Setting Alternate Search URL

SharePoint can be configured in multiple ways and sometimes a dedicated farm will be provisioned to deliver shared services such as search and managed metadata.

Also, in an upgrade scenario where SharePoint 2010 is being gradually upgraded to SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2010 can be configured to consume SharePoint2013 shared services such as search.

In these scenarios it is necessary to configure the OnePlace Solutions products to use an alternate search URL so that when you execute searches in the navigation tree or location content grid, the search is executed against a different URL from the location you are executing your search.

Use the ‘startsWithMatchingUrl’ attribute to specify locations which should have their search redirected to an alternate URL. If you have multiple site collections on the same web application, just specify the first part of the URLto have all site collections have their search performed against an alternative URL. Use the ‘searchProviderUrl’ to specify the alternative search URL to use to execute the search.

Copy Code

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration> 
    <searchProviderUrls>
        <searchProviderUrl startsWithMatchingUrl="http://vs-server108" action="delete"/>
        <searchProviderUrl startsWithMatchingUrl="http://vs-server108" searchProviderUrl="http://vs-server82" action="insert"/>                 
    </searchProviderUrls>
</configuration>

There are some scenarios or configurations that will not work if configured to use alterative search URLs. These are summarized below;

Scenarios we support

• Redirecting from SP2010 search to SP2013 search if using same security credentials

• Redirecting from SP2010 to SP2010 with same security credentials

• Redirecting from SP2013 to SP2013 with same security credentials

• Redirecting from Office 365 to Office 365 with same security credentials

• Redirecting from SP 2013 on-premise to Office 365 if the office 365 cookies are cached and valid on the machine

Scenarios we don’t support

• Redirecting from SP2013 to SP2010

• Redirecting from Office 365 to SP2010

• Redirecting from SP2013 to Office 365 (with no stored or expired cookies)

• Redirecting from SP2010 to Office 365 (with no stored or expired cookies)