Ever wanted to know how to control that Refinement Panel on your search pages? The out of the box options are OK, but you’re looking for something to take it over the top. With the SharePoint 2010 search Refinement Panel web part, you can add extended find-ability to your content.
You can define how the search refiners are displayed such as sort order, group order, group name, and number of filters to display. Slapping FAST Search on top of your Farm will launch your capabilities into another level….but may also give you some headaches….
I’ve had a request for our Refinement Panel to sort by descending frequency and show over 1000 options. For something like that, I had to create my own groupings with updated attributes. At the end of the day, I had to re-write my own categories and options. But it’s not too difficult if you have the road map to the attributes.
Now, if you’re using FAST Search for SharePoint 2010, then you’re going to have extended capabilities with the Facets. You are able to extend further than just the first 100 items to help define the Facets, which was the case in my site. I’ll leave that details for another post since FAST is a beast in itself.
Here is a list of the common attributes that you’d want to use if you’re ever in the same situation as myself.
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Title | A string specifying the filter category title, displayed in the Refinement Panel Web Part.For taxonomy filter categories, use the following titles:
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| Description | A string specifying the filter category description, displayed as a tooltip in the Refinement Panel Web Part. |
| Type | The type of data that the refinement is based on.Valid values are:
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| MappedProperty | A string specifying the name of the managed property for refinement. For taxonomy columns or tags, specify ows_MetadataFacetInfo. For popular social tags, useows_MetadataFacetInfo,popularsocialtags. |
| MetadataThreshhold | An integer greater than or equal to 1 that specifies the number of results that must contain a value to display the filter generator under the filter category. |
| NumberOfFiltersToDisplay | An integer from 1 to 50 that specifies the number of filters to display in the filter category. |
| MaxNumberOfFilters | An integer that specifies the maximum number of filters to display when the show more link in the Refinement Panel Web Part is clicked. To display all the filters, specify 0 for this attribute. |
| SortBy | Specifies the sort criteria for displaying the filter values in the Refinement Panel Web Part.Valid values are:
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| SortDirection | Specifies the sort direction for the filter values.Valid values are Ascending or Descending. |
| SortByForMoreFilters | Applies to: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 search Specifies the sort criteria for the filter values when show more link is clicked. This attribute is optional, and if it is not included, the value specified in the SortBy attribute is used as the sort criteria.Valid values are:
|
| SortDirectionForMoreFilters | Applies to: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 search Specifies the sort direction for the filter values when the show more link is clicked.Valid values are Ascending or Descending.This attribute is optional, and if it is not included, the value specified in the SortDirection attribute is used instead. |
| ShowMoreLink | Specifies whether to display the show more link in the Refinement Panel Web Part.true to display the link; otherwise, false. |
| MoreLinkText | A string specifying the link text for the show more link. |
| LessLinkText | A string specifying the link text for the show less link. |
| ShowCounts | Specifies whether the count or percentage is displayed with the filter.Valid values are:
You can specify a custom value for this attribute if the XSLT of the Refinement Web Part is customized to handle the custom value. |