Search Configuration for Search Server 2008

The SharePoint Connector for Confluence provides some configuration screens that are available only with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. These configuration screens (Manage Confluence Search and Confluence Search Source) allow for a quick and easy way to do the following:

• Create a web site Content Source.
• Create a Crawl Rule configured to authenticate to Confluence using Forms Based Authentication (FBA).
• Register the SharePoint Connector for Confluence Security Trimmer with the crawl rule.
• Optionally create a Scope with a scope rule containing only items in the generated content source.

All of the above can be done manually in MOSS, but must be done manually in Search Server 2008. Some installations may benefit from using Search Server 2008 or Search Server 2008 Express because their licensing costs differ from MOSS (Search Server 2008 Express is free, albeit limited).

Here is a rough outline of the manual steps involved:

• Manually create a web site Content Source pointing to your Confluence installation. The content source can easily be configured manually using the existing MOSS and Search Server 2008 search administration screens.

• Manually create a Crawl Rule. A crawl rule using FBA can be configured manually using the existing Search Server 2008 configuration screens. The MOSS search administration screens can only be configured to use FBA using the new interface that is available with the July 2008 SharePoint Infrastructure Update. Alternatively, an involved process for configuring FBA with MOSS can be done with the June 2007 FBA/CBA Hotfix. See SharePoint Search Prerequisite Updates for more details.

• Manually register a Security Trimmer for your crawl rule. Registration of a security trimmer can be done manually with the use of the stsadm command line tool. The tool is in the BIN directory under your root SharePoint installation (e.g., C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12"). The command line would look something like:

  stsadm -o registersecuritytrimmer -ssp SharedServices -id 1 -typename "Atlassian.Confluence.SharePoint.Search.ConfluenceSecurityTrimmer, Atlassian.Confluence.SharePoint.Search, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=Neutral, PublicKeyToken=96f82bd35ec392e7" -rulepath <crawl rule URL/path>

• Manually create a Scope with a scope rule containing only items in the content source. The scope can easily be configured manually using the existing MOSS and Search Server 2008 search administration screens.