How to: Set up People Search in SharePoint 2013

Good article by Corey Roth

Here is the link: http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2013/01/03/how-to-set-up-people-search-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx

How FAST Search for SharePoint Fits into SharePoint 2010 (en-US)

Some very good information, especially on how people search fits in the grand scheme of things:

How FAST Search for SharePoint Fits into SharePoint 2010 (en-US)

How to make custom user profile properties searchable in SharePoint 2010?

Not as simple as in MOSS, please see the post by Steve McDonnell

Making Custom User Profile Properties Searchable in SharePoint 2010

FAST Query and FAST Content Search Service Applications in a SharePoint 2010 deployment Explained

After FAST for SharePoint 2010 (FAST4SP) is installed and configured, there are 2 search service applications associated with FAST4SP: FAST Query Search Service Application and FAST Content Search Service Application (Your search service application name could be different). It took me a while to realize the differences between those 2 service applications. The following blog entry helped me a lot learning those 2 service applications.

The two types of Search Service Applications (in a SharePoint 2010 deployment with FAST Search Server) - On The Search - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

In summary, FAST Query is used to service all search queries and crawl People content, i.e., User Profiles. So under the Search Administration page for FAST Query, there should be one and only one Content Source defined, with Start Addresses with only one entry, like sps3://hostname. Also search scopes should be defined under FAST Query service application. This blog entry demonstrates how to create a search scope in FAST Query from content source defined in FAST Content.

FAST Content is used to crawl all other content sources other than People. Out of the box under the Search Administration page of FAST Content, we should remove the entry of sps3:// from the content source's start addresses text box. Also note there is no search service application proxy for FAST Content.

People search not working, peopleresults.aspx page does not exist and people search webparts missing

I have installed SharePoint 2010 and configured Managed Metadata Service, User Profile Service Application, Search Service Application and My Site settings. Also I created a web application with root site collection created with Publishing Portal template. Now I can search documents with no problem.

While doing a people search, it fails complaining that http://server/search/peopleresults.aspx missing. Then I found this article http://www.sharepoint911.com/blogs/laura/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=676af157-7d96-4e15-a987-54b8a3e4d948&ID=53 about similar problem. I followed the steps and realized that those people search web parts, such as people search box, people search core results, are missing in my SharePoint environment. I also tried to enable a whole bunch of features but to no avail.

Finally I found a workaround, here are the steps.

* delete the search subsite created by the publishing portal template
* create a managed path named search, you can name anything you want
* create a site collection under the search managed path, with Enterprise Search Center template
* change the My Site settings to reflect above change
* change search settings of the portal root site collection to reflect above change

I tried to create a subsite under root site collection, but only the Publishing templates are available. That is why I took the managed path route.

Not sure why I ran into the problem at the first place and not sure anybody else experienced this problem or not. Hopefully this can help somebody out there.