MC+A

Answer: Yes – The Google Mini Can Index documents stored in Micrsoft SharePoint!

The Google Mini along with the MC+A Google SharePoint Sitemap can effectively be configured to crawl Microsoft SharePoint sites.  The MC+A Google SharePoint Sitemap produces a dyanmic site map which the Mini can use to crawl deep within SharePoint.   You can further enhance this by adding a Content Web Part onto the search page which will allow you to have the Google Mini produce search results within SharePoint.

Here’s it working in our environment.

and in edit mode:

How is the integration achieved?

Step 1 – Navigate to the search results page
Step 2 – Switch the search results page to edit mode
Step 3 – Delete the SharePoint search web parts
Step 4 – Add content editor web part
Step 5 Add the following code(modify for your environment)
Content for web part

How does this work?
1) SharePoint search web part reads the k parameter query string and makes an ‘ajax’ type of request to the appliance.
2) The end use broswer communicates directly with the Mini.

If you purchase a Google Mini from MC+A, we offer a free GSS with support matching for the term of the Google Mini. Otherwise, the product lists for $500 and includes a 30 day trial support during the trial. MC+A professional services can be engaged to assist with the integration within SharePoint.

Continuing from our previous troubleshooting post.

Step 2: Check the appliance’s configuration

If the links are functioning properly in your Google Sitemap, but there is still no SharePoint content being crawled, then you should check to which URLs are being crawled.

Often time’s people make the mistake of entering the URL of their SharePoint site and not the URL of their GSS. Ensure that this is not the case by opening the administrative console of your appliance and going to Crawl and Index > Crawl URLs. You should find the URL of your GSS in the top two fields. If it is not there enter it.

Now, select Freshness Tuning from the options on the left. Enter the URL of your GSS and then select Recrawl These URL Patterns. Allow 20-25 minutes for the changes to take effect.

Then, go to Status and Reports > Crawl Diagnostics and check to see if your GSS’s URL is listed. If you see the sitemap’s URL listed proceed to the next step. Otherwise contact MC+A support.

Now, run a search for content that would be found in your SharePoint site. If the appropriate search results are not returned contact MC+A support for further assistance.

It has come to our support team’s attention that, although we have tried to make the setup and configuration of our Google SharePoint Sitemap (GSS) as straightforward as possible we do field support cases from users dealing with similar configuration issues. This blog series hopes to serve as a FAQ and tutorial covering some common configuration and setup issues.

Issue: My Appliance can’t find any SharePoint content!

This is one of the most frequently submitted support requests. This can be caused by a number of issues. We’ll try to break the troubleshooting process into simple steps to help you solve the issue in a snap!

Solution

Step 1: Make sure the GSS is fully functional

Often, customers immediately assume that there is an issue with their appliance when they do not have the Google Sitemap properly configured.

Check to see if the links in the site are working.

Click on the GSS link.

Now click on various links to ensure that there are no HTML errors. Exclude the Site Link entries drom this test as their results will not be relevant. thos links are simply the actual URLs the sitemap will be charged with directing the appliance to.

If links return HTML errors, the appliance will not successfully crawl the content. If this is what you encounter you know that the issue resides either within your GSS configuration or your SharePoint site.

The next step would be to make sure that all of the proper information has been entered into the Settings section of the GSS.

Make sure that you verify that the account and account password have access to you SharePoint site. To do this, simply navigate to your SharePoint site using the same credentials that your GSS is using. If the credentials are not the issue, you should contact MC+A support for more help.

Next Up…..Step 2: Checking the appliance’s Configuration

Last Monday, MC+A released version 2.5 of the GSS. This tool is used to aid a Google Search Appliance or Google Mini with content discovery of a Microsoft SharePoint system. In this release, we added an installer that will install the GSS to a Windows Server 2003 system (with IIS) and a fixed for MOSS. You can request a free trial at:

http://www.mcplusa.com/solutions/enterprise-search/google-sharepoint-sitemap/