The all new Cloud Search service application coming to SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016

 

The all new Cloud Search service application coming to SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint 2016

We would like to make an announcement regarding the new hybrid capability being delivered as an update by the end of the year for SharePoint Server 2013 and natively in SharePoint Server 2016. The new feature is the Cloud Search service application and it enables the crawling of on-premises content sources to feed the Office 365 search index. This creates a truly unified search experience for users in a hybrid environment.

The new Cloud Search service application allows organizations to leverage the unified index approach and reduce the size of their on-premises search deployment. Take a look at the session below to learn about considerations when configuring hybrid search as well as deployment guidelines. Keep an eye on this space for our post on best practices and scaling guidelines

Below is a quick summary of the features that are part of the pre-release version that is being validated in a limited TAP program today.

1. The Cloud Search service application will support crawling of on-premises content to build one unified index in the cloud.

2. All existing content sources that are supported in SharePoint Server 2013 will be supported for crawling by the Cloud Search service application.

3 The unified index will enable authenticated users to search from SharePoint Online and return results that include items from both on-premises content and online content without the need for implementing query federation.

4. Authenticated users will also be able to query from SharePoint Server 2010, 2013 or 2016 on-premises for content from the SharePoint Online unified search index. This can be done by publishing the SharePoint Cloud Search service application and consuming it from a SharePoint Server 2010 farm. In addition you configure Hybrid Query federation from the Cloud Search service application to SharePoint Online. As a result, both site search and the enterprise search center works and users can see results from the unified search index in SharePoint Online.

5. Query federation continues to be supported in SharePoint Server 2013 for both the inbound and outbound model

Posted Created By : Manas Biswas [MSFT] , Neil Hodgkinson [MSFT] Kathrine Hammervold [MSFT]