6. Configure Indexing
Now the external content
type is fully configured and ready to get indexed. BCS indexing is easy
in SharePoint 2010 compared to BDC in SharePoint 2007. Just add the BCS
data source as a new search content source in the Search service
application by navigating to the Manage Service Applications page in
Central Administration. Click the Content Sources link in the navigation
pane, which opens the Manage Content Sources page, shown in Figure 16. This page shows a list of all content sources.
Click New Content Source, and
enter an appropriate name for the content source. Choose Line of
Business Data as the content source type, and choose the relevant BCS
application and external data source, as in Figure 17.
Now select "Start full
crawl", and click OK. It usually takes a few minutes for the indexer to
update and start. When it goes back to idle, the external content source
has been crawled.
7. Performing a Search
In order to test the search, a site that is configured to perform enterprise searches is required.
Go to the Enterprise Search Center site, and search for a customer name
or other contact detail (if you followed the Customers example). The
search should now return results from the BCS, as shown in Figure 18.
Clicking a search result from the BCS source opens it in the newly created profile page, as shown in Figure 19. The profile page automatically shows the metadata properties from the external content type.
After following this walkthrough, it should be easy to create and configure searching for other external content types as well.
