SharePoint 2013 – Create custom Crawl Properties using PowerShell

Sometimes we need to create, custom site columns and some search related logic which requires above columns as managed properties within the same SharePoint solution (WSP). But as we all aware, following steps need to be done to map site columns to managed properties.

How can we do this without full crawl ?

As a solution, I create crawl properties using PowerShell prior to the solution deployment. Using the SharePoint solution I create managed properties and map them to crawl properties. Then after sometime, we can run full crawl to finish the process.

I split the article in to two section, to make it clear.

• Step 1 : Create Crawl Properties using PowerShell
• Step 2 : Create Managed Properties and map to Crawl Properties using a feature

In this post I’ll discuss about creating Crawl Properties using PowerShell. Following are the steps used to create crawl properties

1. Get value for property set parameter from existing category. In my case I added the property to SharePoint category

1. $searchapp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
2. $cat = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCategory -SearchApplication $searchapp -Identity SharePoint
3. Get-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -SearchApplication $searchapp -Category $cat -Limit 1

I got “00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346” as the result

2. Determine Crawl Property names
If your site column is ClientName, then the Crawl Property name will be ows_ClientName

3. Create Crawl Property using PowerShell

1. New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -Category SharePoint -IsNameEnum $false -Name "ows_CustomClientName" -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -SearchApplication $searchapp -VariantType 72
2.  
3. New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -Category SharePoint -IsNameEnum $false -Name "ows_CustomProperty" -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -SearchApplication $searchapp -VariantType 72
4.  
5. New-SPEnterpriseSearchMetadataCrawledProperty -Category SharePoint -IsNameEnum $false -Name "ows_CustomCountry" -PropSet "00130329-0000-0130-c000-000000131346" -SearchApplication $searchapp -VariantType 72

4. That will create Crawl Properties in Search schema