You can search in MOSS in many ways. The simplest is just like
in WSS: Using a search box at the top of a page with a scopes
drop-down, you pick what you want to search. Search administrators can
configure and add scopes, but the default ones that come out of the box
are All Sites, People, and in each site a This Site scope (see Figure 1).
By
default, the All Sites scope searches on everything, excluding people,
although the results may include people’s personal sites if you search
for a person’s name. This also means that search results can come from
sites outside SharePoint. MOSS can search on other sources of data
outside SharePoint, and the All Sites scope, by default, searches on
that content.
Note
Depending
on the scope you choose, you might be directed to a different search
results page, also depending on how the search administrator set up the
search.
Use the Search Center
Another option is to use the search center. This site is dedicated to searching and is usually designed to give you a better searching experience.
To
get to the search center, you can either find it on the navigation bar
(if it has a link there, usually under the name Search) or just perform
a simple search from any site. By default, in MOSS you are directed to
a search center when you do that.
The search center has an option to display several search tabs or search pages (see Figure 2). Each of these tabs can be configured to display search results from different sources of content.
Other tabs can be created by the search administrator and can be configured to show different search results.
To
switch between tabs, just click the tab name. If you have searched on a
term before, the term for which you have searched is automatically
transfered to the new tab, and a search is performed on it.
Use Federated Search
Federated search
is a new capability of the MOSS search that was added to the product
after it was released, so it might or might not be utilized by the site
you are using. The idea of a federated search is that the search
displays results from more than just what SharePoint is indexing; for
example, you also can search the Internet. This way, if you are
researching a certain term—say bicycle—and
would like to see everything related to bicycles from the SharePoint
site, but also from an MSN search or Google, the federated search
allows that.
Tip
If
the federated search results come from the Internet, you might want to
open them in a new window or a separate tab so that you don’t lose the
search results page (see Figure 3).
The search administrator can configure the federated search to show results from many sources outside SharePoint.
Tip
Remember that the federated search results might be results from the Internet and from sites that have unreliable data.
