I’ve been trying to make time to deploy Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Search Server Express 2008. This week I finally got around to it, but then I decided "hey, why not go with the shiny new 2010 versions instead?"
Thus it came to pass that I installed SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Search Server Express 2010 on our application server.
I’ll preface the rest of this post by saying that I don’t know jack about SharePoint. I have actively avoided it, in fact, which made me kind of an outcast at 3Sharp. However, we can really make use of its feature set, even though we won’t (at first) be customizing it or building new applications on top of it.
SPF Installation was absolutely painless. The new installer is superb; it automatically figures out which prerequisites you need, downloads them, and installs them. Hey Microsoft UC team! We want this same level of seamless behavior in the Exchange and OCS/CS installers!
Search Server Express installation was likewise easy. I found it a little odd that you have to manually specify access controls for visitors; I would have expected this to be done by default. However, the steps required are easy to follow.
(side note: man, some of the default SPF themes are F-U-G-L-Y. I hope my eyes stop bleeding soon.)
The next step was to add the Search Center URL to the top navigation bar of the main site. Again, this is something that I was halfway expecting the installer to do for me, or at least to offer, and it was easy to do it manually.
There are a ton of other integration points between SPF 2010 and other parts of our infrastructure:
- you can display Exchange calendar public folders as part of the site calendar
- you can search Exchange public folders (something that will be very handy for our source code control system)
you can connect Windows 7 desktop search to it, so that searches automatically include Search Server Express-indexed content
I don’t know how to do any of these things yet, but it’s just a matter of time!
Update: turns out you can’t use the Windows 7 desktop search connector with SPF; for that you need SharePoint Standard. Oh well.
Paul's Down-Home Page 
Did you install Sharepoint Foundation and then install Search Server Express on top of it? I thought this could not be done? I’m working on an IntRanet install and need the Search Server Express capabilities with Sharepoint Foundation capabilities, I’ve done some google searching but haven’t found any really good answer.