SharePoint Searchin the Enterprise, Strategy and the New Search Paradigm

Copyright © 2013 Robin Macrae, Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
SharePoint Search in the
Enterprise, Strategy and the
New Search Paradigm
Robin Macrae
Earley & Associates
SharePoint Saturday
Toronto
2013-07-20

Overview I
• Introduction, bio, company, capabilities, topic, objectives
• The client, priorities, specific goals, search guys, users
• The pitch, project, Earley formula, deliverables, activities
• Gap analysis, content in context, content continuum (models)
• Strategy, recommendations (SCoE, infrastructure, education, SP
transition + catalog, modeling), framework, conclusions
• Transition, new roles, customization, tuning, search
skill, feedback, discovery, BIA/SBA/UIA
2013-07-18 Copyright © 2013 Robin Macrae, Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 2

Overview II
• Metadata strategy, infrastructure
• New search paradigm
• SP2013 search capabilities

Biographical
• Information architecture
• information architect
• design and strategy
• Semantic Web evangelist
• metadata lover
• Professional
• trusted advisor
• multi-discipline
• work methodology (dog food)
• Experienced
• expert in expertise
• wide range of enterprise clients
robin.macrae@earley.com
@Robin_Macrae
416-255-7450

The company I keep
• An information management consulting company
• Consulting services
• Taxonomy & Metadata
• Search
• Microsoft SharePoint
• Content Management
• Digital Asset Management
• Usability
• Visit earley.com and follow @sethearley

Earley & Associates capabilities
Program Management
Business Analysis /
User Research
Technology Selection
Implementation
Support
Socialization &
Training
Governance
Strategy
Success Metrics
Enterprise
Search,
Collaboration
& Portals
Digital Asset
Management
Workflow
Management
Security &
Privacy
Management
Rights
Management
Records
Management
Website
Navigation,
Search &
SEO
Content
Management
Taxonomy &
Usability
Driven
Solutions

Session Topic
• Focus is developing a search strategy in which the enterprise adopts
the new search paradigm — search becomes an integral component
of the enterprise's approach to content and collaboration
• Enterprise search strategy and roadmap are keys to planning the
search capabilities and experiences for success
• Why search has risen to a new and central role in enterprise IT
strategy
• Outline the considerations in changing from an enterprise search
platform to SharePoint 2013
• Review the several models used in evaluating the maturity,
requirements and direction for enterprise content
• Review some of the key elements of the new search paradigm and
• Review the noteworthy SP2013 search capabilities that deliver
those elements

Session Topic
• Enterprise search has evolved to a new level of importance and effectiveness.
Today, the search as an application paradigm is being incorporated into enterprise
search strategies. SharePoint 2013 brings important new capabilities. This is in
response to rampant user dissatisfaction with search reaching unacceptable levels.
Strategies must change if business performance and user productivity are to be
improved. The choices are complex and interconnected. Which should be your
priorities? Taxonomies? Text and content analytics? Social? Improved crawling?
• In this presentation, an enterprise search strategy and roadmap project in a large
financial services organization will provide insight into understanding the new
paradigm of search-based applications as well as the use of taxonomies to improve
search performance, connecting users to expertise and knowledge, delivering
personalized digital content to multiple channels and devices, analyzing and
measuring search effectiveness and applying search optimization techniques. In
addition, the UI design and usability considerations appropriate to moving search
from one of the worst workload satisfaction ratings to one of the best.

Session Objectives
• Learn key lessons in developing an enterprise search strategy and
roadmap
• This is about change management
• SP2013 search heralds a new approach to search
• The key new capabilities of search
• Search as a semantic application
• It’s not about how to configure search or develop search
applications in SP

The client
• Mega U.S. financial institution
• Regulated
• Largely U.S. but some international scope
• Well established, stable, secure = conservative
• Content varies from low value and ephemeral to time
sensitive, critical and professional quality
• Usual business unit tribes and departmental organization with
typical information silos and NIH attitude

The client’s priorities I
• Major investment and priority in trinity of mobility, collaboration and
enriched communication
• New ways of working and interacting being developed
• New platforms and information sources – blogs, wikis and
collaborative workspaces, team virtual meetings
• Sharing knowledge balanced against privacy and security

The client’s priorities II
• Regulated financial organization, internal audit controls, retention for
compliance
• Large amounts of unstructured content
• Millions of email messages
• 100,000+ e-meetings in 2010
• Thousands of SharePoint sites
• Quantity doubling annually
• Governance to monitor and manage content
• Well developed in-house software development, usability,
requirements capabilities

The client’s priorities III
• 1M+ files in several thousand active SP sites
• SP growing exponentially … doubling annually
• 10,000+ pages on HR portal, a search app
• 200,000 external and 2M internal documents indexed by search
platform
• HR classifies 70% of organization as knowledge workers
• Knowledge workers heavy users of internally generated content for
decision making and client delivery service

Smorgasbord of specific goals
• Better basic or infrastructure search
• Reduce search user dissatisfaction
• Increase use of search to reduce reinventing wheel
• Learn how to identify and implement SBA
• Device independence
• Content integration
• Unified search
• Integration of social software

The pitch
• Taxonomy, metadata and information architecture are key aspects of
search
• Search is fundamentally about metadata
• Some content is structured, some isn’t and needs help
• Advanced search functionalities require taxonomy
• Search is increasingly looking like navigation
• What happens when you click on a link?
• Guided navigation & faceted search are really the same thing
• Search is messy
• Knowledge is messy, information is messy.
• People find answers through haphazard and chaotic processes

The project
• Develop an enterprise search strategy and roadmap
• Educate in SAA and SBAs
• Deliver in 3 months
• Provide detailed descriptions of activities to implement

The Earley formula for enterprise search
• Understand business initiatives and user needs
• Analyze content, systems, taxonomy and UI
• Perform heuristic search assessment
• Build a strategic vision and perform gap analysis
• Formulate search solution recommendations
• Present long term roadmap and ―quick wins‖ plan

Strategy and roadmap deliverables

Project activities
12 interview
sessions
w/45
business & IT
crew
focus
Technology on
search
platform, SharePoint,
Documentum, etc.
6 audiences
targeted for
search
20+
working
sessions
conducted
3
Executive
readouts
Assessment
Recommendations
Roadmap
Strategy

Maturity model / gap analysis
20 © Robin Macrae All Rights Reserved

Workstreams
Content Modeling –
• Content Type Definitions
• Metadata Schema Design
• Managed Metadata Service Design
• Taxonomy Framework and Development
Process and Integration –
• Workflow Design
• Automated vs. Manual Process Analysis
• Online vs. Offline Functional Capability
• Data Integration and Synchronization
Search Architecture Design –
• Ontology Development
• Site Collection Architecture
• Site Maps and Logical Content Organization
• Search Experience Design
Search Based Applications –
• Navigation
• Wireframes
• User Interface Design
Audience & Content Analysis –
• Content Audits and Inventories
• Personas, User and Group Matrices
• User Scenarios and Use Cases
Content Authoring & Publishing –
• Content Creation and Curation
• Information Lifecycle Management Design
• Publication Process Modeling
Audience Analysis
Content Analysis
Content Authoring
& Publishing Processes
Content Types,
Metadata Schemas
& Taxonomy Design
Workflow &
System Integration
Search
Architecture Design
Search Based
Applications
(Content in Context)
Designing for content in context

Chaotic Processes Controlled Processes
Problem solving
Collaboration
Accessing information
Answering questions
Knowledge Creation Knowledge Reuse
Enterprise Knowledge Management
Spans Structured and Unstructured Processes
Less Structure More Structure
CLASSofTOOL
Blogs
Records
Management
Document
Management
Process
ManagementWikis
Collaborative
Spaces
Instant
Messaging
Email
Management
Web Content
Management
Learning
Management
Digital Asset
Management
My
Sites
Centralized
PublishingSharePoint Span of Control
The content continuum

The enterprise search engine guys
• Dedicated search platform and team
• Don’t see much value in structured content — not our job
• But it is in search as an application and search-driven apps
• Paradigm shift — Search-As-An-Application and
• It’s a discipline, a way of thinking
• Must be practiced or applied to be understood — 10,000 hours —
use it to understand it (dog food)
• High priests when village doctors needed

The search users
• The Google experience of search
• Training vs. education
• Big dose vs. incremental, on-demand, self-service
• Eating your own dog food
• Curatorial, iterative development process
• Need to mix vocabularies
• general vs. niche
• old vs. new
• organizational units, department

Popular ways to screw up search
• Degrade performance
• Don’t integrate results from multiple sources – let the user sort it out
(silos)
• Ignore UI principles in page design – its only search
• Ignore consumer search – the gold standard is Google
Innovations in his enterprise
• Don’t let anyone know search is the black sheep of the family
• Treat user dissatisfaction as a lack of user effort or a failure in
design
• Treat content as something alien and incomprehensible

The strategy in four part harmony
• Search Center of Excellence
• Centralized enterprise content and search services and
resources for planning, coordination, organization, education and
user feedback
• Search as an application
• Requirements, testing, release management
• Resources and funding to support the initiative
• Taxonomy
• Creation, use and maintenance of taxonomies, controlled
vocabularies, categories, user ratings, folksonomies and other
enterprise metadata
• Search engine configuration and tuning
• Text enhancements (keywords, synonyms, replacements),
relevancy tuning, schemas (use cases), catalog sources and
configurations, etc.

The strategy in four part harmony continued
• Accelerate SharePoint transition and search usage
• Education (vs training)
• Catalog sources
• Modelling

Long term recommendations
– SCoE
• Elevate search to an enterprise program – make search an
enterprise priority
• Establish a Search Center of Excellence program
• Use Search Center of Excellence to drive adoption of search as an
application
• Resources and funding to support the initiative
• Requirements, testing, release management
• Make testing a integral part of both basic search and search
application development for IDOL, SharePoint and all search
applications
• Address both basic search and search application requirements
• Provide appropriate resources, responsibilities and roles
• Provide a central organizing and coordinating vehicle to implement
strategy and drive search improvements

– taxonomy infrastructure
• Creation, use and maintenance of taxonomies, controlled
vocabularies, categories, user ratings, folksonomies and other
enterprise metadata
• Build an enterprise metadata / taxonomy infrastructure
• Essential component of sharing, finding and reuse of content in
the enterprise
• Taxonomy infrastructure will enable essential search
enhancements driven equally by business units and IT

– Search engine configuration and tuning
• Text enhancements (keywords, synonyms, replacements)
• Relevancy tuning
• Schemas (use cases)
• Catalog sources and configurations, etc.
• SEO (organic)
• media (video) distribution

– Accelerate SharePoint
• Reinforce decision to promote new unstructured business generated
content in SharePoint
• Utilize Search Centre and Term Store in SP2010
• Accelerate upgrading to SP2013
• Increase utilization of SharePoint search in both
• Give SharePoint’s search capabilities a higher priority given the
transition to SharePoint and the 2013 search improvements

– Education
• Educate authors and users
• Help authors make good choices and understand the results
• Promote new search capabilities
• Restructure the way businesses view the content available. Catalog
the content sources indexed by IDOL. Socialize the breadth of
search’s capabilities.
• Accelerate upgrading to SharePoint 2013 and increase utilization of
SharePoint search. Give SharePoint’s search capabilities a higher
priority given the transition to SharePoint and the 2013 search
improvements.

– Catalog sources
• Restructure way businesses view the content available
• Catalog the content sources indexed by enterprise search platform
• Socialize the breadth of search’s capabilities
• Accelerate upgrading to SharePoint 2013 and increase utilization of
SharePoint search. Give SharePoint’s search capabilities a higher
priority given the transition to SharePoint and the 2013 search
improvements.

– Modeling
• Develop an enterprise content model
• An important part of both content management and enterprise
search
• Wide variety in the value of content and its durability or permanence
should be reflected in the ―care and feeding of that content‖

Enterprise search strategy framework
Search Center of Excellence
Governance | Metrics | Content Curation | UX | Training | Communications
Foundational Search Elements
Technology | Metadata & Taxonomy | Content Management | UX & IA
Search Application Categories
Discovery-Based
Ad hoc search, lookup
by employees, teams
HR portal, Work Sites
Network-Based
Personal, professional
people connections
MySites, Communities
Knowledge-Based
Authoritative content
Client sites,
Communities of
Practice

Conclusions
• Recommendations utilize the organization’s existing set of
resources, initiatives and governance relating to search
• Recommendations address multiplicity of content sources and user
experiences in search – a primary source of user dissatisfaction
• SharePoint 2013 upgrade provides excellent set of search
capabilities that is consistent with decide to transition to SharePoint

The transition
• This is a breakthrough, not evolution
• Paradigm change is different kind of change, understanding
insufficient
• Training doesn’t work but skills need upgrading
• You have competition from consumer search experience and
expectations -- ignore at your peril

Key strategy issue
• Continued priority on search platform delays transition in search
thinking
• Search engine tuning (customization) unavoidable in short run but
inefficient (the old way)
• SP2013 migration not yet evaluated much less scheduled
• application development out of scope
• shift from search technicians to business site admins and content
creator professionals imperiled

SP2013 based approach
• Goal is to complete the basic learning and strategy process by
hands on experience with SBA in SP2013
• Go to one of half a dozen client groups within target division
• Propose simple SP2013 search-based techniques to solve a few
narrow business needs/problems
• Pick groups with content heavy SP sites that are easy to migrate
• Develop with users in SP2013 development VMs
• Make templates a priority (reuse)
• Prove both ease of migration and use of web part search capabilities

Result
• Even though development of SP2013 search apps one of key
recommendations, implications not realized
• SP2013 migration scary to contemplate – we’re not trail
blazers, what are other organizations doing?
• What we would get isn’t substantial enough – want an enterprise
SBA to validate strategy
• Go with search guys on search platform and see what happens –
give the client what the client wants

Thanks for attending this presentation
Robin Macrae
Information Architect
robin.macrae@earley.com
@Robin_Macrae
slideshare.net/robin555/
pinterest.com/ram55/
2013-07-18 Copyright © 2013 Robin Macrae, Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. slide ‹#›
The presentation will be uploaded to SlideShare
bit.ly/search-RAM-2013-07-20

Bonus slides
• a selection of largely self-explanatory SP2013 search slides

Key search related SP2010 capabilities
• Filters, views and navigation
• Leverage custom metadata in searching
• Autotagging (SmartTag, etc.)
• Thesaurus and best bets
• Dynamic content presentation
• All are dependent on taxonomy and metadata
• Centralized metadata control, hierarchy and support for taxonomy
and folksonomy tagging differentiate 2010 from 2007

Search improvements in SP2013
• Perhaps most important change in SP2013
• From a WCM pespective:
• Search and Term Store are key to WCM and in SP 2013
• Content Search Web Part is your new best friend.
• Design Manager and HTML master pages, page layouts, and
display templates rock
• From architect’s:
• Integration of FAST Search
• Search-driven apps
• Cross-Site Publishing
• Search Center at the site collection level
• Navigation
• Custom URL (Permalinks)

Content Search Web Part (CSWP)
• Replaces and is much more expansive than much used but not so user-
friendly Content Query Web Part in SP2010 and MOSS2007
• Searches through and presents content based on defined query
• Can return any content from the search index
• Can be very specific about where you search, how often you search, and
how granular you want the results to display – data presented can be
organized using a number of refiners and settings
• How best to take advantage of these new capabilities
• Dependent on crawl settings
• If you need to display instant content, refreshed version of content or
content from sites not indexed, use the Content Query Web Part (CQWP)
instead
• CQWP and CSWP are only available within SharePoint 2013 Enterprise
edition

Content Search Web Part (CSWP)

Content Search Web Part vs Content Query Web
Part
CSwp Scope
• Web part that displays results
from a search query, limited only
by scope of your crawl
How It Displays Results
• Results based on the search
index, highly configurable display
settings
Accuracy Of Results
• The more often the crawl, the
more up to date the information
CQwp Scope
• Web part that displays content
from a single site collection
QWP Scope
• Web part that displays content
from a single site collection
How It Displays Results
• Results based on the filter
Accuracy Of Results
• Instant view into available
content, always up to date
Source :Content Query Web Part vs. Content Search Web Part

CSwp vs CQwp
Content In Results
• Can search beyond a site
collection to a web app or even
the farm. Is unable to display
minor versions of documents.
Summary
• Can search the whole farm if
necessary but is only as up-to-
date as the search crawl. Unable
to display minor versions.
Content is not available if the site
collection or site is not indexed.
Content In Results
• Is limited to the site collection,
but is able to display minor
versions
Summary
• Can display instant information
and is able to display minor
versions. Cannot search beyond
the site collection and is not as
customisable without coding (e.g.
XSLT)

Which web part to use?
• Each has its place in SharePoint 2013
• Depends on:
• what you are trying to accomplish
• how up-to-date you need the information
• how vast you want the search scope
• what skills you have available to extend the out-of-the-box capabilities
• CSWP easier to configure and searches a much larger content area --
CQWP is instant on content and shows potentially deeper results (minor
versions)

Improvements in SP2013

SharePoint 2013’s Display Templates
• Each element controlled by a display template or microformat:
Result Types + Display Templates = Rich Search Experiences

Credit: Rob Dornbush, Sr. IA, UX Design, Earley & Associates

New search scope

SharePoint Searchin the Enterprise, Strategy and the New Search Paradigm

Recomendados

Recomendados

Más contenido relacionado

La actualidad más candente

La actualidad más candente (20)

Similar a SharePoint Searchin the Enterprise, Strategy and the New Search Paradigm

Similar a SharePoint Searchin the Enterprise, Strategy and the New Search Paradigm (20)

Más de Robin Macrae

Más de Robin Macrae (6)

Último

Último (20)