SharePoint 2016 Connector

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

SharePoint Server comes with OOTB connectors for SharePoint content and sites, and 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 2016 content into a search engine other than SharePoint search, Microsoft’s OOTB connectors don’t apply.  BA Insight’s SharePoint 2016 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, the content won’t be visible in search OOTB.   BA Insight’s connectors and connector framework provide solutions for these scenarios.

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 2016’s performance.
• Provides a single consolidated search index referencing SharePoint 2016 content, along with content from SharePoint Online and other repositories, resulting in a single unified result set.
• After SharePoint 2016 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.

Drive Organizational Productivity

By including SharePoint 2016 content and applications in a unified search index, you increase adoption of your intranet, improving organizational efficiency and productivity.

Contact us today to learn more.