MC+A

Please see information on Google’s Support site:

https://support.google.com/enterprise/doc/gsa/00/update_index_page.html

Customers under Sliver & Gold support constracts with MC+A will be contacted regarding upgrading.

Google Enterprise has released a maintenance release of the software. Some minor fixes have been included. You can download the update at:

https://support.google.com/enterprise/

with the login credentials provided in your welcome email. If you are under a maintenance contract, MC+A Support will be contacting you to schedule your update. If you need assistance with the release, contact MC+A support or Google support.

Invariably, more often recently we have been involved with configuring the Google Search Appliance with Single Sign On forms authentication based content. As you may know, this is one of my many on board features of the appliance. In many cases it can be easier said than done to complete the wizard successfully. This article demonstrates some easy tricks to help you complete the wizard.  Unfortunately the topic of SSO is quite large.  I will be just describing some short cuts that we employ when attempting to configure the Appliance.

Single Sign On – The Problem

Most of the difficulties in completing the form come from small amounts of javascript that is called with the web browser normally submits the form. The appliance does not execute any javascript on the page. It instead simply rewrites the form and presents it to you. Evidence of javascript is when you hover over you see javascript:submitLogin() in your browsers status window.

Single Sign On – The Solution

Using a tool like HTTP Analyzer you can examing the posts and responses during the normal login process. By taking note of the form variables submitted you can recreate this if necessary during the form wizard process.

Be careful to note what the javascript is actually doing. In most cases, there is no logic in the javascript. In that case, you may use the next technique to complete the wizard successfully.

Completing the wizard:

1. Turn off Styles

   Sometimes developers will use Javascript to turn on and off styles. By turning off all styles, you’ll see areas of the HTML that is hidden by CSS styles. In some cases, simply complete the form and save.

2. Editing the HTML that the Google Search Appliance returns to you.

   If you submit a ticket to Google Support with javascript as the cause, the first response will be to see about getting the javascript removed. This will involved multiple internal departments within your company or your clients company.

   I find that this can be difficult at times. At best, a company can roll a version of the form that just the GSA sees. Since you may need to reset the form in the future, a simple swap form temporally will need to be repeated in the future and this too can cause internal stagnation.

   You can save yourself the trouble by simplifying editing the HTML that is returned by the appliance. If you remember earlier, I said to note what actual form variables need to be sent. Simply find the form and make appropriate changes to mimic the original submission. For example, your GSA returned form could look like this.

   <form action="/EnterpriseController" method="post" name="frm1" onsubmit="defaultSubmit(); return false;" />
   <input name="cookieUrl" value="http://sso.mysite.edu:80/amserver/SomethingWrong/" type="hidden" />
   <input name="GoogleOriginalFormMethod" value="GET" type="hidden" />
   <input name="cookieLoginSubmit" value="true" type="hidden" />
   <input name="actionType" value="ssoSites" type="hidden" /><input name=”cookiePattern” value="http://portal.mysite.com/" type="hidden" />
   </form>
   

   Simply change it to this:

   <form action="/EnterpriseController" method="post" name="frm1" onsubmit="defaultSubmit(); return false;">
   <input name="cookieUrl" value="http://sso.mysite.edu:80/amserver/CorrectFormLocation" type="hidden"/>
   <input name="GoogleOriginalFormMethod" value="POST" type="hidden"/>
   <input name="cookieLoginSubmit" value="true" type="hidden"/>;
   <input name="actionType" value="ssoSites" type="hidden"/>
   <input name="cookiePattern" value="http://portal.mysite.com/" type="hidden"/>
   </form>
   

   Then, make sure that all of the text field, hidden and otherwise are included in this form.

   Submit and save.

3. Clicking back and save

There have been times where simply clicking the back button and saving and done the trick.

Of course, MC+A can help you with a detail explanation of this during one of our Search Health Checks or other related support services. Feel free to Contact us.

An update was released last week for the Google Search Appliance. Version 5.2 has been updated and released for the GB-1001. It also contains some bug fixes from the previous version as well.

Below are a list of version 5.2 includes the following features (Copied from here).  A detail of the fixes in the release can be found here.

The latest Google Search Appliance gives users secure access to more content sources, with enhanced search quality and new user interface options.

End User Features

Personalized Search Experience
Allow administrators to adjust search results for different user groups, based on department or function.

Alerts
Employees can subscribe to email alerts for topics and documents of interest, choosing an hourly, daily, or weekly schedule.

Spellchecker in Six New Languages
French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch.

Enterprise Content

Languages
Restrict search results to any of 27 auto-detected languages including administrative functions in five new languages (Czech, English-UK, Portuguese-Portugal, Turkish, Vietnamese); contextual spell checking for all end users in Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Dutch.

Security and Access Control

Kerberos Support
Provide native support for Kerberos, enabling a silent authentication experience for end-users.

Metadata Biasing
Administrators can bias results based on metadata (in addition to biasing based on source, URL or date).

Advanced Reporting
View and export daily and hourly result sets, top queries, special feature usage, and more. Report for every query, including reports on which queries receive no clicks by a user and how often users are clicking on sponsored links in comparison to organic search results or OneBox modules.

Administration and Customization

Localized Administration
Administer your Google Search Appliance around the globe in 27 different languages. Full administration is now supported in Basque, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (US), English (UK), Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.