What's New in Windows Search, Browse, and Organization(for 7)

What's new in Windows Search, Browse, and Organization?

Windows® 7 introduces a number of new features and enhancements that can help IT professionals deploy and maintain desktop search, browse, and organization functionality:

• Improvements in the performance and stability of the indexer.
  
• Improvements in the performance and relevance of the search experience.
  
• The introduction of federated search and search connectors.
  
• The introduction of aggregation and visualizations to improve the organization of search results.
  
• The introduction of libraries to help with organization.
  
• Improvements in the performance and user interface of Windows Explorer.
  
• Additional Group Policy settings, available on all supported operating systems.
  
• Reduced impact on the server running Microsoft Exchange Server when indexing uncached (classic online) e-mail.
  
• The ability to index delegate mailboxes for e-mail.
  
• Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems.
  
• Support for indexing digitally signed e-mail of MAPI-enabled e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook®.
  
• An expanded ability to do fast remote queries of file shares, including on Windows Vista®, Windows Server® 2008, Windows® XP with Windows Search 4.0 installed, and earlier versions.
  

The Windows Search Service enables you to perform fast file searches on a server from computers running Windows 7 or Windows Server® 2008 R2, or from computers that have Windows Desktop Search installed and are running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, Windows Server® 2003 R2, or Windows Server® 2003.

Indexing of uncached e-mail is also known as classic online e-mail. In Windows® 7, there is less impact on Microsoft Exchange Server when indexing uncached e-mail. In contrast to uncached or classic online e-mail, cached e-mail uses a local Offline Folder file (.ost) to keep a local copy of your Exchange Server mailbox on your computer, which permits indexing of e-mail locally.

Who will want to use Windows Search, Browse, and Organization?

This feature is intended for end users and IT professionals.
Before deploying Windows 7, administrators should consider several factors, including the following:

• The role of desktop search within your enterprise search strategy.
  
• Which data stores or services you want to publish for direct client access in Windows Explorer by using the OpenSearch standard.
  
• Current document storage practices and how they relate to libraries.
  
• The importance of file storage encryption to your organization.
  
• The importance of e-mail encryption and signing to your organization.