Sharepoint Search - Content Sources

In this article we can explore Content Sources and how to add a new Content Source.

Content Sources

Content Source represents the origin of content. As SharePoint handles various contents like Database, File System etc. there should be a Indexing Service to handle all these sources.

Please have a note that SQL Server is having Full Text Search index, but SharePoint has its own Indexing engines.

By default SharePoint searches in the site collection and document libraries.

Using Custom Content Source configuration we can make SharePoint search the possible areas:

• File System Drives
• Network Drives
• Lotus Notes Data
• Web Sites

Adding new Content Source

In this example we are trying to add a File System content source. After adding, the user will be able to search on the files and contents inside it.

The following are the steps involved:

1. Create a Share Folder named Contents with a Text File inside it and make Read/Write permissions for Everyone:
   
   
   
   Ensure that the above folder contains a text file with data for eg: MyTodo
    
2. Open the Central Administration web site and click on the Manage Service Applications link:
   
   
    
3. Click on the Search Service Applications from the page that appears:
   
   
    
4. Click the Content Sources link from the left pane:
   
   
    
   
5. Click on the New Content Source link from the page that appears:
   
   
    
6. Enter the following details in the Content Source page:
   
   
   
   Click the OK button and the Crawler will be performing a crawl.
    
7. Go back to the main site and enter the keyword to search for (MyToDo). You can view the following results:
   
   
   

This concludes our article on adding Content Source and doing a sample search.

Viewing Crawl History

We can always view the crawl log to check the activity was successful and view the errors if not. Use the View Crawl Log command to view this.



Starting Crawls

We can start, stop, and pause crawls manually by using the command bar as shown below. Please note that the data will not be searchable until after a full crawl.



Summary

In this article we have explored how to add a content source in a SharePoint site.