Original article
Features deprecated in SharePoint 2013
The following features and functionality have been deprecated or changed in SharePoint 2013.
Visual upgrade
Description: The visual upgrade feature in SharePoint Server 2010 is not available in SharePoint 2013. For the upgrade from Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010, you could choose to use the visual upgrade feature to give site collection owners and site owners the opportunity to preserve the previous user interface temporarily while still upgrading the infrastructure and databases, site collections, and features to the latest version. This allowed site collection owners and site owners to update customizations to work in the new user interface. Once the database and site collection upgrade was complete, the user had the option to upgrade the user interface on a more granular level of the website (SPWeb object).
Reason for change: The visual upgrade feature is replaced with deferred site collection upgrade. The site collection upgrade process is not reversible. The deferred site collection upgrade is a more comprehensive upgrade process than visual upgrade.
Visual upgrade preserved only the old master pages, CSS files, and HTML files. Deferred site collection upgrade preserves much more, including SPFeature functionality. To achieve the deferred site collection upgrade, major changes in the architecture were required, including the removal of visual upgrade.
With deferred site collection upgrade, you can continue to use the UI from the previous version (SharePoint Server 2010) more seamlessly than is possible with visual upgrade. The master page, CSS, JScript, and SPFeatures will remain in SharePoint Server 2010 mode. One key difference is that the granularity of upgrading the user interface is per site collection (SPSite) instead of site (SPWeb). Users can still preview their site in the new SharePoint 2013 user interface before committing. However, this is accomplished by creating and upgrading a temporary copy of their site collection instead of a preview in the existing instance of the site collection. The reason for previewing a copy of the site collection is because of the complexity of what occurs during site collection upgrade. Once a site collection is upgraded, it cannot be rolled back. Therefore, performing a preview would not be possible except in a copy of the site collection.
Migration path: Site collection administrators who are using visual upgrade to continue to use SharePoint Server 2007 must move to the SharePoint Server 2010 user interface before upgrading to SharePoint 2013. After the content database is upgraded, users can use deferred site collection upgrade to continue to use the SharePoint Server 2010 experience for their site collections. Site collection administrators can be notified by their farm administrator when a site collection is ready for upgrade and the site collection administrators can then choose to either perform the upgrade of their site collection or optionally first preview the new functionality in a temporary copy of their site collection.
Any SharePoint user interface might have dependencies on visual upgrade. The main dependency was getting the user interface version and then outputting the correct user interface (new or legacy). The visual upgrade API feature is updated so that the user interface version is remapped to the new site collection compatibility level property. This returns the same information about which version the site uses as before. Therefore, dependent code does not need to change.
Document Workspace site template
Description: When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Document Workspace site template is not available.
Reason for change: The scenario of collaborating on a document is now provided by the Team Site site template. The Document Workspace site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.
Migration path: Existing sites that were created by using the Document Workspace site template will continue to operate in SharePoint 2013. The Document Workspace site template will be removed completely from the next major release of SharePoint and sites that were created by using the Document Workspace site template will not be supported.
Personalization Site site template
Description: When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Personalization Site site template is not available.
Reason for change: The Personalization Site site template was not a widely used site template. The Personalization Site site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.
Migration path: Existing sites that were created by using the Personalization Site site template will continue to operate in SharePoint 2013. The Personalization Site site template will be removed completely from the next major release of SharePoint and sites that were created by using the Personalization Site site template will not be supported.
Meeting Workspace site templates
Description: When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, all five of the Meeting Workspace site templates are not available. This includes the Basic Meeting Workspace, Blank Meeting Workspace, Decision Meeting Workspace, Social Meeting Workspace, and Multipage Meeting Workspace.
Reason for change: SharePoint 2013 and Office 2013 provide other features that support meetings and collaboration. For example, you can use Lync to conduct live meetings, OneNote to take notes during meetings, and a SharePoint team site or My Site to store shared meeting notes.
Migration path: Existing sites that were created by using the Meeting Workspace site templates will continue to operate in SharePoint 2013. The Meeting Workspace site templates will be removed completely from the next major release of SharePoint and sites that were created by using the Meeting Workspace site templates will not be supported.
Group Work site template and Group Work solution
Description: When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Group Work site template is not available. This Group Work site template provides a groupware solution that teams can use to create, organize, and share information. The Group Work site template includes the Group Calendar, Circulation, Phone-Call Memo, document library, and other basic lists. The Group Work site template and the Group Work solution are discontinued and not available in SharePoint 2013.
Reason for change: The Group Work site template was not a widely used site template. The Group Work site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.
Migration path: Existing sites that were created by using the Group Work site template will continue to operate in SharePoint 2013. The Group Work site template will be removed completely from the next major release of SharePoint and sites that were created by using the Group Work site template will not be supported.
Visio Process Repository site template
Description: When you create a site in SharePoint 2013, the Visio Process Repository site template will continue to be available. However, the Visio Process Repository site template will be removed in the next major release of SharePoint.
Reason for change: The Visio Process Repository site template is not a widely used site template. The Visio Process Repository site template was removed from SharePoint 2013 to simplify the list of templates that are available when a user creates a new site collection.
Migration path: Not required. The Visio Process Repository site template is available in SharePoint 2013.
Unghosting and customizing CSS files
Description: The following methods are included in SharePoint 2013, but will be removed from the next major release of SharePoint:
- Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer.Webs.CustomizeCss
- Microsoft.SharePoint.SoapServer.Webs.RevertCss
The Webs.CustomizeCss method applies style sheet customization to a particular file.
The Webs.RevertCss method reverts style sheet customization of a file to the default style sheet.
These two methods are stored in Webs.asmx.cs and are defined in Webswsdl.asps.
Reason for change: The methods are outdated and are no longer needed.
Migration path: None.
Imaging Web service
Description: The Imaging Web service provides functionality for creating and managing picture libraries. The Imaging Web service will be removed from the next major release of SharePoint. The Imaging Web service is included and supported in SharePoint 2013.
Reason for change: The Imaging Web service is not widely used. The only client application for the Imaging Web service, Office Picture Manager, is no longer included with SharePoint 2013. The Imaging Web service is being removed to reduce security vulnerabilities and to simplify the number of ways to connect to SharePoint 2013.
Migration path: All the functionality of the Imaging Web service is available through the client-side object model (CSOM). The CSOM provides client-side applications with access to a subset of the SharePoint Foundation server object model, including core objects such as site collections, sites, lists, and list items. Also, Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) provides clients with key functionality of the Imaging Web service (for example, upload, download, and rename).
Excel Services — Can't edit workbooks in the browser that have external data connections
Description: Workbooks with external data connections that use Windows authentication cannot be refreshed in the browser. Instead, you are prompted to open the workbook in the Excel client program. Workbooks that have database or Windows credentials stored either in the Secure Store Service or in the connection string can still be edited in the browser. This change applies only when Excel Web App in Office Web Apps Server is used to view workbooks, not when Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2013 is used.
Reason for change: This is a design limitation in SharePoint 2013.
Migration path: You can still refresh these workbooks in the Excel client program. Additionally, a service application administrator can configure that workbooks are viewed in SharePoint 2013 instead of Office Web Apps Server.
Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010
Description: Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010 has been discontinued and is not available in SharePoint 2013. Analytics processing for SharePoint 2013 is now a component of the Search service.
Reason for change: A new analytics system was required for SharePoint 2013 that included improvements in scalability and performance, and that had an infrastructure that encompasses SharePoint Online. The Analytics Processing Component in SharePoint 2013 runs analytics jobs to analyze content in the search index and user actions that are performed on SharePoint sites.
SharePoint 2013 still logs every click in SharePoint sites and still provides a count of hits for every document. User data is made anonymous early in the logging process and the Analytics Processing Component is scalable to the service.
This analytics data is used in SharePoint 2013 to provide new item-to-item recommendation features, to show view counts that are embedded in SharePoint 2013 and Search Server user interface, to provide a report of the top items in a site and list, and to influence the relevancy algorithm of search.
What happens to Web Analytics after upgrade: The Web Analytics Service is not upgraded to the Analytics Processing Component in SharePoint 2013. When you upgrade to SharePoint 2013, the databases that contain the data from Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010 are not removed. These databases are not used by or maintained by the Analytics Processing Component in SharePoint 2013. This means that documents on sites in SharePoint Server 2010 that are upgraded will show a hit count of 0.
When you upgrade to SharePoint 2013, do not attach and upgrade the databases that contain the data from Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010. We recommend that you turn off Web Analytics in the SharePoint Server 2010 environment before you copy the content databases that you want to upgrade to SharePoint 2013.
Reports from Web Analytics for the top items in a site are carried forward. Reports that show browser traffic, top users of a site, and referring URL are not carried forward and are not used by the Analytics Processing Component in SharePoint 2013.
Administrative reports for the quota usage of site collections in the farm are not available in SharePoint 2013.
SharePoint 2013 does not support the Web Analytics Web Part. After a farm is upgraded to SharePoint 2013, all instances of a Web Analytics Web Part will not function. The page that includes the Analytics Web Part will render and a message appears that informs the user that the Web Part is no longer supported.
Migration path: None. Data collection for Analytics Processing in SharePoint 2013 starts immediately for sites, including SharePoint Server 2010 sites.
Excel Services — Can't edit workbooks in the browser that have external data connections
Description: Workbooks with external data connections that use Windows authentication cannot be refreshed in the browser. Instead, you are prompted to open the workbook in the Excel client program. Workbooks that have database or Windows credentials stored either in the Secure Store Service or in the connection string can still be edited in the browser. This change applies only when Excel Web App in Office Web Apps Server is used to view workbooks, not when Excel Services in SharePoint Server 2013 is used.
Reason for change: This is a design limitation in SharePoint 2013.
Migration path: You can still refresh these workbooks in the Excel client program. Additionally, a service application administrator can configure that workbooks are viewed in SharePoint 2013 instead of Office Web Apps Server.
Organization Profiles
Description: The Organization Profiles feature is deprecated in SharePoint Server 2013. Organization Profiles contain detailed information about an organization such as teams, divisions, and other information that describes the organization’s hierarchy.
Reason for change: SharePoint features related to identities continue to evolve around the core concepts of users and groups, and SharePoint will not be investing further in OrgID.
Migration path: Existing solutions based on Organization Profiles will continue to operate in SharePoint 2013. The Organization Profiles feature will be removed completely from the next major release of SharePoint, and solutions created by using Organization Profiles will not be supported.
SharePoint Foundation 2010 deprecated search features
The following functionality has changed in SharePoint Foundation search.
Search capabilities
Description: The search capabilities of SharePoint Foundation 2013 have changed, and are now based on the same search implementation as SharePoint Server. This provides many improvements, but also means that the search configuration is very different.
Reason for change: Alignment of basic capabilities between SharePoint Server and SharePoint Foundation.
Migration path: No migration of search settings is supported.
SharePoint Server 2010 deprecated search features
The following section provides details about the deprecated search features in SharePoint Server.
Modifying the search topology using a web-based interface
Description: SharePoint 2013 uses the web-based interface to show the current status of the topology. You change the topology by using Windows PowerShell. SharePoint Server 2010 also included a web-based option for changing the topology.
Reason for change: The core search architecture of SharePoint 2013 has a more complex and flexible topology that can be changed more efficiently by using Windows PowerShell.
Migration path: Use Windows PowerShell to modify the search topology.
Diacritic sensitivity element in the thesaurus
Description: In SharePoint Server 2010, thesaurus files contain a
<diacritics_sensitive> element. This element determines whether diacritical marks such as accents should be ignored or applied by the search system when expanding a query with terms from the thesaurus. By default, the <diacritics_sensitive> element is set to zero to ignore diacritical marks.
In SharePoint 2013, the
<diacritics_sensitive> element is not available. Instead, diacritical marks are always respected when matching query terms with terms in the thesaurus.
Diacritic variants are not automatically matched with query terms. Therefore, fewer query terms might be expanded by synonyms. For example, the thesaurus entry
<munchen> is not matched with the query term<münchen>.
Reason for change: The feature has limited usage. The same behavior as in SharePoint Server 2010 can be achieved by adding diacritic variants in the thesaurus.
Migration path: Update the thesaurus dictionaries that are tagged as diacritic insensitive. To update thesaurus dictionaries, add diacritic variations of the relevant terms.
Replacement mode within the thesaurus
Description: The thesaurus replacement mode is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.
In SharePoint Server 2010, you can classify entries in the thesaurus as expansions that are added to the query in addition to the original term. Likewise, you can classify entries as replacements of the original term in a query.
In SharePoint 2013, thesaurus replacements are no longer supported. All entries in the thesaurus are expansions, and the original term is not removed from the query. The original query term is always evaluated when you search the index. You cannot remove synonyms or words from the index.
Reason for change: The feature has limited usage, and may also have unwanted side-effects for relevance.
Migration path: No equivalent feature.
Search Query web service
Description: The Search Query web service is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.
In SharePoint Server 2010, the Search Query web service exposes the SharePoint Enterprise Search capabilities to client applications. This enables you to access search results from client and web applications outside the context of a SharePoint site.
Reason for change: The Search Query web service is deprecated because the client object model (CSOM) and a new REST-based web service are available for developing Office-wide extensibility scenarios. The CSOM exposes the same functionality as the Search Query web service, and a larger set of functionality for stand-alone client applications.
Migration path: Change custom search solutions to use the CSOM or REST-based web service instead of using the Search Query web service.
Search RSS and search from Windows
Description: The search RSS feature is deprecated in SharePoint 2013. The functionality for performing enterprise searches from Windows 7 depends on search RSS and this element has also been deprecated in SharePoint 2013.
The RSS link no longer appears on the results page. This link is replaced by the Search Alerts link.
Before upgrading site collections to SharePoint 2013, you can continue to use RSS in the SharePoint 2010 version of the Search Center. However, after you upgrade the Search Center to SharePoint 2013, the RSS is no longer available. In SharePoint 2013, you can create custom RSS feeds that use the client object model (CSOM), which targets the needs of your particular application and the RSS readers.
Reason for change: Most RSS readers that are available do not support claims authentication. In SharePoint 2013, claims authentication is the default authentication model. By using claims authentication, RSS readers work while the authentication cookie is cached. However, after the cookie expires, RSS readers cannot refresh their authentication, and so they stop working.
Migration path: After migrating a site to SharePoint 2013, you can create search-based alerts to be notified of changes to search results. You can also create a custom RSS feed in SharePoint document libraries, by using the UX extensibility platform.
Custom word breaker dictionaries
Description: The format of the custom word breaker dictionaries has changed in SharePoint 2013. In SharePoint 2013, you can only create one language-independent dictionary. In SharePoint Server 2010, you can create language-specific custom dictionaries (one dictionary for each language) to edit the word breaker behavior of enterprise search. The word breaker behavior for East Asian (CJK) languages has not changed in SharePoint 2013.
In SharePoint 2013, custom word breaker dictionaries from earlier versions of SharePoint Server are not supported.
Reason for change: The search processing framework for SharePoint 2013 is new, and the way the word breakers operate has changed.
Migration path: You must combine existing custom dictionaries into one language-independent dictionary.
Configuration of stemming in the registry
Description: The configuration of stemming in the registry is no longer supported in SharePoint 2013. Modifying stemming entries in the registry has no effect during search. In SharePoint Server 2010, you can turn stemming on or off, or you can replace it with a third-party stemmer by changing the registry. In SharePoint 2013, you cannot use a third-party stemmer.
Reason for change: This feature has limited feature usage.
Migration path: There is no migration path available for custom stemmers. You can enable or disable stemming in the Search Result Web Part.
SharePoint Search SQL syntax
Description: In SharePoint Server 2010, you could construct complex search queries by using SQL syntax.
Search in SharePoint 2013 supports FAST Query Language (FQL) syntax and Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax for custom search solutions. You cannot use SQL syntax in custom search solutions.
Custom search solutions that use SQL syntax with the Query object model and the Query web service that were created in earlier versions of SharePoint Serverdo not work when you upgrade them to SharePoint 2013. If you submit queries by using these applications, you will receive an error.
Reason for change: The core search architecture has changed in SharePoint 2013, and the SQL syntax is no longer supported.
Migration path: Change current search solutions to use either the KQL syntax or FQL syntax for queries.
Shallow search refiners
Description: SharePoint Server Search in Office 2010 supported shallow search refiners. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint supports shallow refiners and deep refiners. InSharePoint 2013, only deep search refiners are supported.
We recommend that you use deep search refiners to refine searches. In SharePoint 2013, deep refiners are an improvement to the existing FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint functionality. For example, the resource usage for each refiner is improved in SharePoint 2013.
In SharePoint 2013, you can view refiners as you did in the earlier version of the product. However, the refiners are now computed differently. They are created based on index structures that are aggregated across the full result set.
Reason for change: The shallow search refiners are replaced with an improved implementation of deep search refiners.
Migration path: No specific migration steps are necessary.
FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint deprecated features
The following section provides details about the deprecated features in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.
FAST Search database connector
Description: The FAST Search database connector is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
Reason for change: The connector framework for SharePoint 2013 is combined with the BCS framework and the Business Data Catalog connectors.
Migration path: Replace the FAST Search database connector with the Business Data Catalog-based indexing connectors in the BCS framework.
FAST Search Lotus Notes connector
Description: The FAST Search Lotus Notes connector is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
The Lotus Notes indexing connector (BCS framework) provides similar functionality as the FAST Search Lotus Notes connector. The FAST Search Lotus Notes connector supports the Lotus Notes security model. This includes Lotus Notes roles, and lets you crawl Lotus Notes databases as attachments.
Reason for change: The connector framework for SharePoint 2013 is combined with the BCS framework and the Business Data Catalog connectors.
Migration path: Replace the FAST Search Lotus Notes connector with the Lotus Notes indexing connector, or with a third-party connector.
FAST Search web crawler
Description: The FAST Search web crawler is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
The SharePoint 2013 crawler provides similar functionality to the FAST Search web crawler.
Reason for change: The crawler capabilities are merged into one crawler implementation for consistency and ease of use.
Migration path: Use the standard SharePoint 2013 crawler. The following table explains the differences between the FAST Search web crawler and the SharePoint 2013 Preview crawler, and provides details about migration.
| Feature | FAST Search web crawler | SharePoint 2013 crawler | Migration path |
|---|---|---|---|
Refeed documents
|
You can refeed documents that you have previously downloaded to the index without having to recrawl them.
|
You can perform a full recrawl with similar functionality, but with slightly decreased performance of feeds.
|
None.
|
Extract dynamically generated links and content from Java
|
You can extract dynamically generated links and content from JavaScript.
|
No longer supported.
|
None.
|
Language-focused crawls
|
You can extract dynamically generated links and content from JavaScript. You can perform crawls focused on language.
You can focus a crawl on a certain language, by only following links from and storing content for documents that match specific languages.
This feature is intended for large scale crawls that target specific languages but that do not limit the crawl to a top level domain.
|
No longer supported.
|
None.
|
Modify URIs
|
You can modify the URIs before crawling them.
Such a modification of the URI enables you to remove certain features of the URI, such as dynamic components, and to rename host names.
|
You can apply prefix-type URI rewriting with the "Server name remapping" feature in Search Admin. This allows you to perform the most relevant modifications of the URI.
|
None.
|
Find similar results
Description: The Find similar results feature is not available in SharePoint 2013. The Find similar results feature is supported in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint to search for results that resemble results that you have already retrieved.
Reason for change: The Find similar results feature is available only within the query integration interfaces, and it does not consistently provide good results in many scenarios.
Migration path: There is no migration path available.
FAST Query Language (FQL) deprecated features
Description: The FQL features are aligned with the features of the SharePoint Keyword Query Language (KQL) syntax
The following table describes the FAST Query Language (FQL) features that are deprecated in SharePoint 2013.
| FQL operator or feature | Changed behavior in SharePoint 2013 |
|---|---|
ANY operator |
This operator has the same effect as the
OR operator. |
RANK operator |
This operator is accepted but does not affect result ranking.
|
XRANK operator |
This operator has a new and more flexible syntax.
The old syntax is deprecated.
The
boost parameter is mapped to the new cb parameter. The boostall parameter is ignored. |
STRING operator |
The
N parameter is accepted but ignored.
The
MINEXPANSION/MAXEXPANSION parameters are not supported.
The
ANNOTATION_CLASS parameter is not supported.
For the
MODE parameter, the following arguments are deprecated, and have the following behavior:
|
Implicit typing of numeric data types
|
The FQL parser is not search schema-aware, and some implicit numeric data typing is no longer supported.
|
Reason for change: To simplify the query syntax, some redundant syntax features were removed from SharePoint 2013.
Migration path: The following table describes what to replace the deprecated FQL operators or features with.
| Replace this FQL operator or feature | With |
|---|---|
ANY operator | WORDS operator |
RANK operator | XRANK operator |
XRANK operator |
New syntax
|
STRING operator |
For proximity operations, use the
NEAR/ONEAR operators. For mapping of end-user query text, use the KQL mode. |
Numeric data types
|
Type numeric data explicitly. Use either the
int/float/decimal operators, or consistently use decimal/float syntax (with decimals always included) in the query. |
URL Query syntax
Description: In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, the URL-related managed properties (such as site, or path) are tokenized as a text string, and you can query any subpart of the URL. This includes
STARTS-WITH,ENDS-WITH, PHRASE and proximity queries on URL properties. Special characters such as “/”, “_” and “-”are handled as word delimiters.
In SharePoint 2013, the entire URL is tokenized as one word. This includes special characters such as “
/”, “_” and “-”. You can query these managed properties by:- Searching for the full string for the site or path.
- Searching for the leading part of the site or path.
- Omitting the protocol part (http, https), and omitting the leading part of the domain address in the query expression, for the site managed property.
Reason for change: The implementation in SharePoint 2013 is aligned with SharePoint Server 2010 search. The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint implementation has a very high query performance cost, especially when you search for the full URL or a leading subset of the URL.
Migration path: The following table provides details on how to change FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint query expressions to match the SharePoint 2013 URL query syntax.
| To match | Then |
|---|---|
The complete URL string
|
Search for the exact string. Special characters in the URL must match. Do not use the
PHRASE operator. |
The leading part of the URL
|
Do not use the wildcard character.
|
Any part of the URL
|
|
Specific search scope filters
Description: In SharePoint 2013, search scopes are automatically converted to result sources.
In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, you can specify additional filtering conditions for search scopes, as described in the following table:
| Filter(s) | Description |
|---|---|
FQL scope
|
These filters may contain FQL syntax. In SharePoint 2013, you can use migrated FAST Search scope filters, but you cannot change them.
|
Alternative full-text index for the query
|
This filter provides a non-default full-text index for the full-text part of the queries.
In SharePoint 2013, you can use migrated FAST Search scope filters that contain an alternative full-text index. However, you cannot change or convert these filters to result sources.
|
Reason for change: The search scope functionality was replaced by a more powerful functionality for result sources.
Migration path: You must convert FQL scope filters to corresponding result sources. You can use an alternative full-text index in the query syntax.
Anti-phrasing
Description: The search anti-phrasing feature in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
Anti-phrasing removes phrases that do not have to be indexed from queries, such as “who is”, “what is”, or “how do I”. These anti-phrases are listed in a static dictionary that the user cannot edit.
In SharePoint 2013, such phrases are not removed from the query. Instead, all query terms are evaluated when you search the index.
Reason for change: The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint feature has limited usage due to the limited number of customization options.
Migration path: None.
Offensive content filtering
Description: The filtering of offensive content in search is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.
In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, you can choose to filter offensive content. Offensive content filtering is not enabled by default.
In SharePoint 2013, you can no longer block documents that contain potentially offensive content from being indexed.
Reason for change: The feature has limited usage.
Migration path: None.
Substring search
Description: The substring search feature was removed in SharePoint 2013.
In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, substring search (N-gram indexing) can be used in addition to the statistical tokenizer in East Asian languages. Substring search can be useful for cases in which the normal tokenization is ambiguous, such as for product names and other concepts that are not part of the statistical tokenizer.
Reason for change: The feature has limited usage, and has very extensive hard disk requirements for the index.
Migration path: None.
Person names and location extractions
Description: In SharePoint 2013, you cannot extract person names and locations from documents by using predefined extractors.
In SharePoint 2013, you can create custom extractors to extract person names and locations. The difference between the predefined extractors in FAST Search Server2010 for SharePoint, and custom extractors in SharePoint 2013, is that custom extractors are only based on dictionary entries, whereas the predefined extractors also use extraction rules.
Reason for change: This feature has limited usage and usually requires extensive customization. In most cases, we recommend that you use customer-specific dictionaries.
Migration path: Use custom extractors for person names and locations.
Number of custom entity extractors
Description: In SharePoint 2013, the number of custom entity extractors that you can define is limited to 12.
In FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Service Pack 1 (SP1), you can define an unlimited number of custom extractors. You can use custom entity extractors to populate refiners on the search result page.
There are 12 predefined custom entity extractors in SharePoint 2013:
- Five whole-word case-insensitive extractors
- Five word-part case-insensitive extractors
- One whole-word case-sensitive extractor
- One word-part case-sensitive extractor
Reason for change: By using a predefined set of custom entity extractors, the content processing architecture is more simple and easier to use.
Migration path: Use the predefined set of custom entity extractors.
Supported document formats
Description: SharePoint 2013 no longer supports rarely used and older document formats that are supported in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint by enabling the Advanced Filter Pack. Both the ULS logs and the crawl log indicate the items that were not crawled.
In SharePoint 2013, the set of supported formats that are enabled by default is extended, and the quality of document parsing for these formats has improved.
Reason for change: The file formats for indexing are older formats and are no longer supported.
Migration path: You can work with partners to create IFilter-based versions of the file formats that can no longer be indexed.
Content processing extensibility
Description: The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint content processing extensibility feature has changed in SharePoint 2013. Content processing prepares an item from a content source for indexing and searching. The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint content processing extensibility feature uses a sandbox where your custom code runs. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ff795801.aspx on MSDN, FAST Search, for more information.
SharePoint 2013 provides a new web service interface for content processing extensibility.
The new implementation of this feature has the following improvements:
- The web service callout provides more flexibility about where the custom code runs than it does with the sandbox callout.
- You can define triggers for the web service callout to optimize performance.
- Content processing is performed on managed properties instead of on crawled properties. This makes it simpler to manage the items that are changed.
Reason for change: The content processing architecture of search has changed to improve performance and flexibility.
Migration path: To integrate with the new SharePoint content processing component, you must change the code. The custom content processing code must be packaged as a web service.
Custom XML item processing
Description: FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint includes a custom XML item processing feature as part of the content processing pipeline. Custom XML item processing is not supported in SharePoint 2013.
Reason for change: In SharePoint 2013, the content processing architecture has changed. Custom XML item processing was removed and we recommend that you implement a mapping functionality outside SharePoint.
Migration path: Custom XML item processing can be performed outside the content processing pipeline, for example by mapping XML content to a SharePoint list, or to a database table.
Adding a test item to the index
Description: DocPush is a test and diagnostic command-line tool that submits test documents to the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint index. A similar command-line tool is not available in SharePoint 2013.
Reason for change: The administration and diagnostics of feeding and crawling has changed in SharePoint 2013.
Migration path: None. You can create test documents or test lists in SharePoint to test crawling and feeding. To remove items from the search index or to verify that there are any errors on an item, you can use the crawl log. See View search diagnostics in SharePoint Server 2013 for more information.
To remove items from the search results, use the Search Result Removal feature in Queries and Results. See Delete items from the search index or from search results in SharePoint Server 2013.
