo I’ll create a content source called ‘Pauls Blog’ and crawl http://www.paulgrimley.com.

Once the content source is created run a full crawl and make sure that you successfully crawl by checking the crawl log.

Whilst the content source is crawling next thing to do is create a scope that contains the content source (make sure you compile the scope from search administration).

From the search navigation on the left hand select scopes under ‘Queries and Results’. From here click ‘New Scope’.

We’ll come back to the search results page later as this will need configuring. On the next page one thing that can trip you up assuming that you’ve created you’re scope and its ready. Before its ready to be used the scope needs two things – rules and compiling once the rules are in place. Firstly select ‘Add Rules’ which is where I will assign the content source created earlier to the scope.

On the next page simply select the content source option and pick Pauls Blog from the drop down and click ok.

Notice on the next page it will state the scope is not ready until the next scheduled compile which in this case is 8 minutes.

To speed up this process you can force an immediate update of the job by compiling scopes from the search administration home page. Simply select Start update now and this should compile your scope within a small space of time.

So now the scope should be available for use within the enterprise search site collection. In Part 2 I will discuss creating a separate results page that can be secured and targeted at specific individuals.