This article will walk you through how to leverage MOSS Enterprise Search to find all files that a user has currently checked out from Document Libraries.  By using this method, a user will be able to find all documents that they have checked out for all web applications that are using the current Shared Service Provider.

Obviously, the frequency in which you crawl SharePoint document libraries will affect the accuracy of these results.  However, this provides a solution that does not require any custom coding and is just another way in which you can leverage MOSS Enterprise Search.

Overview - the following are the steps that we will perform

1. Create a new managed property in the Shared Service Provider (SSP)
2. Perform a full crawl on the SharePoint content source
3. Use the new managed property

• Keyword Search
• Search Core Result web part with a fixed query
• Add a new property to the Advanced Search web part

Let's do it...

1.  First, we need to create a new Managed Property that is mapped to the ows_CheckoutUser Crawled Property in the Shared Service Provider (SSP) .

• Browse to the SSP home page, click Search Settings
• Click on Metadata property mappings in the Crawl Settings section
• Click New Managed Property on the toolbar
• Enter checkoutuser for the property name and leave the type as text.
• Click on the Add Mapping button
• On the Crawled property selection screen, enter check in the Crawled property name field and click the Find button.
• Select ows_CheckoutUser(Text) and click OK.
• Your new managed property settings should look like the following:

• Click OK to create the new managed property.

2.  Prior to being able to use the new managed property, a full crawl must be performed on a SharePoint content source of which you have at least one file checked out.

• From the SSP home page, click Search Settings
• Click on Content sources and crawl schedules
• Click on Start Full Crawl for the Local Office SharePoint Server sites content source.

3.  Once the full crawl has completed on the SharePoint content source, we can begin to use the new managed property.  Depending on whether or not the MOSS profile import is configured, will determine what value you should use in your search query.  In the case of my environment, I did not have my profile import configured and thus I will need to use my Active Directory user name in my query.

• The easiest way to use the new managed property is by issuing a search using a keyword.  To find all files that have been checked out to a user, enter checkoutuser:rsteeno into the search box:

• Below are the search results showing the file that I currently have checked out.

• An additional situation in which this new managed property can be used is by configuing an instance of a Search Core Results web part to use a Fixed Keyword Query.
• Add the Search Core Results web part to a web part page and Modify the properties.  Specifically, you will need to set the Cross-Web Part query ID to something other than User Query, which is the default, and set the Fixed Keyword Query property.  The following screen shot shows my configured web part:

• Ideally, this web part could be configured to use the current user information.  I'll save that for a later post as I still need to do some research on making that work.
• The final way in which this property can be used is in the Advanced Search web part.  To add this property to the advanced search web part, please check out this article by Joe Shepherd.

This blog will primarily used for posting SharePoint 2007 related information that I feel the need to share.  Check back soon for some useful posts...