Microsoft SharePoint Connector
The second generation Coveo connector for Microsoft SharePoint allows you to bring
the information stored on one or multiple SharePoint farms (tenants in SharePoint
Online) into the unified index so that end-users can easily access this content. The
connector allows Coveo Enterprise Search (CES) to crawl and index a complete SharePoint
farm or specific farm sections, such as Web Applications, site collections, websites,
lists, and document libraries.
Note: The document in this section describes the second generation SharePoint connector.
CES 7.0.6830+ (July 2014) The original SharePoint connector is still available and was renamed SharePoint Legacy connector (see Microsoft SharePoint Legacy Connector).
CES 7.0.7433+ (February 2015) A tool to convert your SharePoint Legacy sources to SharePoint sources is available. The SharePoint Converter Tool is pretty useful when you want to take full advantage of the improved SharePoint connector without having to recreate all your SharePoint Legacy sources. Contact Coveo Support to get the SharePoint Converter Tool.
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Microsoft SharePoint Connector Guide |
Comparison With the Legacy Connector
The second generation SharePoint connector has been completely rewritten to provide similar features as the SharePoint Legacy connector with the bonus of a significantly improved crawling performance thanks to multi-threading and optimized API communications. For supported SharePoint versions, Coveo recommends to use the new SharePoint connector to create or migrate SharePoint sources.
The following table highlights the differences between the two connectors.
Comparison aspect | New SharePoint connector | SharePoint Legacy connector |
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Supported SharePoint versions | Online, 2016, 2013, 2010, Foundation 2013, and Foundation 2010 | Online, 2013, 2010, MOSS 2007, WSS3, Foundation 2013, and Foundation 2010 |
Crawling performance | Significantly improved |
Good |
Multi-threading | Yes | No |
Refresh subtree | Yes | No |
Claims form authentication | No | Yes |
Unpublished items | Not indexed | Indexed |
Connector Features Summary
Features | Supported | Additional information | |
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SharePoint version | 2010, 2013, 2016, Online, Foundation 2010, and Foundation 2013 | ||
Searchable content types |
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Farms (tenants in SharePoint Online), Web applications, site collections, sites, user profiles*, personal websites*, lists, list items, list item attachments, document libraries, document sets, documents, Web parts1, and microblog posts and replies. | |
Content update | Incremental refresh |
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Full refresh or rebuild is needed to retrieve deleted user profiles1. |
Full refresh |
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Rebuild |
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Document-level security |
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* - Not available in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.
1 - Not all Web parts are available in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 (see Overview of Web Parts available in SharePoint Foundation 2010).
Features
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Content indexing
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Indexing all SharePoint content
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Farms (tenants in SharePoint Online) and Web Applications
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Site collections, websites, and subsites
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Lists, list items, and list item attachments
Note: CES 7.0.8225+ (March 2016) SharePoint Online lists, list items, and list item attachments are indexed.
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Document libraries, documents, and document sets
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User profiles and personal websites
Note: User profiles and personal websites are not available in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation.
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Microblog posts and replies
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CES 7.0.7022+ (September 2014) Web Parts Pages [more]
Note: Not all Web parts are available in Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 (see Overview of Web Parts available in SharePoint Foundation 2010).
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CES 7.0.7022+ (September 2014) Social tags [more]
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HTTP over SSL (HTTPS) support
You can use the SharePoint connector to index a SharePoint site that uses HTTPS.
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Security
The SharePoint connector supports security for SharePoint Web Applications using Classic Mode or Claims Based authentication.
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Classic Mode
The connector indexes permissions on SharePoint items as SharePoint groups and Windows accounts.
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When a user performs a query, returned results are only those to which his Windows account has access.
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Users can perform queries from any Coveo search interface.
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Claims Based (Windows [NTLM or Kerberos], ADFS)
The connector indexes permissions on SharePoint items as SharePoint groups and Claims.
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When a user performs a query, returned results are only those with permissions that match any of the Claims assigned to the user after he is successfully authenticated in SharePoint.
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Users can perform queries from any Coveo .NET Front-End search interface:
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When searching from within SharePoint using the Coveo search box, the user is already authenticated in SharePoint and his Claims are available to the Coveo search interface. This means that search queries can be performed using the Claims assigned to the user.
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Claims users can also perform searches for secured SharePoint content from Coveo search interfaces outside SharePoint without having to log in to the search interface when the search interface is configured for SSO (see Manually Configuring a .NET Search Interface Claims SSO for an On-Premises SharePoint).
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CES 7.0.9093+ (September 2017) Users can perform queries from any Coveo JavaScript search interface (see Coveo JavaScript Search Framework and Allowing a JavaScript Search Page to Retrieve SharePoint Claims).
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Incremental refresh
Once incremental refresh is enabled on a SharePoint source, the SharePoint connector automatically refreshes the content modified since the last incremental refresh run. This way, the index is always kept up to date (see Scheduling a Source Incremental Refresh).
Notes:
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CES 7.0.9434+ (September 2018) A change in the URI of SharePoint documents will cause an incremental refresh to add duplicate documents to your index. A full refresh (recommended) or rebuild is required to remove those duplicates and prevent the issue from happening again.
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CES 7.0.8541+ (September 2016) The incremental refresh takes account of added and modified user profiles. A source full refresh or rebuild is required to update deleted user profiles.
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CES 7.0.8388– (June 2016) The incremental refresh does not take account of user profile changes.
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SharePoint Integration:
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Installation of Coveo Web Service on the SharePoint server to provide more crawling functions
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Installation of the Coveo search box to replace the SharePoint search box
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Installation of Coveo search interfaces on the SharePoint server
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Intranet and SharePoint search interface features related to the SharePoint connector:
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Search results folding for the following SharePoint items:
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Blog posts and their comments
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Discussion board threads
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Document sets and their items
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The Document Sets facet appears, listing all document sets included in the results when one or more document set items match the query.
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Search results referring to a document link in SharePoint are now identified with a special icon.
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CES 7.0.9272+ (March 2018) Okta single sign-on authentication is supported (see Okta Single Sign-On Provider for SharePoint On-Premises).
Note on exclusion filters
The SharePoint connector does not expand filtered items, meaning that the connector only expands and indexes items that were not precedently excluded by a filter.
When you want to exclude a specific container but include its sub-items, you must use a script. Contact Coveo Support for assistance.
Feature History
CES version | Monthly release | Features |
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7.0.9272 | March 2018 | Support for SharePoint on-premises SSO authentication with Okta [more] |
7.0.8541 | September 2016 | Support for SharePoint 2016 |
7.0.7433 | February 2015 | Introduction of the SharePoint Converter Tool |
7.0.7022 | September 2014 | Support for social tags and Web Parts Pages |
7.0.6942 | August 2014 |
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7.0.6830 | July 2014 |
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7.0.6767 | June 2014 | Introduction of this second generation SharePoint connector. |