A noise word, or stop word, is a term the search engine ignores in end-user search queries.

Why would you want to remove a user's search term? Here are several usage cases.

1. The term occurs so frequently in the searchable content it is unlikely to be helpful in identifying or narrowing your search results. For example, a search for Microsoft Training on the Microsoft web site would yield a large number of results for the term Microsoft, when what you are really trying to find is Training.
2. The term is not important. For example, in a search for the highest mountain removing the article the would not affect the overall quality of the search.
3. The term should not be included in the search. For example, an offensive or obsolete term.

Each language has its own list of noise words. The English SharePoint® Server 2010 noise words are: a, and, is, in, it, of, the, to. When a search contains only noise words no search results are returned and an error is displayed.

"Your query included only common words and/or characters which were removed. No results are available. Try to add query terms."

A couple of other questions come to mind:

What if you want to include noise words in your search? Disable the “Ignore Noise Words” option in the Search Core Results web part.

Can you change the default noise words file? Yes, and configuring the noise words file can greatly improve the effectiveness of your user searches. You can find out more by reading Manage stop word files (SharePoint Server 2010).

Lastly, remember some words can have a secondary meaning. Which may explain why you can’t find the Information Technology department when you search for it.

To learn more about this and other topics for SharePoint developers, navigate to the Microsoft Learning | FAST University Learning Portal at www.fastuniversity.com and register for the Enterprise Search for Application Developers course or contact an Education Consultant for more information at fastuniv@microsoft.com.

By Cindy Staley

Hi all,

Microsoft Learning is pleased to announce the release of the English ILT course: 10554A: Developing Rich Internet Applications Using Microsoft® Silverlight® 4.

This course covers intermediate and advanced topics required to develop professional Silverlight 4 applications that can be deployed to the Web, Windows desktops, and Windows Phone 7 devices. The course will include hands-on labs that comprise approximately 50% of the classroom time and enable the student to learn Silverlight 4 programming within a variety of real-world scenarios.

Course Description

This 5-day ILT course will teach professional developers the advanced programming skills that are required to create real-world Web, Windows, and Windows Phone 7 solutions using Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010 in either Visual Basic or C#.

Audience

The target audience for this training course is professional developers who have experience with XAML (either through WPF or Silverlight), a limited amount of Silverlight development experience, and experience working in Visual Studio 2010. This audience is interested in learning to develop advanced Silverlight 4 applications using Visual Studio 2010.This course is intended for developers who have programming experience using either Visual Basic .NET or Visual C# and who understand the concepts of object-oriented programming. This course is designed for developers who are comfortable using Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2010.

Course Syllabus:

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Course.aspx?ID=10554A&Locale=en-us#tab1

Note: This course is available for download on the MCT Courseware Download Center and will be available for order by Learning Partners on Sep 7th, 2011.

Thanks and hope you enjoy the course.

Regards

Amith

Are you one of the almost 3,000 MCPs who have recently created a profile at Elance.com?  If so, don't forget to associate yourself with the MCP group via your Virtual Business Card.  You can follow the below steps to make the connection:

1)    Login to Elance and access your Profile. On the right side of the page, click on ‘Join Groups’

2)    Find the Microsoft Certified Professional Group and click ‘Join This Group’

3)    Insert a link to your MCP Virtual Business Card in the comments box and click ‘Join Group’

Elance will verify that you are a MCP and, once verified, you will be added to the MCP group on Elance.   

If you do not already have your MCP Virtual Business Card, please go here.

If you have any questions, please email Elance at: services@elance.com

Some MCTs have experienced issues with not being able to see/access the MCT Forum tab on the blog. We believe that the issues have been fixed; however, I need your help in confirming this. For those of you who have experienced problems with seeing and accessing the Forum, would you mind dumping your cache and logging in again. If you're unable to see the tab, respond with as much detail as you can. And, if you can now see the tab, let me know that too, eh? Thanks for your help and patience as we try to figure this out.

Don't miss the opportunity to learn more about how to join the MCP group on Elance! There are thousands of posted projects that need your Microsoft Certification skills. Learn how to create your profile, respond to proposals, and get paid! There are several onboarding sessions to help you get started:

Sign-up for an Onboarding Session

Go here to sign-up for your free contractor account.

Remaining onboard sessions:

·       Elance MCP Training – 7th session

08/25/2011 09:00 AM (Pacific)

·       Elance MCP Training – 7th session

         08/25/2011 06:00 PM (Pacific)

·       Elance MCP Training – 8th session

08/26/2011 11:00 AM (Pacific)

·       Elance MCP Training – 9th session

08/29/2011 08:00 AM (Pacific)

There are over 2k MCPs who have already created a profile and hundreds who have already submitted proposals for projects - get started now!

Do you use OneNote 2010? We need your help! The OneNote 2010 MOS beta is about to open and we need participants. We are excited to bring OneNote 2010 to our Microsoft Office Specialist line up for the first time. Please be sure to review exam details including audience profile and skills measured on our exam detail page.

The beta will run starting Monday, September 12 through Tuesday, October 4, 2011. Check here to see if a test center near you is participating. Interested but don't see a nearby test center? Please email Certiport's beta coordinator, Stacey Tilley, at betacoordinator@certiport.com.

Please note the beta exam is in English only.

UPDATE: This survey is now closed. Thanks to all who took it!

We need volunteers to help us design Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) Exam 373, Mobile Development Fundamentals.

We've collected initial information about relevant tasks and compiled them into an Objective Domain (OD), or exam design document. The OD includes a description of the MTA certification, the target audience for this exam, and a list of content areas, or functional groups, that begin with a single number. Below each functional group is a set of objectives, each of which begins with two numbers (e.g., 1.1) and includes a scoping statement (“This objective may include but is not limited to”).

Your feedback on this OD will be used to revise and finalize it. Exam questions will be written to each objective, so it’s important that the objectives be appropriate for the audience level, relevant, and clear. Your feedback on the OD is an excellent opportunity to influence the exam and help us get the design right!

We’re using a survey tool to facilitate the collection and organization of comments about the OD.

Please use the following link to access the survey and provide your feedback:

 http://microsoftlearning.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_20mcGcXgTA7gPg8

Please note that this privacy statement applies only to the MTA 373 OD Review Survey. It does not apply to other online or offline Microsoft sites, surveys, products or services.

Microsoft is committed to protecting your privacy. This survey does not request or collect any personal information from you nor does this survey use any cookies or other technologies to track your responses to the survey. Your responses to this survey will not be linked to the contact information previously collected by Microsoft. Your answers will be reported in aggregate with those of other respondents.

Note that if you’re running Internet Explorer 9, you’ll need to enable Compatibility View to complete the survey.

Please provide your feedback by eod PST Friday, August 26^th, to ensure that it is included in the finalization of the OD.

Thank you for your help!  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me (sanres@microsoft.com).

I am often asked: If I will only be working with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, do I need to attend the SharePoint 2010 search training? The answer is yes, absolutely.

FAST Search builds on and extends the SharePoint search platform. By first understanding what SharePoint offers you can take advantage of those capabilities and then add on the new FAST Search features. Take a look at some of the topics in the SharePoint search classes:

• Create and configure a search site with out of the box search web parts.
• Create and configure federated locations and federated web parts.
• Implement search scopes and managed metadata.
• Configure and customize SharePoint linguistic features.
• Create a search web part using the Federated Object Model.
• Create a Query Web Services client to submit a query and retrieve results.
• Create a database External Content Type using SharePoint Designer.

All of the SharePoint search topics are helpful for FAST Search, and every topic will teach you foundational concepts that apply to both products. So what FAST Search for SharePoint topics are covered? Here are a few.

• Understand the FAST Search architecture and configure the FAST Web Crawler.
• Construct advance FAST Query Language queries.
• Configure numeric refiners and search scopes.
• Configure linguistics features like keywords, synonyms, stemming, spell checking, and offensive content filtering.
• Implement advanced content processing like sentiment analysis.
• Implement ranking profiles and optimize search results relevancy.

As you can see, these topics are designed to highlight some the high-end capabilities of FAST Search. When you add these features onto what SharePoint Search provides you have a very powerful search application with refinement, advanced querying, specialty content processing, and customized ranking.

So when you are considering FAST Search training remember you are not just trying to understand FAST Search but SharePoint Search as well. Your knowledge of both products will help you make sound decisions on which product’s features better meet your business needs.

For more information or to register for a class, please contact MSL | FAST University at fastuniv@microsoft.com.

By Leo Souza

Career Opportunities: Announcing New Opportunity for MCPs

 
Microsoft Learning is working with Elance, an online employment platform for freelancers and consultants, to help MCPs find work in the cloud. An MCP group will be created on the Elance platform and validated through your Virtual Business Card.

Microsoft partners and customers are looking to hire MCPs for remote contract based hourly and statement of work (SOW) work. Contractors have earned more than $US450 million to-date through Elance. Thousands of projects that are perfectly suited to MCPs are available on Elance now.

Elance is free to join and offers you the opportunity to:

• Find Work: Efficient process to submit proposals for jobs actively hiring.
• Build Your Portfolio: Create an online profile to showcase skills, experience and work history.
• Work Online: Workrooms to share all of your files and communications.
• Get Paid: Fast and secure payments in the cloud using Elance escrow and automated billing.

To get started, please register for one of the following on-boarding webinars:

Thursday August 18, 2011, 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time
Friday August 19, 2011, 9 A.M. Pacific Time
Monday August 22, 2011, 7 A.M. Pacific Time
Monday August 22, 2011, 10 A.M. Pacific Time
Monday August 22, 2011,6 P.M. Pacific Time
Thursday August 25, 2011, 9 A.M. Pacific Time
Thursday August 25, 2011, 6 P.M. Pacific Time

On-boarding will cover:

• Create Your Online Profile: Showcase your skills, certifications and education. Set your hourly rate, and describe your specialties.
• Respond to Job Postings: Search for active job opportunities from Microsoft Partners/Customers and submit proposals to win the work.
• Manage Work & Payments: Learn how to utilize the online workroom to collaborate with clients and share files. Create milestones and timesheets to track work and get paid.

Note Elance is a third-party vendor. Microsoft is providing this information to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of this information does not imply endorsement by Microsoft of Elance, its site or services.
 

MCT Readiness returns after taking a month off during Summer. We will have two great sessions for our MCTs tomorrow:

• Learn how to build your own environment from scratch using SQL Server when Dandy Weyn gives you an exclusive  preview in What's New in SQL Server Code Name "Denali".

• Don't miss Symon Perriman when he speaks about multi-site high-availability, where virtual machines can be configured on a Hyper-V Failover Cluster that stretches across sites in his session Disaster Recovery Planning for Hyper-V with Failover Clustering.

We will be online from 8AM PST - 10 AM PST, MCTs you should have received an email invitation and of course you can find full information at the MCT Readiness site. We'd love to see you there tomorrow!

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles. One of the highlights of my experience was attending a session led by Romi Mahajan, Worldwide Director of Digital Marketing and Search at Microsoft, entitled “Expand Your SharePoint Practice with Solutions for Internet Sites.”

As an instructor on Enterprise Search technology for the past five years, I have had the opportunity to work with students on how to build search-driven applications across a wide array of industries, on either side of the firewall. However, Romi’s presentation still provided an “aha moment” for me, clearly showing the value of search to help deliver a solid digital marketing platform with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Digital marketing allows for companies to keep up with their consumers, making sure that the right information about products and services is available at the right time across all channels in which the companies invest – web sites, mobile device marketing, and social media, to name a few. However, as with other enterprise computing tasks, managing and optimizing multiple platforms to perform these tasks can be a considerable challenge.

A well-thought out plan to digital marketing hinges on putting the user experience first, unifying your approach to management of Web Content, Digital Assets, Commerce, Analytics, and Social & Web 2.0 capabilities, as well as Search. According to a recent Gartner Report, “By 2013, more than 30% of the most popular websites will use search and content analytics to target content.”¹

The good news is that the tools for your digital marketing solution may already be in your hands. The investment that many companies have made in SharePoint Server 2010 to power their internal sites to boost business productivity can also be leveraged for digital marketing. And the FAST Search for SharePoint Server 2010 component can help further engage your customers with an adaptive and interactive search experience, delivering dynamic navigation and flexible search results that gets your customers exactly where they want to go.

Learn more about how to get the most out of the search capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010 for your digital marketing needs by registering for a class on the FAST University Learning Portal www.fastuniversity.com or for more information contact a FAST University Education Consultant at fastuniv@microsoft.com.

By: Lawrence Kaye

¹Gartner RAS Core Research Note, Mick MacComascaigh & Whit Andrews, 3 Dec 2009