FAST Search for SharePoint tracking and usage

FAST Search for SharePoint is an advanced search solution integrated with Microsoft SharePoint that provides users with powerful and accurate search capabilities. This solution delivers a user-friendly and intelligent search experience, enabling users to easily find relevant content within their SharePoint repositories.

FAST Search for SharePoint provides more advanced capabilities than SharePoint's native search engine. It offers features like relevance tuning, deep refinement, thumbnail previews, rich query support, and visual search results. Additionally, it can handle large volumes of content to provide faster and more accurate searches compared to the native search engine.

Configuring FAST Search for SharePoint requires SharePoint Server 2010 or later, and installation of FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. Once the prerequisites are met, you can configure FAST Search through SharePoint Central Administration, which involves setting up content sources, query capabilities, and search settings.

Yes, FAST Search for SharePoint can crawl external content sources by using connectors like Business Data Connectivity (BDC) and custom connectors. This way, it not only enables users to search within SharePoint content but also allows them to retrieve relevant information from other repositories.

Optimizing the performance of FAST Search for SharePoint requires tuning several factors like indexing, relevance, and infrastructure. You can remove unnecessary content sources, focus on important metadata properties, and improve crawling performance to ensure optimal search results. Additionally, you can monitor search performance metrics and implement redundant components to maintain high availability and prevent potential bottlenecks.