SharePoint 2013 Custom Search - Part 1 - Managed Properties

This is the first in a three part blog which will focus on leveraging SharePoint 2013 Custom Search in a real world business solution, part one is creating managed properties, part two looks at getting these as part of result sources and querying, and finally part three brings it together with a bit of custom styling using display templates.

OK, so Microsoft have changed the way they have implemented Search in SharePoint 2013 - in quite a massive way if you didn't already know. 

Alongside some of the larger changes, there are a few smaller ones which aren't immediately obvious.
Once upon a time to configure managed properties, one had to venture into the 'Metadata Properties' section in 2010:

The game has changed a little, and this option is now embedded in 'Search Schema' in the 2013 world:

If you've already added managed properties in 2010 I hate to tell you how to suck eggs, but I'll cover it anyway as there are a few more changes, I'll point these out as we go on...

A few ground rules on managed properties and crawling -

Rule 1: You have to map a managed property to a crawled property

Rule 2: A crawled property is not a crawled property until its been crawled (kind of makes sense, but the next rule will clarify)

Rule 3: A crawled property is not registered as crawled unless there is some data against it

Rule 4: You have to run a full crawl before data in a crawl property is crawled

Hopefully that all makes sense, but basically, to add a managed property; create the column in SharePoint, add an item with data against that column, run a full crawl and the crawled property will be visible in central admin.

There will be a few of you reading this know your stuff that will be like 'hang on a minute, why do I need to map a crawled property to managed one in SharePoint 2013?'

Well the answer is - you dont! SharePoint 2013 has added a neat feature which creates a managed property automatically on a full crawl for any columns that contain data. However, I prefer to create mine manually for a few reasons.

Take the following two managed properties:

They both actually crawl the same value and will return the same thing, however the automatically created one (at the top of the screenshot above) you will see has a somewhat messy name appended with OWSTEXT. In addition, if you wanted this property to be searchable (which is extremely likely) you would have to edit the property as its created with only query and retrieve attributes.

So to create a managed property (after the rules above have been followed) choose 'Add New Managed Property' in the resulting screen give it a meaningful name (I would create this without spaces to make this easier to reference in javascript / html / xsl later):

Select the attributes that you wish this property to have:

Map this to a crawled property (you can map this to more than one crawled property!):

You are now able reference the values from crawled properties in your solutions using the managed property name. To read about how to achieve this as part of a business solution take a look at the second part in this series:

SharePoint 2013 Custom Search - Part 2 - Result Sources and Query