Customize Windows Vista Instant Search
Google, et al forced Microsoft to open up the Windows Instant Search tool to other search providers and indexes…good for competition, maybe not so good for end users. The focus today is not on that however, it is on adding a link to your Windows SharePoint Services Server index to the Windows Vista Instant Search tool. Basically, it is very simple, and this information is in a variety of places, but, I was struggling to locate the info today at a client, so I thought I would go ahead and put it into a blog, for posterity.
So basically, I did the following…Asked Live Search for Vista Search gpedit.msc and soon enough I came across this… http://www.winvistaclub.com/t68.html. I followed it to the location in GPEdit, in this case User Config -> Admin Templates -> Windows Components -> Instant Search I edited it for our MOSS Site, simply by opening up our site, and entering a search term, and then copying and pasting the url, up to and including k=, then I added %w which is the variable for the search phrase. Then I followed the remaining instructions for gpupdate /force in an administrative command line, and tested successfully.
This is a great tool for me, and makes life very easy now…I am very used to working from the keyboard and pressing the start key, then typing whatever I am looking to launch or find. It works quite well and quite quickly. Now with this, I simply do the same, but this time instead of using the suggestions, mouse up to search the intranet and away I go…