Having problems with FAST and the Microsoft Information Worker virtual image , try creating a new certificate …

If you want to try out FAST and SharePoint without having to do a complete install yourself you can  use the 2010 Information Worker Demonstration and Evaluation Virtual Machine (RTM) image – which also includes FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. Don’t forget to update the certificate though because this image uses a self signed certificate which has expired – for a detailed description how to do this correctly check out remember to give your SharePoint 2010 Information Worker Virtual Machine a fresh certificate

Tags van Technorati: FAST,FS4SP,SharePoint,SharePoint+2010,SPS2010,Microsoft

Community Day 2011 registrations are open ….

Registrations are open for Community Day 2011  - do not hesitate to register for this whole day of technical sessions – free of charge. Registrations will be handled on a first come first serve basis – so don’t wait. There are 2 SharePoint related sessions on the agenda as well …

Tags van Technorati: community+day,community,microsoft,biwug

Using the default property extractors in FAST and how it works with the search refinements

Property extraction in Fast Search 2010 for SharePoint is a process that extracts information from the textual content of an item which is crawled and then adds this information into a number of crawled properties. Afterwards you map these crawled properties to SharePoint managed properties and use it in your search – within the search refiners, within the search results and even as input for sorting of your search results.

FAST has a number of standard extractors shipped with the product – all of these use a generic dictionary to recognize the different terms within a crawled document:

• Companies – activated by default and present in the search refiners on the search result page
• Locations – activated by default but not present in the  search refiners on the search result page
• Person names  - this one is not activated by default. You will need to modify OptionalProcessing.xml which you can find in FASTSearch\etc\config_data\DocumentProcessor\ . Switch <processor name=”personnameextraction” active=”no”/> to <processor name=”personnameextraction” active=”yes”/>. Afterwards you will need to reset the processorserver using the FAST command line – psctrl –reset (For reference take a look at psctrl.exe reference on Technet). Afterwards you will need to do a full crawl.

Although these extractors use a generic dictionary you still have some control over the way that they work – by defining include and exclude lists of items within the FAST search administration screens – this is nicely explained in this article - Manage property extraction. You can off course also use PowerShell – to fill these include/exclude lists as explained in this blog post -  Property extraction in FS4SP.

If you want to use information from the person names and locations extractors in the search refinemens you will need to modify them and add the following.

For the people refiner:

<Category Title="People" Description="Use this filter to restrict results by people" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator" MetadataThreshold="1" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4" MaxNumberOfFilters="200" ShowMoreLink="True" MappedProperty="personnames" MoreLinkText="show more" LessLinkText="show fewer" ShowCounts="Count" />

For the location refiner:

<Category Title="Location" Description="Use this filter to restrict results by location" Type="Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.WebControls.ManagedPropertyFilterGenerator" MetadataThreshold="1" NumberOfFiltersToDisplay="4" MaxNumberOfFilters="20" ShowMoreLink="True" MappedProperty="locations" MoreLinkText="show more" LessLinkText="show fewer" ShowCounts="Count" />

Tags van Technorati: FAST+search+2010,FS4SP,FAST,SharePoint+2010,SharePoint,Microsoft,enterprise+search

Introductory information about FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

I will be presenting a MSDN live meeting on Tuesday the 24th of May about FAST Search Server 2010 from a development perspective. For those of you who want to attend – it might be useful to take a look at these links beforehand – since they present an overview of what FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint allows you to build as a developer:

• FAST Search for SharePoint demo video
• Building search driven applications with FAST
• Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Enterprise Search Evaluation Guide

If there are more must read articles or videos that you would recommended, just leave a link.

Technorati Tags: FAST,search,FAST+Search+Server,FS4SP,SharePoint,development,SPS2010,microsoft

Unlock WP7 Emulator/ Unlocking the Apps

WP7 January 2011 Updates, Microsoft had released some updates for Windows Phone 7, with the WP7 OS Developer Tools (WP7 Dev Tools). MS Included in that Dev Tools (SDK) is Windows Phone 7 OS Emulator.Earlier version of the Windows Phone7 OS shipped few applicationsjust a browser and some settings and the emulator was locked down restricting developers to check out its full features. To play with the rest of the OSthe default apps; like Email, Zune, Xbox Live, and whatnot—have needed to load the emulator with an unlock the ROM image giving full access to the build application.

Unlock Emulator

There are few steps to unlock the ROM image.

Step-1: Download Windows Phone 7 Series BIN file "wm70_copypaste"

Step-2: Rename the downloaded BIN file to WM70C1.bin.

Step-3: Copy the BIN file, and paste it into below mentioned directory

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\WindowsPhone\v7.0\Emulation\Images

Step-4: Rename the existing WM70C1.bin so that you could copy new file without overwriting.

Step-5: Now copy the downloaded WM70C1.bin file in Images folder.

Step-6: Now Run the WP7 Emulator by starting a new project and simply pressing F5 Key.

You should now are able to access entire featured in the emulator.

That’s it!

Now unlock the Emulator

Unlock Emulator

Many-many special thanks to XDA, Redmond Pie and Dan Ardelean

Thank you!