Project Description
SharePoint Advanced Search extends the out-of-the-box search input web part by providing a flexible Managed Property search user interface.
v1.0 of SPAdvancedSearch has been released.
SPAdvancedSearch Goals
The goal of the SPAdvancedSearch project is to improve the ability for end-users to perform advanced property-based searches in SharePoint without requiring knowledge of the property-based syntax (i.e. DocumentCategory:Proposal, etc.). For quite some time I wished that the user profile search in SharePoint was available for finding content other than user profiles. This project seeks to bridge that gap.
SPAdvancedSearch Overview
Since the out-of-the-box search input provides many configuration options, I decided to derive from Microsoft’s Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.SearchBoxEx web part to inherit the “goodness” it provides. The derived web part “intercepts” the advanced search link by providing an expand / collapse panel with flexible managed property advanced search options. In addition to providing a basic text box input UI, the advanced search web part allows for configuring “Choice” values similar to SharePoint’s Choice field type. Future enhancements and considerations are included later in this document. One interesting note to point out is that this control does not alter the way that the OOTB SharePoint search control performs queries. Instead, it makes use of the same QueryString driven approach (i.e. results.aspx?k=Some Key Words Here).
Screen Shots
Advanced Search Panel

Advanced Search Configuration
