Property Management

Property management is about mapping crawled properties to managed properties. Crawled properties are automatically extracted from crawled content and grouped by category based on the protocol handler or IFilter used. If you plan to make the crawled properties part of the search user experience, you can map the crawled properties to managed properties.

For example, three different document types might have different names for the property identifying the author. One document type might name this property "author," another "writer," and a third "property3". You can map each of these crawled properties to the Author managed property so that when a user queries by author, appropriate results from the three document types are included. Searches can be performed only on managed properties, not crawled properties.

Example use cases for managed properties:

• Expose for advanced search

• Display in search results

• Use as refiners (refiner property, deep refiners)

• Sort search results on properties (sort property)

• Allow the managed property to be included in query operators and filters (query property)

You can add a new managed property and then map this property to selected crawled properties, or you can select a crawled property and map it to an existing managed property.

To manage properties within the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint farm, use Property Management on the FAST Search Administration page, as described in this article. To manage properties for People Search, however, use Metadata Properties on the Query SSA Search Administration page

What do you want to do?

Display the Managed Properties page

Add a managed property

Edit a managed property

Delete a managed property

Map a crawled property

Manage crawled property categories

Display the Managed Properties page

To map managed properties to crawled properties, first open the Managed Properties page:

1. On the Central Administration page, under Application Management, select Manage Service Application.

2. On the Manage Service Application page, click the name of your FAST Query SSA.

3. From the menu on the left, select FAST Search Administration.

4. On the FAST Search Administration page, under Property Management, click Managed Properties.

Top of Page

Add a managed property

1. On the Managed Properties page, click Add Managed Property.

2. On the New Managed Property page, in the Property Name box in the Name and Type section, type the name of the new managed property.

3. In the Description box, type a description of the property.

4. In the Type list, select one of the following as appropriate for the property:
   Text, Integer, DateTime, Decimal, Boolean, Float.

5. In the Stemming section, select the Enable stemming check box if you want a query for one of the possible forms of a word to also match properties that contain a different form of the word. (Only relevant for properties of type Text.)

6. In the Result Type section, select Static summary (default) or Dynamic summary. Use dynamic summary for large text properties where only matching sections should be displayed in the search result summary. Static summary displays the full result. (Only relevant for properties of type Text.)

7. In the Mappings to Crawled Properties section, select one of the following:
   Include values from all crawled properties mapped
   Select this option if you want values from all crawled properties to be mapped for a given document. A query for a property in a document in which all crawled properties are mapped returns a result if any of the crawled properties that are mapped match.
   Include values from a single crawled property based on the order specified
   Select this option if you want only a single value mapped. When multiple crawled properties are mapped to a managed property, the one that is selected will be the first in the list that has a value for a given document. You can reorder the list by using the Move up and Move down buttons.

8. Click Add Mapping to add a mapping to the list.

9. The Select crawled properties to map to New Property dialog box appears. Configure the settings as follows:
   On the Select a category menu, click either All categories or a specific type of document category (for example, Office or Mail).
   In Available crawled properties, select a crawled property to map to the managed property that you are adding. Click Add to move the property to the Selected crawled properties list. Repeat if you want to add more crawled properties to the same managed property. Because the list of crawled properties is likely to be long, you can type the name (or the first part of the name) of the property that you are looking for in the Crawled property name box, and then click Find.
   Click OK.

10. On the New Managed Property page, in the Sort Property section, select the Sort property check box if you want the property to be sortable. (Search result page administrators can enable sorting of the search results on sortable properties.)

    Note:  Sortability increases memory consumption.

11. In the Query Property section, select the Query property check box if you want to allow the managed property to be included in query operators and filters.

    Note:  Having Query property enabled increases the index size

12. In the Refiner Property section, select the Refiner property check box if you want the managed property to categorize the top documents (typically top 100) into refiner groups. To have all documents in the search result categorized into refiner groups, also select the Deep refiner check box. (The refiner property attribute indicates whether the managed property can be used to refine the search results.)

    Note:  Deep refiners increase memory usage in search and indexing.

13. In the Full-text Index Mapping section, select the rank priority level for the property.
    Properties can be mapped to different priority levels based on their importance and size. Small, relevant properties like document title and keywords should be mapped to high priority, whereas longer, less relevant properties like body should be mapped to low priority.

    Note:  High priority properties occupy more disk space than low priority.

14. Click OK.

Top of Page

Edit a managed property

One reason that you may want to edit a managed property is to map a crawled property to it.

• On the Managed Properties page, in the Property Name list, click Edit Managed Property on the menu of the managed property that you want to edit.

You can find information about the managed property settings, including how to add a new mapping, in the Add a managed property section.

Top of Page

Delete a managed property

Deleting a managed property has the following consequences:

• Users will no longer be able to query by using this property.

• If custom search applications or Web Parts use this property, they will be broken.

To delete a managed property:

• On the Managed Properties page, in the Managed Property Name list, click Delete Managed Property on the menu of the managed property that you want to delete.

Top of Page

Map a crawled property

You can map crawled properties to managed properties by editing the crawled property. You can map a crawled property to one or more managed properties.

1. On the Managed Properties page, click Crawled Properties Categories.

2. On the Crawled Property Categories page, find the category to which the crawled property belongs.

3. Click View properties on the menu of the category.

4. On the Crawled properties page, click the crawled property name that you want to edit.

5. On the Edit Crawled Property page, in the Mappings to managed properties section, click Add Mapping.

6. In the Select managed properties to map to dialog box, configure the settings as follows:
   In the Available managed properties list, select a managed property, and then click Add. Repeat if you want to add more managed properties to the same crawled property.
   Click OK.

7. On the Edit Crawled Property page, if you want to include values for the crawled property in the search index, select the Include values for this property in the search index check box. This option makes values for the crawled property searchable when a full-text search is used. (Normally, crawled properties are searchable only when a property-based search is used.)
   
   Select the check box to enable querying against the values of this crawled property. This will place these values in the search index. For example, if the crawled property is "author," simple queries such as "Smith" will return both items that contain the word "Smith" and items whose author property is "Smith." When unchecked, users will have to query against the managed property "author:Smith" to find the same items. Including unnecessary properties may have a negative effect on search relevance and performance.

8. Click OK.

9. In the message box advising that the changes will not take effect until after the next full crawl, click OK.

Note:  The changes actually take place on a document-by-document basis during the crawl.

Top of Page

Manage crawled property categories

Crawled properties are grouped by category, based on the protocol handler or IFilter used. For example, a property coming from the Office IFilter will be in the "Office" category.

Categories are supplied by the indexing connectors. Only use one category per indexing connector. Default mappings are supplied out of the box.

To edit crawled property categories and view crawled properties in a particular category, you must first open the Crawled Properties Categories page:

1. On the Central Administration page, under Application Management, select Manage Service Application.

2. On the Manage Service Application page, click the name of your FAST Query SSA.

3. From the menu on the left, select FAST Search Administration.

4. On the FAST Search Administration page, under Property Management, click Crawled Properties Categories.

5. To view crawled properties in a particular category, move the cursor over the category name, expand the menu that appears, and choose View Properties.

6. To edit a crawled property category, move the cursor over the category name, expand the menu that appears, and choose Edit Category.

7. To delete a category, move the cursor over the category name, expand the menu that appears, and choose Delete Category.

Note:  Changes to properties will take effect after the next full crawl.

Top of Page