Notice: The Display Language should be English, because I check for the word 'Any' in the XSL. You can/should adjust this by yourself in rows 30, 33, 36 for your preferred language.
Zip file with two webparts: - HTML Form Web Part.dwp with navigation and the javascript; - Refinement Panel.webpart with the extended XSL and customized categories. Add the web parts to the Left Zone in the Search results page, and remove the original Refinement Panel web part.
The selection of multiple Refiners in the same category is possible out of the box.
For instance if we select the Word refiner in the Result Type category it will show us the following url:
According to the Keyword Query Syntax Reference Multiple Property Restrictions work like this:
When you use multiple instances of the same property restriction, matches are based on the union of the property restrictions in the keyword query. This is functionally the same as using the OR Boolean operator.
So if we just add "%20fileextension%3D%22pdf%22" to the URL it will get us Word OR Pdf documents as a result.
The nice thing is that the XSL recognizes both refiners as selected.
Even the deselection of a selected refiner is working.
In this case, if we would deselect the Word refiner, the url is correct:
http://sp2010/SearchCenter/Pages/results.aspx?k=sharepoint&r=fileextension%3D%22pdf%22
But on the other hand if we would deselect the Pdf refiner the logic is broken. When multiple instances of the same property are used -like Word- the url is not correctly processed: the spaces (OR) are replaced by AND. This will show us no results of course.
Another example of selection of multiple refiners is with the Author category.
The author can/will show us 2 names: the original author from the document property, and the one that created the document (by upload).
First we select the original author of the document.
Then we select the creator of the document.
The deselection of a selected author is working fine.
Conclusion:
So the selection of multiple refiners in the same category is possible but the UI doesn't provide the full and correct navigation for it.
I was still not satisfied with the possibilities I came up with to get the right icon for every filter value in the Refinement panel.
I wanted to be able to add a specific icon to the Refiner values belonging to the Filter category 'Author' for instance.
Therefore I had to promote the ManagedProperty parameter, so its value would be available in the FilterLink template.
Here is the complete XSL that can replace the original one. Add this via the XSL Editor of the Refinement Panel webpart:
The result is a Refinement Panel with icons, where a hyperlink is added to the icons of the Filter categories 'Site' and 'Author':
- Site: Open site in new window
- Author: hyperlink to a people search results page with a TOP Federated Results webpart, that includes the local people search and an internet people search via the api of linkedin, pipl, etc.
Replace the url in row 253 with the url of your own search center.
Wish list:
- Display avatar of the authors: due to the lack of e-mail address and MD5 encoding this is difficult to achieve;
- Show user profile on hoover with javascript/jQuery: be my guest. => There is a solution for this in SP2013/Online made by Elio Struyf: People refinement made easy by adding profile pictures.
I managed to make it possible to select multiple Refiners via the UI, just by extending the XSL of the Refinement Panel and adding a little javascript.
There are two Russian vendors that offer free SharePoint tools.
RebelSearch Document Preview for SharePoint Search 2010
Install this on your WFE server(s) and you will have a preview option of the search results.
Be aware that it runs under the farm service account, and that is considered a security risk by SharePoint itself.
HarePoint Workflow Scheduler , that allows automatic execution of SharePoint workflows by schedule.
HarePoint Workflow Extensions Free Set of Activities, with a lot of String functions (finally available in SPD!).
Together with Virto Workflow Activities Kit that offers a free rollup of activities from Codeplex, these are a very useful extension of the workflow activities in SharePoint Designer.
How to connect from SAP to SharePoint to show related documents
Use case:
In SAP we have the registration of objects, and we want to link relevant documents or forms to these objects. Instead of the options SAP DMS, Web Dynpro or Adobe forms, we want to make use of SharePoint for this purpose.
So related documents are stored in SharePoint. But how to get to them, how to upload them and link them to the SAP objects?
Solution:
With some modest customization of SAP it is possible to present an option (under the button) to open a browser with a constructed url based on the metadata from SAP. For example: http://sp2010/objectinfo/default.aspx?ObjectID=obj000333
The first part of the url is static:"http://sp2010/objectinfo/default.aspx?ObjectID=", and the ID of the SAP object is added: "obj000333".
This url will connect to the default page of a Document Center site in SharePoint.
What should the user experience be like?
First of all we want to show a selection of documents and pictures based on the ID of the SAP object. This can be done with the help of a Query String (URL) Filter webpart that gets the value of the Query String Parameter: ObjectID. Then we connect to send the filter values to the Documents and Pictures webpart.
We should also be able to add new documents or pictures to the libraries and have the object ID added to them automatically after upload. With the help of javascript we are able to store the Object ID and current user ID as session variables, so the values can be used after upload to modify the properties of the (new) documents and pictures. This is one of the Off-The-Shelf scripts that I have described in an earlier post.
Finally we want to show an input box with the Object ID as default value, and the manual input can be used to change the filter value on the spot.
When the documents are stored in more than one location it's better to fire a search query from SAP.
Add the ObjectID as managed property to your search administration, so it will be indexed and can be used as keyword in the search query.
The url should be like: http://sp2010/SearchCenter/Pages/results.aspx?k=ObjectID%3A%22obj000333%22