Does documents on file server require a search-center to be visible on searching?

Question

I've made a few tests during the day and didn't find any other with the same problem, nor an explaination if the statement above is true. But my tests show that this is the case.

• All 6 search components are running well
• Crawl account have read access to the file server
• Crawl log show that the documents have been successfully crawled

Searching on the root site collection renders no result, but switching to the context of ALL in a search-center, the documents are shown.

Does documents on file server require a search-center to be visible on searching?

Answer 1

The search page used by the site (OSSSearch) will only return results from the context of the current site. To get the files from the file share you have to be in the Search Center. If you want to create a new Result Source choose "Local SharePoint" which includes in the index your files from the file share (confusing I know, but it's really the local SSA) and then construct a query like "{searchTerms} Path=file://fileshare*". (That's just off the top of my head, you may need to play with it.)

You can also set the SSA to reference your "Global" search center and you can also set it from the Site Collection.