Hi,
Today I was faced with an interesting question regarding SharePoint’s search capabilities. I have a need to customize the search results as to display content of PDF files returned from the search in a specific format.
Suppose there is a document library of patient records in PDF format. Each PDF would contain (amongst other information) the patient ID, DOB, address, and hair colour. Now, if I searched for a complete or partial patient ID I would like the results to display as follows:
123431
DOB: 10/30/1973
Address: 123 Main Street, Mainsville, MA
Hair Color: Black
582654
DOB: 11/07/2001
Address: 234 Front Street, Toronto, ON
Hair Color: Blonde
The Patient ID would be found inside the PDF and would be a link to the document. The rest other fields would be picked-up from inside the PDF. I know that the search results can be formatted using XSLT in SharePoint 2010 and using the GUI in SharePoint 2013. However, can SharePoint be set up to read data from inside the result documents and display it in the results?
Thanks,
-Haniel
Yetch!
Sounds like they’ve built a process before they’ve figured out what they’re trying to achieve…
Would it make sense to store/index the original FrameMaker files? Use an iFilter that handles them?
Weird. As I was saying,
So as it turns out I was provided with incomplete requirements (surprise?) The client data would have specific information but not consistent between documents which rules out doing a structured search. They are using FrameMaker to export the document into PDF and will also export specific sections of the entire document into individual HTML files. So a single PDF may have up to 1000 small HTML snippets related to it. All this information would reside in Livelink. When someone searches for a term in SharePoint, it would bring back the HTML documents in a higher ranking and the PDF’s below.
Although the solution should work technically, I caution them that governance on creation of the original document is important. If the document creator doesn’t place the correct information into the right sections, it will not be returned by the search or too many results will have a match.
Regards,
-Haniel
Hey Haniel,
looks like that got truncated.
Regards
Craig
Hi Craig, So as it turns out I was provided with incomplete requirements (surprise?) The client data would have spec
Unfortunately the client already settled on Livelink for their records management solution (not really sure why). They are planning on using OpenText AGA which claims it can support the SharePoint search. As you said, the challenge will be with extracting out the metadata. Stay tuned on an update.
Regards,
-Haniel
