Finding Reporting Services Content faster

Hi everyone - I've been away from my blog for a little while.  However, now again I have some time to start blogging again.

I get tons of customer questions over the course of a week. I’d like to share with you how I make my life easier by using Internet Explorer’s built-in search box to help me find things faster.   Other browsers provide similar capabilities, so you should be able to get it working there as well.

The first issue I'd like to address is an issue that has come up a number of times in a number of ways.   I first addressed it here.  But since then SQL Server 2008 has made a lot of progress and I find I need to find the latest documentation, quickly.   

How to Add a SSRS Search Provider to Internet Explorer 7:

1. Find the Search box in the upper right corner of the IE window.

2. Use the down arrow to open the provider selector menu.

3.Click Find More Providers…

4. Find the Create Your Own box (highlighted in Yellow/Mustard color)

5. In the text box labeled Paste the URL of the Search results page URL, paste the following:

https://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=TEST+%22reporting+services%22+site%3Amsdn2.microsoft.com  

6. In the text box labeled Specify a name for the search provider Name, paste the following:

RS on MSDN2

7. Click Install.

8. Now type a search term into the search box (choose your favorite SSRS feature name), use the down arrow and select RS on MSDN2 from the selector menu.  You will see the results of your search. 

You can use additional search terms to find documentation that is specific to a version:

Find only SQL Server 2008 documentation

https://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=TEST+100+"reporting services"+site:msdn2.microsoft.com

Find only SQL Server 2005 documentation

https://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=TEST+90+"reporting services"+site:msdn2.microsoft.com

Find only SQL Server 2000 documentation

https://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=TEST+80+"reporting services"+site:msdn2.microsoft.com

Alternately, you can just type your search term followed by 100, 90 or 80 in the Search Provider text box. 

Clearly this doesn't apply only to SSRS, but that's where I find it most useful :-).

 

Take care and good luck,

-Lukasz

Update 1: I corrected the search terms to be actual URLs.  It should work better for people.  Note, I'm using www.live.com as my search provider.  You can do something similar with other search engines.