Create and configure a Search Service Application in SharePoint Server 2013

If you used the Farm Configuration Wizard after you installed SharePoint Server 2013 , a Search Service Application might have been created at that time. To verify whether a Search Service Application exists, you can click Manage service applications in the Application Management section on the Central Administration home page. For the remainder of this article, it is assumed that a Search Service Application does not exist yet, and that therefore you must create one.

When you deploy and configure a Search Service Application, you perform the following main tasks:

1.Create Accounts
Certain domain user accounts are required specifically for a Search Service Application.

2. Create a Search Service Application

A Search Service Application provides enterprise search features and functionality.

3. Configure the Search Service Application

Basic configuration of a Search Service Application includes configuring a default content access account, an email contact, and content sources.

4. Configure the Search Service Application Topology
You can deploy search components on different servers in the farm. You can also specify which instance of SQL Server is used to host the search-related databases.

Step 1: Create Accounts that are required for a SharePoint Search Service Application

The following table lists the accounts that are required when a Search Service Application is created.

The accounts that you use for the Search service, the Search Admin Web Service application pool, and the Search Query and Site Settings Web Service application pool must be registered as managed accounts in SharePoint Server 2013 Preview so that they are available when you create the Search Service Application. Use the following procedure to register each of these accounts as a managed account.

To Register a Managed Account

1. On the Central Administration home page, in the Quick Launch, click Security.

2. On the Security page, in the General Security section, click Configure managed accounts.

3. On the Managed Accounts page, click Register Managed Account.

4. On the Register Managed Account page, in the Account Registration section, type the user name and password that you want to use as credentials for the service account.

5. If you want SharePoint Server 2013 Preview to manage password changes for this account, select the Enable automatic password change check box and configure the parameters for automatic password change.

6. Click OK.

Step 2: Create a SharePoint Search Service Application

Each Search Service Application has a separate content index. You can create multiple Search Service Applications if you want to have different content indexes for different sets of content. For example, if you want to segregate sensitive content (such as employee benefits information) into a separate content index, you can create a separate Search Service Application to correspond to that set of content.

Use the following procedure to create a Search Service Application.

To create a Search Service Application

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group for the farm for which you want to create the service application.

2. On the Central Administration home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

3. On the Manage Service Applications page, on the ribbon, click New, and then click Search Service Application.

4. On the Create New Search Service Application page, do the following:

a) Accept the default value for Service Application name, or type a new name for the Search Service Application.

b) In the Search Service Account list, select the managed account that you registered in the previous procedure to run the Search service.

c) In the Application Pool for Search Admin Web Service section, do the following:

i. Select the Create new application pool option, and then specify a name for the application pool in the Application pool name text box.

ii. In the Select a security account for this application pool section, select the Configurable option, and then from the list select the account that you registered to run the application pool for the Search Admin Web Service.

d) In the Application Pool for Search Query and Site Settings Web Service section, do the following:

i. Choose the Create new application pool option, and then specify a name for the application pool in the Application pool name text box.

5. Click OK.

Step 3: Configure the SharePoint Search Service Application

You configure a Search Service Application on the Search Administration page for that service application. Use the following procedure to go to the Search Administration page for a particular Search Service Application.

To go to the Search Administration page

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is an administrator for the Search Service Application that you want to configure.

2. On the home page of the Central Administration website, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

3. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the Search Service Application that you want to configure.

On the Search Administration page, configure the settings as described in the following sections:

Specify the default content access account
Specify the contact email address
Create content sources

Specify the default content access account

When you create a Search Service Application, the account that you specify for the Search service is automatically configured as the default content access account. The crawler uses this account to crawl content that does not have an associated crawl rule that specifies a different account. For the default content access account, we recommend that you specify a domain user account that has read access to as much of the content that you want to crawl as possible. You can change the default content access account at any time.

If you have to crawl certain content by using a different account, you can create a crawl rule and specify a different account for crawling. Use the following procedure to specify the default content access account.

To specify the default content access account

1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link in the Default content access account row.

2. In the Default Content Access Account dialog box, in the Account box, type the account that you created for content access in the form domain\user name.

3. Type the password for this account in the Password and Confirm Password boxes.

4. Click OK.

To specify the default content access account

1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link in the Default content access account row.

2. In the Default Content Access Account dialog box, in the Account box, type the account that you created for content access in the form domain\user name.

3. Type the password for this account in the Password and Confirm Password boxes.

4. Click OK.

Specify the contact email address

The Search service writes the contact email address to the logs of crawled servers. The default contact email address, someone@example.com, is a placeholder. We recommend that you change this to an account that an external administrator can contact when a crawl might be contributing to a problem such as a decrease in performance on a server that the search system is crawling.

Use the following procedure to specify the contact email address.

To specify the contact email address

1. On the Search Administration page, in the System Status section, click the link for the Contact e-mail address.

2. In the Search E-mail Setting dialog box, in the E-mail Address box, type the email address that you want to appear in the logs of servers that are crawled by the search system.

3. Click OK.

Create content sources in a SharePoint Search Service Application

Crawling requires at least one content source. A content source is a set of options that you use to specify the type of content to crawl, the starting URLs to crawl, and when and how deep to crawl. When a Search Service Application is created, a content source named "Local SharePoint sites" is automatically created and configured for crawling all SharePoint sites in the local server farm. You can create content sources to specify other content to crawl and how the system will crawl that content. However, you do not have to create other content sources if you do not want to crawl content other than the SharePoint sites in the local farm.

If you choose the Standalone installation option when you install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview, a full crawl of all SharePoint sites in the farm is automatically performed after installation and an incremental crawl is scheduled to occur every 20 minutes after that. If you choose the Server Farm installation option when you install SharePoint Server 2013 Preview, no crawls are automatically scheduled or performed.

Step 4: Configure the SharePoint Search Service Application Topology

When you create a Search Service Application, the SharePoint Server Search service is started on the application server that is hosting the Central Administration website, and search components are deployed to that server. If you have more than one application server in your farm, you can deploy additional search components on other application servers, depending on your requirements. You can deploy multiple instances of certain components.

Create a Search Center site in SharePoint 2013 Preview

A Search Center site, or Search Center, provides an interface for users to submit search queries and view search results. A Search Center site is the top-level site of a site collection that a farm administrator creates by using the Enterprise Search Center template or the Basic Search Center template.

Depending on the kind of installation that you performed and the site collection template that you selected at that time, the farm might already have a Search Center site. To check this, browse to the top-level site for the site collection that you created during installation. In either case, you can create a Search Center site and grant users access to it by using the procedures in this article. After you create the Search Center site, the site collection administrator or site owner might want to add features and functionality so that the site provides a richer interface than the search box that appears by default on each SharePoint site.

To create a SharePoint Search Center Site

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Farm Administrators group.

2. On the home page of the Central Administration website, in the Application Management section, click Create site collections.

3. On the Create Site Collection page, do the following:

a) In the Web Application section, select a web application to contain the new site collection. To use a web application other than the one that is displayed, click the web application that is displayed, and then click Change Web Application.

b) In the Title and Description section, in the Title box, type the name for the new Search Center site. Optionally, type a description in the Description box.

c) In the Web Site Address section, for the part of the URL immediately after the web application address, select /sites/, or select a managed path that was previously defined, and then type the final part of the URL.

Note the address of the new Search Center for future reference.

d) In the Template Selection section, do the following:

i. In the Select the experience version drop-down list, select 2013 to create a Search Center site that provides the SharePoint 2013 Preview user experience, or select 2010 to create a Search Center site that provides the SharePoint 2010 Products user experience.

ii. In the Select a template subsection, click the Enterprise tab, and then do one of the following:

· If you are using SharePoint Foundation 2013 Preview, select the Basic Search Center template.

· Otherwise, if you are using SharePoint Server 2013 Preview, select the Enterprise Search Center template.

e) In the Primary Site Collection Administrator section, in the User name box, type the user name of the primary site collection administrator for this site collection in the form domain\user name.

f) (Optional) In the Secondary Site Collection Administrator section, type the user name of a secondary site collection administrator in the form domain\user name.

g) In the Quota Template section, select No Quota.

A Search Center site is not intended to be a data repository. Therefore, you do not have to select a quota template.

h) Click OK.

4. On the Top-Level Site Successfully Created page, click the link to the Search Center site that you created.

After you create the Search Center site, you must grant site access to users so that they can perform search queries and view search results. Use the following procedure to grant site access to users.

To grant access to the SharePoint Search Center

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure is a member of the Owners group on the Search Center site.

2. In a web browser, go to the Search Center site.

3. Open the Site menu by clicking the gear icon in the upper-right portion of the page, and then click Site Permissions.

4. In the Shared with dialog box, click Invite people.

5. In the Share dialog box, in the Enter users separated with semicolons text box, type the names of the Windows user groups and Windows users to whom you want to grant permissions for submitting queries and viewing search results in the Search Center.

For example, to grant access to the Search Center to all Windows users, type NT Authority\authenticated users.

6. Click Show options.

7. Clear the Send an email invitation check box.

8. In the Select a group or permission level drop-down list, select Visitors [Read].

9. Click Share.

Be sure that the Search Service Application has been created and the service is up and running.

The first new thing that I saw is the “Where should users searches go?” When you click on it, it will ask you to fill the “Preferred Search Center”

At the right side, you can see that the service has never been ran, so you can click on the left side “Content Sources”

So we are going to test the search on my Portal SpPirate, I made a search on Document, but the search returned nothing.

Under Content Sources we can define which site should be crawled for search. I have only one site, but if you have many sites, you can edit them here.

Under the version 2010, you had incremental and full crawl. Now there is a new crawl i.e. “Continuous Crawl”.

Note: This is a special type of crawl that eliminates the need to create incremental crawl schedules and will seamlessly work with the content source to provide maximum freshness.

When you start the crawl you will see that the Status will change.