SharePoint - Wiki Sites

In addition to document management features, SharePoint has collaboration features. One of them is the ability to create wiki pages. This is how it looks:

Word "wiki" comes from Hawaiian word "wiki wiki" which means “fast”. A wiki is a site that is designed for groups of people to quickly capture and share ideas by creating simple pages and linking them together. After someone creates a page, another team member can add more content, edit the content, or add supporting links.

Because team members can edit wiki pages without any special editing tools, wikis are a good tool for brainstorming and collecting information from several people. Team members can easily create links to pages for someone to finish creating later, or link to existing pages, without having to struggle with long Web addresses.

Creating a wiki site is similar to creating any other type of site. You specify the site name, choose a wiki as the type of site, and then specify who will have access to your site.

Creating a wiki site is the same as creating any other type of site. You specify the site name, choose a wiki as the type of site, and then specify who will have access to this site. Before creating this site, be sure that you are at the location where you want this site to be located.

Then under "Site Actions", choose "Sites and Workspaces", and then "Create". After this you would select "Enterprise Wiki" and proceed entering the data for your new wiki site just like you would do for a regular site:

To edit any wiki page, click "Edit" on the page, proceed editing the page, and click "save" when you are done.

You can create links from one page to another to pages. To do this, click "edit", go to the place where you would like to have this link, and insert the name of the page, surrounded by double square brackets: [[Page Name]]. For example, to insert a link to a page called "Planner Demos," type [[Planner Demos]]. The link will be created when you save the page:

You can also create links pages that don't exist yet. This will be just a placeholer link and will look like [...] Later on, you can click on dots and create a new page and then enter text instead of dots.

You can add other items to a wiki site, such as a tasks list to track action items or tasks related to the wiki. You can choose whether or not the list or library appears on the Quick Launch for the wiki.

As you can see, a wiki site is a really good tool for brainstorming, like a white board, where team members can write their ideas.

Information Architecture Components - Navigation Systems

In my previous posts on information architecture components, I mentioned that information architecture components can be divided into four categories: organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and search systems. I described organization systems and labeling systems in my previous posts. In today's post, I am going to describe navigation systems.

Getting lost is associated with confusion and frustration. While getting lost on a web site is not a life or death situation, it is confusing and frustrating for users when they can't find what they are looking for. Navigation systems support browsing. When users are not sure what they are looking for, they are not going to use search, they are going to browse.

Navigation systems can be divided into two main sub-systems: embedded navigation systems and supplemental navigation systems.

Embedded Navigation Systems

Embedded navigation systems include global navigation systems, local navigation systems, and contextual navigation systems. Global navigation systems and local navigation systems are also called structural navigation.

Global (site-wide) Navigation Systems

Global navigation system is present on every page throughout a site. It is usually a navigation bar at the top of each page. Most global navigation bars provide a link to the home page. Many provide a link to the search function. These site-wide navigation systems allow direct access to key areas and functions of the site, no matter where the user travels in the site. This system has a huge impact on usability of the site. They should be the subject to iterative user-side testing.

Local Navigation Systems

Local navigation systems allow users to explore the immediate area. These navigation systems provide access to the content on a specific page of the site. They are aligned with the local content. They are usually placed on the left hand-side of a page.

Contextual Navigation Systems

Contextual navigation systems provide links specific to a particular page, document, or object. They can be represented as "see also" links which connect users to related products, services, articles, topics, etc. These systems are also called associative navigation. They answer questions such as "how do I?", "what is next?", "what else have you got?" Moderation is the primary rule for creating these links. Used in access, they can add clutter and confusion.

Implementing Embedded Navigation

The main challenge is to balance the flexibility of movement with the danger of overwhelming the user with too many options. Key to success is to recognize that global, local, and contextual navigation exists together on most pages. So, they they are integrated effectively, they complement each other. When they are present together on one page they should not overwhelm the user and drown out the content.

Supplemental Navigation Systems

Supplemental navigation systems include site maps, indexes, and guides. They are external to the basic hierarchy of a web site and provide complementary ways of finding content. Search also belongs to this category but it is so important subject that I will cover it in a separate post. These systems are also called utility navigation as they connect pages and features that help users to use the site itself. They can also include sign-in pages, profile pages, credit card information, etc.

Site Maps

Site Maps provide a broad view of the content in the web site and facilitates random access to segmented portions of that content. They can use text-based links to provide the user with direct access to pages of the site.

A site map is most suitable for web sites that have very good hierarchical organization. If the architecture is not strongly hierarchical, and index or alternative visual representation might be better. For a small site with only few pages, a site-map is not necessary.

Rules for creating site maps:

• reinforce the information hierarchy so the user becomes increasingly familiar with how the content is organized;
• facilitate fast, direct access to the content of the site for those users who know what they want;
• avoid overwhelming the user with too much information.

Site Indexes

Site index presents keywords or phrases alphabetically without representing the hierarchy. They work well for users who already know the name of the item they are looking for.

Large, complex web sites often require both a site map and a site index. The site map reinforces the hierarchy and encourages the exploration, while the site index bypasses the hierarchy and facilitates known item finding. For small sites, a side index alone may be sufficient.

A major challenge in indexing a web site is the level of granularity. Do you index each page or set of pages? The answer depends on what users are looking for. You need to know your audience and understand their needs. You can analyze search logs to see what users are searching for.

Guides

Guides include guided tours, tutorials, micro-portals focused around a specific audience, topic, or task. Guides supplement the existing means of navigating and understanding site content. They often serve as tool for introducing new users to the content and functionality of the site. They can also serve as marketing tools for restricted access sites.

Guides usually feature linear navigation but hypertextual navigation should also be available to provide additional flexibility.

Rules for creating guides:

• the guide should be short; 
• at any point, the user should be able to exit the guide.;
• navigation should be located in the same spot on every page so that users can easily step back and forth through the guide;
• the guide should be designed to answer questions;
• screenshots should be crisp, clear, and optimized, with enlarged details of key features;
• if the guide includes more than a few pages, it may need its own table of contents.

Advanced Navigation

Personalization involves serving up tailored pages to the user based upon a model of the behavior, needs, or preferences of that user. It is used as an example in human resources systems involving giving a user options to view his/her options in compensation or benefits.

Customization involves giving the user direct control over some combination of presentation, navigation, and content options. Yahoo is a good example of customization. It allows user to customize their pages.

Personalization and customization can be used to refine existing navigation systems.

Main Considerations for Designing Navigation Systems

When designing a navigation system, it is important to consider the environment the site will exist in. You always need to consider the context.

The navigation system should present the structure of the hierarchy in a clear, consistent manner, and indicate the user current location which usually is fulfilled through the use of a breadcrumb. Make sure it is correct.

User should be able to easily move between pages. However, balance the advantages of flexibility with the danger of clutter.

Navigation systems should be designed with care to complement and reinforce the hierarchy by providing added context and flexibility.

And finally, here is the "stress test" of your navigation system:

1. Ignore the home page and jump directly into the middle of the site.

2. For each random page, can you figure out where you are in relation to the rest of the site? What major section are you in? What is the parent page?

3. Can you tell where the page will lead you next? Are the links descriptive enough to give you a clue what each is about? Are the links different enough to help you choose one over another, depending on what you want to do?

Change Control in the Regulated Industries

In my last post, I described change control process in general and I mentioned that in the regulated industries, manufactures are required to use a change control procedures I am going to describe this change control procedure in this post.

A change control procedure is usually one of standard operating procedures (SOP's). It usually includes a change control form. Some companies also use change request forms for suggested changes. This procedure usually includes the following components:

Identification

The identification of the changed device, assembly, component, labeling, packaging, software, process, procedure, manufacturing material, and any other related item or document. The change control form has blank spaces for recording this data.

Effective Date

The effective date of the change which is usually a completion date, or an action to be performed when a specific event occurs, such as "implement the change when the new part is installed, validated, and operational." The blank on the change control form for recording the effective date should not be left empty.

Responsibility

The change procedure should state which department or designee is responsible for each function to be performed.

Revision Number

The change procedure should describe the way the revision level is to be incremented. It is common practice to use sequential numbers for revisions.

Communication

The change procedure should describe the communication of changes to all affected parties such as production, purchasing, contractors, suppliers, etc. As appropriate, the document might include activities that apply to internal operations. Examples are employee training, rework, or disposition of in-process assemblies, use of revised drawings and/or procedures, and disposition of old documents.

Updating Documentation

The change procedure should cover updating of primary and secondary documentation such as instruction manuals. Usually there are no problems with updating or revising primary documentation -- in fact, that is a major reason the given change order is being processed. In contrast, it is rather easy to forget that related secondary documents such as component drawings, instruction manuals or packaging require revision if affected by a given change. The use of a good change control form can alleviate this problem.

Documentation Distribution

Revised documentation should be distributed to persons responsible for the operations affected by the change and old documents removed and filed or discarded, as appropriate. After updated documents have been approved, these documents have to be made available at all locations for which they are designated, used, or otherwise necessary, and all obsolete documents have to be promptly removed from all points of use or otherwise prevented from unintended use.

Remedial Actions

Certain changes may require remedial action. Changes of this nature should be addressed in the change control procedure.

Regulatory Submissions

There may be changes may that require a regulatory submission. The change control procedure should specify if regulatory submissions should be considered when making a change.

Business Factors

The change procedure should also cover other factors such as financial impact, modification of sales literature, update of products in commercial distribution, etc.

Quality Assurance Review

The change procedure should cover if the quality assurance review is required for the change.

This change control procedure is also used for document control.

Changes to documents have to be reviewed and approved by an individual(s) in the same function or organization that performed the original review and approval of these documents unless there is a specific designation that states otherwise. These approved changes have to be communicated to the appropriate personnel in a timely manner. A company has to maintain records of changes to documents.

Change control for documents should include:

• identification of the affected documents;
• a description of the change;
• revision number
• the signature of the approving individual(s);
• the approval date;
• the date when the change becomes effective.

In a case of the regulatory agencies inspection, the change control procedure is usually audited.

Change Control

Change control within quality management systems (QMS) and information technology (IT) systems is a formal process used to ensure that changes to a product or system are introduced in a controlled and coordinated manner. It reduces the possibility that unnecessary changes will be introduced to a system without analysis, introducing faults into the system or undoing changes made by other users of software.

The goals of a change control procedure include minimal disruption to services, reduction in back-out activities, and cost-effective utilization of resources involved in implementing a change.

Change control is used in a wide variety of products and systems. For Information Technology (IT), it is a major aspect of the broader discipline of change management. Typical examples from the computer and network environments are patches to software products, installation of new operating systems, upgrades to network routing tables, or changes to the electrical power systems supporting such infrastructure.

Change control process can be described as the sequence of of six steps: record/classify, assess, plan, build/test, implement, close/gain acceptance.

Record/classify

A user initiates a change by making a formal request for something to be changed. The change control team then records and categorizes that request. This categorization would include estimates of importance, impact, and complexity.

Assess

Change control team makes an assessment typically by answering a set of questions concerning risk, both to the business and to the process, and follow this by making a judgment on who should carry out the change. If the change requires more than one type of assessment, the head of the change control team will consolidate them. Everyone with a stake in the change then meet to determine whether there is a business or technical justification for the change. The change is then sent to the delivery team for planning.

Plan

Management will assign the change to a specific delivery team, usually one with the specific role of carrying out this particular type of change. The team's first job is to plan the change in detail as well as construct a regression plan in case the change needs to be backed out.

Build/test

If all stakeholders agree with the plan, the delivery team will build the solution, which will then be tested. They will then seek approval and request a time and date to carry out the implementation phase.

Implement

All stakeholders must agree to a time, date and cost of the implementation of the change. Following the implementation, it is usual to carry out a post-implementation review which would take place at another stakeholders meeting.

Close/gain acceptance

When the user agrees that the change was implemented correctly, the change can be closed.

Change Control in a Regulatory Environment

In a Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) or ISO 9001 regulated environment, change control activities and procedures apply to software, labeling and packaging, device manufacturing processes, production equipment, manufacturing materials, and all associated documentation such as quality system procedures, standard operating procedures, quality acceptance procedures, data forms, and product-specific documentation. Change control is also applied to any production aids such as photographs and models or samples of assemblies and finished devices.

Any regulated industry has a compilation of documents containing the procedures and specifications for a finished product. It includes specifications and all other documentation required to procure components and produce, label, test, package, install, and service a finished product. Manufacturers are to prepare, control changes to, and maintain these documents using change control procedure which is in fact the document control procedure.

In my next post, I will describe the change control procedure as it applies to documentation in a regulated industry.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Digital Asset Manager

I started to describe Documentum in my last post. I described Enterprise Content Management Platform and Documentum Webtop. The subject of my today's post is Documentum Digital Asset Manager.

Documentum Digital Asset Manager (DAM) allows to manage all digital assets, rich media, and traditional documents in one interface. It provides enhanced capabilities to effectively manage rich media in addition to the complete set of enterprise content management capabilities.

DAM is a part of a total Documentum Enterprise Content Management Platform. It can be used to:

• implement rapid changes to digital assets while maintaining consistency and control; 
• repurpose rich media regardless of platform or file format; 
• perform fast search, retrieval, and delivery of digital assets; 
• deliver enhanced media handling capabilities to your organization.

DAM provides easy to use, web-based interface to the unified Documentum content management platform. When enhanced with EMC Documentum Content Transformation Services (CTS) products, Documentum enables the same automation, control, and availability for images, audio, and video that it provides for traditional enterprise content.

DAM allows user to access it from any Windows or Macintosh browser. Users with appropriate permissions can also access administrative controls from DAM interface.

Digital Asset Manager has the following capabilities:

Content Management Functions - provides essential content management services such as:

• Workflow: View inbox, view and initiate workflows, and route documents. 
• Lifecycle: assign lifecycle stage to any object created within DAM. 
• Search: search the entire Documentum repository using keywords and other metadata. 
• "Quick Search" feature is always available without launching the full search dialog. 
• Version Control: manage and access the versions of any rich media asset or document in the repository. 
• Security: control the set of users, groups or roles that can access content within the repository. 
•  Rendition Management: import, view, and create new renditions such as low resolution JPEG or web-ready GIF. 
• Relation Browsing: user can detect and navigate the relationships between assets. 

Loupe Display: zoomed view of each asset by rolling a mouse over the top of thumbnail.

Multi-size Thumbnail Display: view the contents of any folder or the results of any search as select a thumbnails size – small, medium, large.

Active Preview: view contents of multi-page documents (PDF, Word, PowerPoint) page by page with an optimized, web-based pare preview and storyboard navigation interface.

File Sharing for Macintosh Users: share Mac-created files with Mac and PC users by stripping the resource fork when a Mac file is checked out to a PC user and maintaining it for Mac users.

Collections: create, share, manage, transform into specific formats or download content that is grouped together to allow users to exchange ideas related to a particular task or project.

Intellectual Property Rights Management: capture and communicate intellectual property rights associated with assets and extend this framework to third-party tools. This feature includes the ability to create customized rights objects, view associated objects under rights management, search on rights metadata, assign rights on import, check-in, and apply existing rights to assets.

Asset Usage Tracking: view the history associated with a particular asset including who, when, where, and why it was used.

Comprehensive File Transformation: repurpose or render existing content into new formats and resolutions with an easy to use wizard that controls the features provided by Documentum Content Transformation Services products. You can transform single or multiple documents automatically or on demand. For example, automatically convert high resolution print images to low resolution JPEGs and turn commercial video into streaming formats.

Media Profile Creation and Modification: an easy to use wizard to create new profiles for Documentum Content Transformation Services products that control what transformation are available and what they do; you can also chain multiple profiles for more advanced media processing.

Transformation Queue Monitoring: you can see what tasks are currently being processed Documentum Content Transformation Services products configured against given repository; you an monitor where specific items are in need of priority.

PowerPoint Assembly: search and review PowerPoint presentations without having to download and open them on your desktop. You can use thumbnails to select, assemble, re-template, and save slides into a new presentation.

Video Details: you can preview video and flash content through enhanced previews such as storyboards using SMPTE time codes, embedded video preview with play-from-frame streaming capabilities, and text-track management.

Authoring Tool Support: configure Digital Asset Manager to tightly interoperate with My Documentum for Desktop, resulting in seamless user experience when working with authoring tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and QuarkXPress.

Next post on Documentum: Documentum Content Transformation Services.

Content Management Systems Reviews - Documentum - Content Management Platform

Documentum is a content management system produced by EMC Corporation. It is the unified platform for storing a virtually unlimited range of content types within a shared repository. It allows to manage all types of content including documents, photos, video, images, e-mail, web pages, XML-tagged documents, etc.

The core of Documentum is a repository in which the content is stored securely under compliance rules. This repository appears as a unified environment, although content may reside on multiple servers and physical storage devices within a distributed environment.

Documentum provides a suite of services which include content management, web content management, digital asset management, collaboration, content classification, email management, input management, business solutions (forms, invoices, reports, etc.), Information Rights Management, records management, document control, archiving, etc. It also includes xml content repository component which allows dynamic publishing.

Because Documentum includes so many components, it is impossible for me to describe all of them in one post. I am going to break up the description of Documentum components into few posts. Today, I am going to describe Enterprise Content Management Platform and Documentum Webtop.

Enterprise Content Management Platform

The platform provides a secure, unified environment for storing, accessing, organizing, controlling, and delivering any type of unstructured information.

Repository Architecture

Content files can be stored as a file system, a database, or EMC storage Centera. Metadata and full-text index are stored separately. By supporting all major database platforms, operating systems, browsers, portals, application servers, and development standards, Documentum provides vendor agnostic architecture. This architecture supports flexible deployment.

Repositories can be replicated, federated, and locally cached. Both the content server and the repository scale to accommodate billions of items. There are intelligent backups, clustering, and auto-failover by application which provides high availability and business continuity guarantees in managing mission critical business applications.

Application Development and Deployment

The platform includes EMC Documentum composer which provides Eclipse-based tools to significantly enhance the assembly, configuration, and deployment of Documentum applications. Reusable application elements such as user interface components, lifecycle definitions, security settings, object type definitions, and workflow templates speed up the time of deployment. Additional configuration elements such as role-based user presets, forms, templates, and skins emphasize configuration over coding.

Content Functions

Documentum Foundation Services (DFS) – provides core content services such as basic library services including check-in and check-out, version control, object-level access control, and role-based configurations. It also includes features like automatic metadata analysis and attribution, enhanced preview, rendition modeling, workflow, lifecycle management, and virtual document management.

Content Storage Services - users can define and automate the execution of content storage policies, enabling policy-based information lifecycle management (ILM).

Content Protection

Documentum includes encrypted communications between the repository, clients, and applications, and enables flexible and comprehensive authentication, authorization, as well as audit and access control. It also provides platform extensions such as Documentum Trusted Services, Information Rights Management, Records Management, and Retention Policy Services.

Flexible Client Infrastructure

The platform allows users to use content management functionality across desktop, portal or web-based applications. Platform components maintain consistent look and feel when using common functionality.

Integration

The platform integrates well with MS Word, Excel, Outlook, SharePoint and enable content access and process management through familiar applications. It also integrates will portals from IBM, Oracle, and SAP.

Multiple Languages

The platform supports the Unicode universal character set (UTF-16), provides localized UIs, stores, displays, and searches across documents in multiple languages and runs clients on native language browsers and operating systems, all within single repository.

Documentum Webtop

Documentum Webtop is easy to use interface that provides access to repository and content management services via standard web browser rather than having to install a separate client application. It can also be extended to other Documentum services such as collaboration, extended search tools providing a single location to find, update, share, and publish information.

It includes such features as right-mouse click support, auto-completion of fields, ability to perform action on multiple items, enhanced items subscriptions, notifications, and ability to save searches.

Webtop also provides an ability to customize common interface menus and settings based on role, group membership, or location. Departments can include only services they need within Webtop interface and remove those that are not necessary without any IT support. Features and services can be modified as business requirements change over time.

Users can easily add collaboration to their content management applications by implementing Documentum Collaborative Services. When Collaborative Services are enable within a repository, user can create "rooms" with a full set of team collaboration tools. “Rooms” are users managed so team members can be added or removed as necessary.

Webtop includes extended search. It is an advanced search and discovery web client. Within Webtop, users can create a query that would search not only across Documentum system but also across many other information sources within the enterprise and outside the organization.

Webtop delivers results in a dynamically clustered list based on owner, topic, content attributes, and other criteria. Smart navigation features allow users to quickly find relevant information, bypassing irrelevant results on other topics. These queries can be saved as search templates for simplified sharing of commonly searched items.

Developing Enterprise Search Strategy

During last ten years the volume and diversity of digital content grew at unprecedented rates. There is an increased use of departmental network drives, collaboration tools, content management systems, messaging systems with file attachments, corporate blogs and wikis, and databases. There are duplicate and untraceable documents that crowd valuable information needed to get work done.

Unfortunately, not all content makes into it into a managed content repository, like a portal or a content management system. Some companies have more than one content management system. Having a search solution that could search across all content repositories becomes very important.

Expectations for quality search continue to rise. Many users like to use an expression: "we would like a search like Google". So, how do we formulate a search strategy?

Here are few key points:

• Security within enterprise search strategies should be carefully designed. Information like employee pay rates, financial information, or confidential communications should not end up in a general search results. 
• Search results should deliver high quality, authoritative, up-to-date information. Obsolete information should not end up in the search results. 
• Search results should be highly relevant to keywords entered in a search box. 
• The ability to limit the search should be included.

Steps to Develop an Enterprise Search Strategy

Step 1: Define Specific Objectives for Your Search Strategy

People don’t search for the sake of searching. They search because they are looking to find and use information to get their jobs done. Answer these questions:

1. Who is searching? Which roles within the organization are using the search function, and what requirements do they have?

For example, a corporate librarian is likely familiar with Boolean search and using advanced search forms, while a layperson searcher likely prefers a simple search box. A sales professional may need an instant access to past proposals for an upcoming meeting, but compliance professionals conducting investigations often use deep search across massive message archiving and records management systems.

2. What categories of information are they looking for?

Define the big buckets of information that are the most relevant to different roles. Realize that not all roles need all information. Part of why desktop search tools are popular is they inherently define a bucket called "stuff on my machine". Defining categories for searching project information, employee information, sales tools, and news helps searchers formulate the right query for the right type of search.

3. What are they likely to do with the information when they find it? After defining broad information categories, work to understand context and answer the question: why are people searching?

For example, if a marketer is collecting information on a particular competitor by searching on the company’s name, it is often useful to expand that query to include related information, like other competitors in the industry, specific business units or product lines, pricing information, past financial performance. Related information can be included in search experiences through a variety of methods, including the search results themselves or methods like faceted navigation.

It is impossible to account for every type of information that users may be looking for, but defining broad user roles, like sales professionals or market researchers and identifying their most common search scenarios is a great way to create the scope of a search project. Use such methods as personas, use cases, interview users to validate assumptions about what processes they are involved in, and identify the information that is most useful to support those processes.

Step 2: Define the Desired Scope and Inventory Repositories

When using the search function built into a particular content management system, the product itself limits the scope of the search to whatever is stored in this system. Search engines such as Autonomy, Endeca Technologies, Google, Vivisimo, and others will search across multiple content management systems and databases. Increasingly, portal products and collaboration platforms from companies like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and Open Text will also let you search content that is stored inside and outside of their systems.

Use search to reach outside the confines of a single repository. Cross-repository search becomes essential when companies use different content repositories for different purposes.

Match roles and search categories to relevant content sources. Search requirements often include multiple repositories, such as document libraries, file systems, databases, etc. These repositories usually consist of multiple technology products, such as Lotus Notes, EMC Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, and others. Using the roles and types of searches you are looking to support, identify all of the relevant repositories necessary to achieve your desired search scope.

Create an inventory of required repositories. When creating your inventory, document the name of each repository, a repository owner, a description of its content, an assessment of the quality of this content, and the quantity and rate of growth of content in each repository. Also document the technology product used as well as any specific security access policies in place.

Consider a phased rollout and select simple but telling data source repositories for kick-off. When rolling out a project such as search strategy that involves disparate sources and complex UIs, a phased rollout may be preferable depending upon factors such as resource constraints and time-to-launch pressure. By approaching the project in phases, you can vet the process and workflow while familiarizing users with the objectives.

Inventory and prioritize the repositories at the start of your project so that you can identify and start with the repositories that will have a big impact. For example, basic queries into a CRM system can add a lot of value while remaining relatively straightforward. Throughout this process, it is important to set expectations with your users, since this approach may lengthen their involvement with the project.

Documenting your repositories lets software vendors effectively size and bid on your project. Most search software gets priced based on the number of documents (or data items) in the index plus additional fees for premium connectors that ingest content from repositories like enterprise content management systems.

For example, strategies that require a limited set of commodity connectors are priced altogether differently than those with premium connectors for content management systems and enterprise applications. Thus, knowing which repositories are relevant and understanding the rate of content growth within them can help avoid unnecessary overspending.

Step 3: Evaluate and Select the Best Method for Enriching Content

When addressing content with very little descriptive text and metadata, evaluate several methods for enriching the content to improve the search experience. Methods range from manual application of metadata to automatic categorization. Some companies use a mix of both methods.

Step 4: Define Requirements and List Products and Vendors to Consider

After specifying a search scope, define requirements for users. The most important is not to get distracted with irrelevant features, but instead to focus on products that adequately meet the organization’s requirements over a specified time period. Consider factors like ease of implementation, product strategy, and market presence in any product evaluation.

Score and select vendors on criteria that are relevant for your needs. There are many vendors to choose from. Search vendors include Autonomy, Coveo Solutions, Endeca Technologies, Exalead, Google Enterprise, ISYS Search Software, Recommind, Thunderstone Software, Vivisimo, and others. Also large software providers such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP have one or more search products on the market.

Product capabilities range from highly sophisticated, large-scale, secure searches that mix advanced navigation and filtering, to basic keyword searches across file systems. Products differ depending on whether the content being searched consists primarily of data. For example, high-end search companies like Endeca offer robust tools for searching structured data from databases, while small-scale basic file system search needs can be met with products like the Google Mini or the IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition.

Step 5: Define a Taxonomy of Logical Types of Searches

While it is impossible to predict and account for everything people search for, it is possible to organize the search experience so it is intuitive to use. Start with defining logical types of searches. For example:

People Search. Searching for employees has gained acceptance as a valuable type of search within enterprises for finding expertise on a subject. A search for people, whether it is a simple name look-up or more advanced expertise search, requires attention to everything from how the query gets processed to how results appear in the interface. For example, searchers typically want to see an alphabetical list of names in a people search results as opposed to results ranked by relevance.

Product Search. A search for products frequently needs to include product brand names (e.g., Trek), concepts and terms related to the product (e.g., bike, bicycle, road race, touring), product description, and specific product attributes, like frame size, material, and color. Knowing where all of this information is stored and how it should be optimally presented to end users is essential.

Customer Search. It is now possible to search and return results for virtually any logical item in an enterprise, like orders, customers, products, and places. You should look into sources like enterprise data warehouses, ERP systems, order histories, and others to create a full picture of the items that is being searched.

Documents Search. Documents usually reside in few repositories, so be sure to include them in your search sources. Users expect search results to be highly relevant with most relevant to be on the top of the search results list.

By bucketing types of searches into logical categories, you can also improve the quality of those searches. Several methods include applying type specific thesaurus, taxonomies, and controlled vocabularies.

Administrators can influence the relevance algorithm in a way that returns the right information the right way, like weighting hits in a product description more heavily than a product attribute field.

Step 6: Plan for a Relevant User Experience

Recognize that not all search experiences should be the same. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN’s popularity on the Web have generated strong interest in offering simple-to-use wide search boxes and tabbed interfaces within the enterprise. But in the enterprise, it is often helpful to use more advanced interface techniques to clarify what users are looking for, including:

Faceted navigation adds precision to search. It exposes attributes of the items returned to an end user directly into the interface. For example, a search through a product information database for "electrical cables" might return cables organized by gauge, casing materials, insulation, color, and length, giving an engineer clues to find exactly what he is looking for.

Statistical clustering methods remove ambiguity. Methods like statistical clustering automatically organize search results by frequently occurring concepts. Clusters provide higher level groupings of information than the individual results can provide, and can make lists of millions of documents easier to scan and navigate.

Best bets guide users to specific information they need. Creating best bets is the process of writing a specific rule that says something like: "when a person enters the term "401K plan" into the search box on the corporate intranet, they should see a link to the "401K plan" page on the intranet".

Additionally, products like Google OneBox and SAP’s Enterpise Search Appliance enable retrieval of frequently searched facts, such as sales forecast data, dashboards, and partner information from back-end ERP systems. Best bets help users avoid a lot of irrelevant results and are very effective for frequently executed queries.

Use basic interface mock-ups and pilot efforts to test, refine, and make these concepts useful for employees in your organization. Many companies use a "Google Labs" style page on their intranets to test out search user interface concepts and tools prior to exposing them more broadly to the enterprise.

Step 7: Implement, Monitor, and Improve

For large projects, allow a lot of time for change management. Teams should maintain the interface between the search engine and all of its back-end content sources.

It is essential to keep IT individuals informed of product evaluation and selection plans so that the final implementation supports security and regulatory policies that are in place for these systems.

Create a plan for ongoing maintenance of search indexing processes and exceptions. Create a monthly reporting plan that lists most frequent searches performed, searches that did not retrieve results, and overall usage of the search function. This can help you troubleshoot existing implementations and drive future decisions on how to enhance the search experience over time.

Enhancements typically include adding types of searches to the experience, further enriching content assets for better retrieval, and incorporating new, valuable content into the overall experience.

In my future posts, I will describe search products such as Autonomy, Coveo Solutions, Endeca Technologies, Exalead, ISYS Search Software, Recommind, Thunderstone Software, Vivisimo, and others.

SharePoint - Workflows

Workflow is the automated movement of documents through a sequence of actions or tasks. Workflows streamline the cost and time required to coordinate business processes, such as project approval or document review by managing and tracking the human tasks involved with these processes.

Rather than going to a person to get the document approved, you can use the workflow feature of SharePoint to accomplish this task. Workflows also encourage collaboration on documents.

Workflow Types

Workflows available in SharePoint are: approval, collect feedback, collect signatures, disposition approval, three-state.

Approval - this workflow routes a document or an item to a group of people for approval. The "approval" workflow is associated with the document content type, and thus it is available in document libraries. A version of the approval workflow is also associated with the pages library in a publishing site, and it can be used to manage the approval process for the publication of web pages.

Collect Feedback - this workflow routes a document or an item to a group of people for feedback. Reviewers can provide feedback, which is then compiled and sent to the person who initiated the workflow. The "collect feedback" workflow is associated with the document content type, and thus it is available in document libraries.

Collect Signatures workflow routes a document to people to collect their digital signatures. This workflow must be started in a application that is part of the 2007 Office release. Participants must complete their signature tasks by adding their digital signature to the document in the relevant Microsoft Office application. The "collect signatures" workflow is associated with the document content type, and thus it is available in document libraries. However, this workflow appears for a document in the document library only if that document contains one or more Microsoft Office signature Lines.

Disposition Approval - this workflow, which supports records management processes, manages documents expiration and retention by allowing participants to decide whether to retain or delete expired documents. This workflow is intended for use primarily within a records Center site.

Three-state - this workflow can be used to manage business processes that require organizations to track a high volume of issues or items, such as customer support issues, sales leads, or project tasks. It can also be used to manage documents expiration and retention.

Translation Management - this workflow manages the manual document translation process by creating copies of the document to be translated and assigning translation tasks to translators. This workflow is available only for translation management libraries.

Setting up Workflows

Before a workflow can be used, it must be added to a list, library, or content type to make it available for documents or items in a specific location.

The availability of a workflow within a site varies, depending on where it is added:

If you add a workflow directly to a list or library, it is available only for items in that list or library.

If you add a workflow to a list content type (an instance of a site content type that was added to a specific list or library), it is available only for items of that content type in the specific list or library with which that content type is associated.

If you add a workflow to a site content type, that workflow is available for any items of that content type in every list and library to which an instance of that site content type was added. If you want a workflow to be widely available across lists or libraries in a site collection for items of a specific content type, the most efficient way to achieve this result is by adding that workflow directly to a site content type.

When you add a workflow to a list, library, or content type, you can customize the workflow for its specific location by specifying various options:

• the name for this instance of the workflow The tasks list where workflow-related tasks are stored; 
• the history list that records all of the events that are related to the workflow;
• the way that you want the workflow to be started;
• additional options that are specific to the individual workflow, for example, how tasks are routed to participants, what circumstances complete the workflow, and what actions occur after the workflow is completed.

When you add a workflow to a list, library, or content type, you make it available for documents or items in a specific location, you do not start the actual workflow.

Starting a Workflow

After a workflow is added to a list, library, or content type and thereby made available for use, you can start this workflow on a document or item.

To start a workflow, you select the workflow that you want from the list of workflows available for the document or item. If necessary, you may also need to fill out a form with the information that the workflow requires. Depending on how the workflow was designed and configured, you might have the option to further customize the workflow when you start it on a document or item by customizing such options as participants, due date, and task instructions.

Workflows can be customized in several ways. For example, when you add a workflow to a list, library, or content type to make it available for use on documents or items, you can customize the tasks lists and history lists where information about the workflow is stored. When a site user starts a workflow on a document or item, the user may have the option to further customize the workflow by specifying the list of participants, a due date, and task instructions.

Modifying a Workflow

After a workflow is started on an item, you may need to make changes to how the workflow behaves. For example, after a workflow starts, the person who started the workflow might need to add additional participants. Or a workflow participant might need to reassign his or her task to another person or request a change to the document or item that is the focus of the workflow.

Completing Workflow Tasks

When a workflow assigns a task to a workflow participant, the task recipient can either complete that task or request changes to the workflow itself by editing the workflow task form. Workflow participants can complete workflow tasks on a SharePoint site or directly within a client program that is part of the Microsoft Office.

For example, you can add a workflow to a document library that routes a document to a group of people for approval. When the document author starts this workflow on a document in that library, the workflow creates document approval tasks, assigns these tasks to the workflow participants, and then sends e-mail alerts to the participants with task instructions and a link to the document to be approved.

When a workflow participant completes a workflow task or requests a change to the workflow, this prompts the system to move the workflow to the next relevant step. When the workflow participants complete their workflow tasks, the workflow ends, and the workflow owner is automatically notified that the workflow has completed.

Tracking the Status of Workflows

While the workflow is in progress, the workflow owner (in this case, the document author) or the workflow participants can check the workflow status page that is associated with the workflow to see which participants have completed their workflow tasks. The status page includes status information about outstanding workflow tasks. It also includes history information that is relevant to the workflow.

There are also reporting tools that provide an aggregate analysis of workflows history. Organizations can use this analysis to locate bottlenecks in processes or to determine whether a group is meeting the performance targets for a given business process. SharePoint includes Excel reports that can be used with any workflow. Additionally, workflow history information is available.

Custom Workflows

Your organization may choose to design and develop workflows that are unique to the business processes in the organization. Workflows can be as simple or complex as the business processes require. Developers can create workflows that are started by people who use a site, or they can create workflows that start automatically based on an event, such as when a list item is created or changed. If your organization has developed and deployed custom workflows, these workflows may be available in addition to or instead of the predefined workflows already described.

There are two ways in which custom workflows can be created:

Professional software developers can create workflows by using the Visual Studio. These workflows contain custom code and workflow activities. After a professional developer creates custom workflows, a server administrator can deploy them across multiple sites.

Web designers can design no-code workflows for use in a specific list or library by using SharePoint Designer. These workflows are created from a list of available workflow activities, and the web designer who creates the workflow can deploy the workflows directly to the list or library where they will be used.

Here are few screenshots demonstrating workflows.

In the 1st step, you set up workflows for a content type. Click on "workflows settings":

Set up the workflow:

You can use the page below to manage workflow settings:

It is now available to start on a document or an item in a library or a list:

On the next screen, you can check the status of the workflow:

Now you can have efficiency in your business processes!

Information Architecture Components – Labeling Systems

In my last post about information architecture, I mentioned that information architecture includes four components - organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and searching systems and I described organization systems.

In this post, I am going to describe labeling systems.

Labeling is a form of representation. Labels represent a relationship between users and content. So, the goal of a label is to communicate information efficiently that is without taking too much of a web page space or of a user's time. Labels show the user your organization and navigation systems. Unprofessional labels of a web site can destroy a user's confidence in that organization.

There are two types of labels: textual and iconic labels.

Textual Labels

Textual are the most common labels. Types of textual labels include: contextual links, headings, navigation system choices, and index terms.

Contextual links are the text withing the body of a document or chunk of information. They are usually used to create a connection between different pages of a site. These links rely on context. To ensure that contextual links labels are representational, ask yourself a question: "what kind of information will the user expect to be taken to?"

Labels as headings are used to establish a hierarchy within the text. The hierarchical relationships between headings are usually established visually through consistent use of numbering, font sizes, colors and styles, whitespace, and indentation or combination of these parts. It is a good idea to present these headings as a hierarchy. It is important to maintain consistency. Heading labels should be obvious and should convey the sequence. These labels need to tell the user where to start, where to go next, and what action will be involved in each step along the way.

Navigation system labels require more consistency that any other type of label. Users rely on a navigation system to be "rational" through consistent page location and look. So, these labels should be no different. Effectively designed labels are integral to building a sense of familiarity, so they should not change from page to page. Here are some examples of this type labels: Home, Search, Site Map, Contact Us, About Us, News and Events, Announcements. Do not use the same label for a different purpose.

Labels as index terms are often referred to as keywords, descriptive metadata, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies. These labels are used to describe any type of content: sites, pages, content components, etc. Index terms support precise searching. Index terms can also make browsing easier: the metadata from a collection of documents can serve as the source of browsable lists or menus. A very good example of these labels is an index of a site with links to each page.

Iconic Labels

These labels most often used as navigation system labels. They can sometimes serve as headings. The problem with iconic labels is that they present a much more limited language than text. That is why they used for navigation system or small organization system labels where the list of options is small. But they are still risky to use because a user can get confused.

General Guidelines For Creating Labels

Context, content, and users are three key principles that affect all aspects of information architecture including labels. Narrow the scope of your labels whenever possible. Use narrow business context. Keep labels simple and focused.

A good rule is to design labels that speak the same language as a site's users while reflecting its content. If there is a confusion over label, there should be an explanation. On the main page, labels should stand out to users. Labels should clearly represent the content.

Consistency is extremely important. Why? Because consistency means predictability and predictable systems are easier to use. Consistency is affected by few issues: style, presentation, syntax, granularity, comprehensiveness, audience.

Points to consider:

• Consider writing all your labels in a list to get the visual representation of them. You might sort this list alphabetically - this way you may see some duplicates. Then review the list for consistency of usage, punctuation, letter case, etc.
• Establish naming conventions.
• Consider using a controlled vocabulary to maintain consistent terms.
• Analyze your content and create categories.
• Do user-side testing and please do not underestimate it.
• Perform card sort exercises.
• Use search log for analysis.
• Anticipate the growth of the site and plan ahead so that labels you might add in the future don't disagree with the current labels.
• Decisions about which terms to include in a labeling system need to be made in the context of how broad and how large is your site.
• Labeling systems may need to be adjusted as necessary.

Have fun labeling!

Case Study - Applied Biosystems - Enabling Website Search

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of enabling website search in Applied Biosystems.

Applied Biosystems website included the search of the company products. There was a search field where a user would enter keywords hoping to retrieve the company products. However, this was not the case. Entering keywords in the search field was not retrieving any results.

My question for the company's webmaster was: what data source feeds this web site? I was told that there was a Lotus Notes database which contained products information and which fed the website and enables search. I asked to take a look at this database. When I looked at this database, I noticed a couple of metadata fields that were not populated: keywords and related terms.

I told the webmaster that this was the reason why company products were not retrievable on the website. This did not sound credible so I set out to prove it. I populated these two metadata fields in dozen of records and asked the webmaster to re-set the crawler. After this was done, those dozen products were retrievable from the company website. As the result, my diagnosis and solution proved to be correct.

I created a controlled vocabulary of terms and related terms with which records in this database should be indexed, i.e. entered into the keywords and related terms field. I also created a customized taxonomy to categorize company products on the web site and make them browsable through this database. I indexed all records in this database with terms from my controlled vocabulary. And so browsing and search of company products were enabled.

Lessons Learned

• Never underestimate the value of metadata. It is absolutely invaluable in enabling search.
• Metadata values should be consistent. If you decide to call a portable computer "laptop", you must continue to use this term in all your records. In order to maintain the consistency, create controlled vocabulary.
• Use related terms in enabling search.
• Provide two access points to any system: one is search, another is browse. When a user knows exactly what they are looking for, they are going to use the search. If they don't know what they are looking for, they are going to browse. Some time during browsing, they may switch to search and then back to browsing.
• Search is iterative and interactive process. Provide means for it to be such.