Listing User Profiles With a SharePoint Search Service Application

CES 7.0.8541+ (September 2016) The Coveo connector for SharePoint supports to retrieve the user profiles directly from the SharePoint 2010, 2013, and 2016 search service application. This method is particularly useful for farms containing thousands of user profiles to improve the indexing performance.

Once the search service application has retrieved all user profiles, the Coveo connector queries the application for all profiles.

To list user profiles with a SharePoint search service application

1. With an administrator account, access the SharePoint Central Administration.

2. In the Central Administration page, click Manage service applications.

3. If you do not already have one, create a search service application:

   1. In the top menu, in the Create section, click the New drop-down list menu, and then select Search Service Application.

   2. In the Create New Search Service Application dialog:

      1. In the fist box, enter a meaningful Service Application Name.

         Example: Coveo Connector

      2. Click OK.

4. In the application list, click the Name of the application.

5. In the [Search Service Application Name]: Search Administration page, in the menu on the left, under Crawling, click Content Sources.

6. In the [Search Service Application Name]: Manage Content Sources page, click the Local SharePoint sites source Name.

7. In the [Search Service Application Name]: Edit Content Source page, in the Type start addresses below (one per line) box, cut the URL starting with sps3, and then click OK.

8. Back in the [Search Service Application Name]: Manage Content Sources page, click New Content Source.

9. In the [Search Service Application Name]: Add Content Source page:

   1. In the first box, enter a content source Name.

      Example: mysites host

   2. In the Type start addresses below (one per line) box, paste the URL that you cut in step 8.

   3. Under Full Crawl, click Create schedule.

      Note: The full crawl is necessary for the SharePoint connector to take account of deleted user profiles.

   4. In the Manage Schedules dialog:

      1. Next to Settings, in the Run every box, enter 1.

      2. Next to Settings, in the Starting time drop-down list menu, select a time at least one hour prior the start of your SharePoint V2 source refresh (see Configuring and Indexing a Microsoft SharePoint Source).

      3. Click OK.

   5. Click OK.

10. (For SharePoint 2013 and 2016 only) Back in the [Search Service Application Name]: Manage Content Sources page, in the menu on the left, under Queries and Results, click Result Sources.

11. (For SharePoint 2013 and 2016 only) In the [Search Service Application Name]: Manage Result Sources page, click Local People Results drop-down list menu, and then select Set as Default.

    Note: Setting the Local People Results result source as default allowed the application to return user profiles.