EndUserSharePoint.com: What the new infrastructure update for SharePoint means to the End-User

Author: Chris Quick
WSS Development
Moderator: Stump the Panel

Most End Users of SharePoint do not have the time to keep up with the latest buzz in the SharePoint world. This is because most of their time is spent getting their daily tasks done. Only the true SharePoint "junkie" will spend time outside of the job learning about the products they use on a daily basis. Let’s face it, most of us are task oriented and have hobbies that are more interesting than SharePoint (why some people don’t share the same passion for SharePoint that I do will never cease to amaze me).

However, there are times that things come along that will help to revolutionize your work experience and End Users can actually have the honor of presenting it to their IT staff. The latest update for SharePoint is one such opportunity.

Within the last two months, I have been reviewing a new update to SharePoint that extends some of the capabilities of SharePoint search. This new update introduces something called Federated Search. When I first read Paul Galvin’s post about this update and became exposed to the idea of Federated Search, I realized this will significantly change the position of SharePoint in Enterprise Search.

Imagine searching your intranet site for documents about your new product line of roller-skates. Not only are you interested in information about the roller-skates produced by your company, you want to know about the competition. So you begin the arduous task of searching the intranet for information about the skates you sell.

You find a document that lists price points for those skates. Out of curiosity, you decide to search for other competitors producing roller-skates. You open a new browser window and begin searching your other competitors from other search engines on the web. Throughout the process, you may even think, "Geez, it would be great if I could get all of this information from one place".

This is where Federated Search introduced in the new Infrastructure Update for SharePoint will become an invaluable tool to your organization. This addition to search will allow you to pull together search results from the internet with resources produced by teams within your organization into a single location!

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be investigating Federated Search and how it impacts you, the End User.

Chris Quick
WSS Development
Moderator: Stump the Panel