Ontolica for MOSS 2007 will like Ontolica for SharePoint 2003 simply add a new and improved search UI on top of the MS search engine that you get with SharePoint. This in turn means that Ontolica can easily be plugged into any running MOSS 2007 installation with lots of indexed content. Ontolica does not replace the search engine nor does it modify or improve it in any way whatsoever. Content indexing stays 100% the same after installing Ontolica. I like to emphasize this boundary as I by experience know it can be hard for you to tell where SharePoint ends and Ontolica begins.
Ontolica will soon become available for beta testing for selected customers/partners and later to the public. I will tell you more about the Ontolica beta program and the dates in another posting tomorrow. First I would like to reserve this posting for publishing some facts about the new product.
Ontolica for MOSS 2007 will be available in the following two editions:
• Ontolica Wildcard.
• Ontolica Search.
The Ontolica Wildcard edition will come for free and will basically give you the same features as standard MOSS search plus wildcard search - hence the name. There will be a few more goodies in it that we don't bother to lock down. But there will be no email or phone support for this edition. We are instead working on setting up a community forum that the Ontolica team will monitor and provide assistance through.
The Ontolica Search edition is not free and will require you to purchase a license. But for that you get the complete feature set plus support and upgrade. It will, however, come with a free trial license for two users and no expiration date. This will allow you to do a technical evaluation without the need to request a trial license. A 30 day trial license with support for an unlimited number of users can be obtained when you need to include more people in the evaluation process on your test environment.
Here is a comprehensive list of features in the Ontolica Search edition:
• All the standard search features to be found in MOSS 2007.
• Improved Boolean search (AND, OR, NOT)
• Wildcard search.
• NEAR search.
• Consistent search across MOSS and WSS sites. The scopes "This site" and "This list" are now fully configurable and will take the user to the Ontolica search center instead of the WSS search page in the /_layouts folder.
• Site dependent search tab configurations. This is a quite pervasive new feature in Ontolica that deserves a posting of its own - I will blog about it soon.
• Complete web based configuration UI. No longer any need to mess around with overly complex XML configuration files like you had to in Ontolica for SharePoint 2003. We took some beating for that one over the years ;-)
• Federated search. This feature will basically enable you search multiple SSP's from within the same Ontolica search center.
• Improved meta data search. Add your own meta data to the advanced search page with a few clicks. Select between a text box, a dropdown box or a lookup dialog for value input.
• Display custom properties in search results with a few clicks.
• Improved Bets Bets. Ontolica will add support for images and audience targeting.
• Configurable action menu on results. Ontolica will include a fully configurable drop down menu on search results. The default actions that ship with Ontolica are:
o View Properties (teleports the user to the document library list item representing the document).
o Edit in Microsoft Office Word / PowerPoint / Excel.
o Alert Me
o Add to My Links
o View Details.
• Drill Down. Provides the user with a dynamic list of suggestions for refining his or her search. It basically works by analyzing the Meta data on the search results. The lists of Meta data (properties) to provide suggestions for are also fully configurable. Ontolica will in the default configuration be able to provide suggestions for Sites, Authors, File types and Content types.
• Quick filters. Will allow you to easily configure some expression based filters that appear as radio buttons below the keyword input field.
• Document details page.
• Improved people search. Basically nicer thumbnails and more info displayed on each result.
• Image search. Ontolica will ship with a preconfigured search tab optimized for image search like you know it from Google / Live Search.
• Search result grouping. Group you results by Author, Site, Size, Date or some custom property.
• XSLT enabled web parts. All Ontolica search web parts are XSLT enabled to give you full control of the look & feel when required. Even the Ontolica search box in the upper right corner is XSLT enabled. You will, however, only need to worry about modifying the default Ontolica XSLT templates if you have needs that go far beyond common customization scenarios. You can really configure and customize Ontolica to a great extent before you need to worry about XSLT, which I know many of you do not really want to or have time to.
• Configurable web parts. All Ontolica web parts have a dedicated configuration page where you can easily configure the various options og the web part.
• Customizable search dialog. Create your own custom search forms.
• Plugs into the SharePoint feature framework. Ontolica search can be activated/deactivated on the site collection level.
• Site template for easy creation of new Ontolica search centers.
• Solution based installation process. Ontolica installation and deployment relies on the new solutions framework in Windows SharePoint Services V3.
Ontolica has in general been designed to be extremely configurable. We know by experience that you all have slightly different needs out there and we try to accommodate that by a highly configurable product. You can nearly configure all of the above features to a great extent via our new web based configuration framework. It will look very familiar to you as it has been designed in the same look & feel as all of the standard SharePoint configuration pages.
I will in later postings hand pick some of the features and go into a little more detail with them.
The product is as mentioned not available for download yet. But you can sign up for a free copy today on our product web site
http://www.ontolica.com.
