Book Image

Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development

Book Image

Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development

Overview of this book

Microsoft Content Management Server 2002 is a dynamic web publishing system with which you can build websites quickly and cost-efficiently. MCMS provides the administration, authoring, and data management functionality, and you provide the website interface, logic, and workflow. Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) also features in the book. SPS 2003 enables enterprises to deploy an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams, and knowledge so that people can take advantage of relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently.You've mastered the basics of MCMS, and setup your own MCMS installation. You've only scratched the surface. This book is your gateway to squeezing every penny from your investment in MCMS and SPS, and making these two applications work together to provide an outstanding richness of content delivery and easy maintainability. As a developer, the Publishing API (PAPI) is at the heart of your work with MCMS, and this book starts by taking you on the most detailed tour of the PAPI you will find anywhere. As a live example, a component that reveals the structure of your MCMS site is created, taking you through how to manage the common elements of MCMS programmatically. Getting SharePoint and MCMS to work together is the next stop in the book. You will see how to use SharePoint's search engine to search MCMS content, publish content between the two systems, and create SharePoint Web Parts to draw content from MCMS.To ease your everyday work with MCMS, there are chapters on placeholder validation, and some useful custom placeholders for common MCMS tasks, such as a date-time picker, a placeholder for multiple attachments, and a DataGrid placeholder among others. There are a number of ways to consume MCMS content from the outside world, and we look at two exciting ways here; RSS and InfoPath/Web Services. The InfoPath solution provides another interface to MCMS content that allows content authors to concentrate on content and not the presentation. The book is rounded off with a number of must-have MCMS tips and tricks. Revert a posting to a previous version Change a postingÔø???s template Build a recycle bin Deal with links to deleted resources Update a postingÔø???s properties directly from a template file Re-write ugly URLs to friendly URLs Export resource gallery items using the site deployment API (SDAPI) Configure the position and size of the Web Author Console Dialogs Get frames and IFrames to work correctly in a template file
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Advanced Microsoft Content Management Server Development
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Index

Leveraging SharePoint Portal Search within an MCMS Site


The Connector includes three controls that enhance your MCMS templates. Two of these controls are used to collect search query information and to display the results of the query after it has been submitted to the SPS:

  • SearchInputControl:The SearchInputControl displays an input form where a user can enter keywords to search for.

  • SearchResultControl:The SearchResultControl is responsible for taking the keywords and advanced properties submitted in the SearchInputControl, constructing the query, and calling the SPS Search service. The control then takes the response from the Search Service web service and displays the search results.

The third search control included in the Connector is:

  • SearchMetaTagGenerator:This control generates HTML META tag information for MCMS posting properties and custom properties. It is used in combination with an XML mapping file and a command-line utility to configure the SharePoint indexer. This allows users to implement a basic taxonomy for the search function.

The standard and custom properties for which META tags are generated are managed using an XML file called SearchPropertyCollection.xml and a console application called SearchPropertiesSetup.exe, which configures SharePoint Portal Server search using the advanced properties defined by the XML file.

Note

If SharePoint Portal Server and MCMS reside on separate physical servers, the SearchPropertyCollection.xml file needs to exist on both servers. The SearchInputControl uses this XML file on the MCMS server and the SearchPropertiesSetup.exe utility uses the file on the SharePoint Portal Server.

Some configuration is necessary in order to use SPS as a search engine for your MCMS site. This involves creating a new content source, source group, and source scope within SPS. Fortunately Microsoft included another command-line utility program called SearchSetup.exe, which creates the new content source and site path rules within SPS for all top-level channels in your MCMS site.

The SearchSetup.exe utility program can be found in the following directory: C:\Program Files\MCMS Connector for SharePoint Technologies\WSS\Bin.

Refer to Chapter 5, Searching MCMS with SharePoint, for more information regarding MCMS and SharePoint Portal Server search integration.