Search. Sorting and grouping data in search results

Question

We are planning an implementation of SharePoint 2010 Server (Enterprise) Portal. One of requested features is People Search Center. It should:

• Have ability to search by different keywords (name, department, floor and so on). Standard functionality.
• Provide an alphabetical view – display all employees ordered by name.
• Provide a view where employees are grouped by department (like grouping for lists)
• Provide a view where employees are grouped by floor (like grouping for lists)

We plan to use User Profiles and synchronization with AD. There will be about 200 users in the system. We are limited to Search (not FAST).

I come with 2 solutions (please add any other if you know):

1. How can grouping and sorting be organized with Search? Search Core Results web part have a limitation to 50 items and will not receive all profiles to apply sorting/grouping via XSLT. I found a discussion and a possible solution – is it worth? Is there a simple & clear approach how to receive data using C# code (Search Query classes), convert to xml and apply default XSL transformations?
2. Build an employee list that will be synchronized with UP by timer job. As pros – we’ll have built in views with sorting and grouping. As cons – we need to synchronize, remove from searching and we have additional overhead with list. Can we create views for User Information List?

I will be very glad to hear if anyone has experience to share about similar search results customizations.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I've had a similar response here on stackexchange available here where using DVWp with the results coming from Search XML are then taken via SPD 2010 two column layout using XSLT of People Search Core Result WebPart

I found that SPD 2010 is an excellent tool for getting extremely quick customization, you can then use standard operations to group/sort, etc.

Hope it helps, C:\Marius