SharePoint 2019 is a comprehensive and ubiquitous collaboration platform from Microsoft.

Over 75,000 organizations have deployed SharePoint for a broad range of applications. It is increasingly used as part of Hybrid SharePoint configurations.

BA Insight’s SharePoint Connector allows you to connect to SharePoint 2019, fetch data from any site, document library, or list; and index this content securely. It securely indexes both the full text and metadata of documents in SharePoint 2019 into a search engine, enabling a single searchable result set across content from multiple repositories. This allows organizations to tap into the wealth of information accessible within multiple versions of SharePoint as well as other repositories and make that data instantly actionable to users through search.

Connectors for SharePoint

The SharePoint 2019 Connector honors the security of content stored in SharePoint 2019 and provides full and incremental crawls so the users have the latest information available to them all the time.

How BA Insight Improves SharePoint Out of the Box (OOTB)

SharePoint Server comes with OOTB connectors for SharePoint content and sites, as well as for SharePoint people profiles.  In many scenarios, the OOTB connectors are sufficient and should be used. However, there are important scenarios where BA Insight’s SharePoint Connector applies because of capabilities beyond those available OOTB such as:

  • Elasticsearch and other non-SharePoint search engines:  When you are indexing SharePoint 2019 content into a search engine other than SharePoint search, Microsoft’s OOTB connectors don’t apply.  BA Insight’s SharePoint 2019 connector can be used with Elasticsearch, Recommind’s Decisiv search, Azure Search and other search engines.
  • Non-search applications:  BA Insight’s connectors can be used to replicate SharePoint content into a list, a file system, a database, etc. using our Target feature.  There is no capability for this with the OOTB connectors.
  • Security mapping:  When you need to adjust the security on SharePoint content during the indexing process, programmatic access to the ACL fields is required, along with a way to change them.  You may want to ensure that any member of a specific team can see the final reports from that team or tighten the search rights on any content containing “Company Confidential” in the footer of the document.  With Microsoft’s OOTB connectors, there is no way to do this. BA Insight’s connectors and connector framework provide specific mechanisms for this.
  • Cloud Hybrid Search and content processing:  Microsoft’s cloud SSA used for the cloud Hybrid Search facility provides no access to the content and no entity extraction.  BA Insight’s connectors and connector framework support the Content Enrichment Web Service (CEWS) removed by Microsoft as well as other mechanisms, such as a built-in scripting facility.
  • Cloud Hybrid Search and security:  There are some security scenarios not supported by the OOTB connectors with cloud Hybrid Search.  If you have multiple domains with separate AD servers and want to have a single index in O365, there is no way to do this OOTB.  If you want to crawl a SharePoint farm that is using classic authentication, then the content won’t be visible in search OOTB. BA Insight’s connectors and connector framework provide solutions for these scenarios.

Hybrid SharePoint Solutions

BA Insight provides a complete set of solutions for Office 365 and Hybrid SharePoint.  For hybrid scenarios with an on-premise index, our SharePoint Online Connector provides secure, high-performance crawling of content in SharePoint Online.  For scenarios that have data sovereignty, data residency, and security constraints preventing the use of a single centralized index, our SmartHub combines multiple search results into a single interleaved result set.

Connector Features

  • Provides security trimming, only surfacing the content that users are permitted to see.
  • Minimizes the impact on the source application, ensuring no impact to its performance.
  • Provides both full and incremental crawls so users have the latest information.
  • Indexes every desired item with high throughput while avoiding any impact on SharePoint 2019’s performance.
  • Provides a single consolidated search index referencing SharePoint 2019 content, along with content from SharePoint on-premise and other repositories, resulting in a single unified result set.
  • After SharePoint 2019 is crawled, the search index has a representation pointing to the original content. This enables the users to click on a search result and be taken to the original item or document.
  • Works with all types of data.

Future-proof Your Investment for New SharePoint Versions and O365

Microsoft is continually updating SharePoint. BA Insight does the hard work of keeping our connector up to date for both SharePoint Online and multiple versions of SharePoint on-premise.

The upgrades are easy to do and can be done by your IT organization. It is a matter of accessing the BA Insight customer portal, downloading the latest release and installing and configuring it.  Or, if desired, our professional services team can handle the upgrades.

Platforms Supported:

  • Amazon Kendra
  • Amazon OpenSearch Service
  • Azure Cognitive Search
  • Elasticsearch
  • Microsoft Search
  • SharePoint Online
  • SharePoint On-Premise
  • Solr

Drive Organizational Productivity

By including SharePoint 2019 content and applications in a unified search index, you increase adoption of your intranet, improving organizational efficiency and productivity.