SharePoint Jumpstart #3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools

SharePoint Search & IA Jumpstart Series June 18, 2009 Call 3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools Hosted by Earley & Associates in partnership with Consejo, Inc.

About the Jumpstart call series Began educational call series in 2005 Past topics have included Taxonomy and Metadata, Content Management, Search, Semantic Technologies Have had several thousand attendees over the years. Today’s call has over 900 registrants Calls will be recorded and available for download Be sure to fill in evaluation to let us know what additional topics you would like to learn about

Community of Practice Calls Taxonomy Group url: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP Search Group url: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP Upcoming calls: July 15, 2009 – Metadata Maturity Model Survey Findings August 5, 2009 – Conducting a Search Audit September 2, 2009 – DITA October 7, 2009 – Taxonomy Usability Testing November 4, 2009 – Developing an Ontology December 2, 2009 – Applications for Topic Maps

Housekeeping Calls last from 60 – 90 minutes Email questions during the call to [email_address] . Questions will be taken at the end of the session You can also skype Rebecca.M.Allen Questions will be queued through the operator. Press *1 to ask a question If you are on twitter, you can follow the discussion and make comments using the hash tag #spjs

Call 3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search Lars Fastrup, Fastrup Software Turning SharePoint Search into a Better Navigation Tool Paul Wlodarczyk, Earley & Associates Approaches and Tools

SharePoint Search & IA Series: Call 4 Call 4: SharePoint IA vs. The Real World Thursday, June 25 th Toby Conrad & Jeremy Bentley, Smartlogic Jeff Carr & Michael Shulha, Earley & Associates As session recordings become available, you will receive notification at the email address used at the time of registration.

Turning SharePoint Search into a Better Navigation Tool Earley & Associates Webinar June 18 th 2009 Lars Fastrup SharePoint Consultant, SharePoint Products BLOG: blog.sharepointproducts.com E-Mail: [email_address]

My Book on SharePoint Search Only dedictaed book on SharePoint Search. Published April 2008 Published by MS Press 608 Pages Written together with the late SharePoint Guru Patrick Tissegem

Agenda Introduction - Search Use Cases Problems with SharePoint Search OOB Five tips towards a better navigation experience with SharePoint Search

Introduction – Search Use Cases Discover new information Looking for a solution to a problem, searching for information to support a decision, researching existing work, finding employees by title/skill, etc. Retrieve known information Looking up reference material, forgot where it is, find employee contact info, etc. Quick navigation to known information Save time & clicks retrieving known information. Good search is usually faster than browsing you way down some site hierarchy.

OOB Problems with Search Poor support for narrowing down the result set Only possible by adding more keywords or using advanced search Poor advanced search experience Not intuitive at all, poor metadata search . No actionable results Only possible to open documents from the result list. No support for edit, check-in, check-out, etc. No document preview Often a need to download and open entire documents to assess whether they are relevant.

5 Tips Towards Better Navigation Create actionable results by adding a ”Goto Document Library” action to the results Add Faceted Search for more intuitive metadata search Do not expose search scopes to end-users Add seperate employee search box Add Document Preview

Actionable Results Examples of action links on a single result: Send link by email Add to My Links Goto Document Library The action links are added by customizing the XSLT template on the Core Results Web Part See my blog (blog.sharepointproducts.com) for free code No code solution available from thirdparty vendor

Goto Document Library Navigates to the document library item where user can perform additional actions like Edit and Check Out Same as ”View Properties” from inside doc. library

Faceted Search A search facet is a Metadata value Applying a facet filters results by that Metadata value Relevant facets are automatically suggested from analyzing the top 500 relevant results Users get relevant suggestions how to narrow their search in an intuitive way Great alternative to Scopes & Advanced Search Free add-on developed by a Microsoft consultant http://www.codeplex.com/FacetedSearch Thirdparty solutions also available

Search Center with Faceted Search

Do not expose Search Scopes OOB with scope picker Without scope picker

Separate Employee Search Box This is a more intuitive solution than a scope picker The employee search box directs searches to the People search tab in the search center The other search box directs searches to the All Sites search tab Requires .NET development efforts to implement. My book includes detailed tutorial on custom SB

Document Preview Features to look for In-browser preview of document pages with formatting and images intact Hit highlighting of keywords List of relevant document pages Currently only available from thirdparty vendor Microsoft has demoed Silverlight enabled preview solution for FAST search Currently unknown if SharePoint 2010 will come with document preview OOB

Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools Paul Wlodarczyk Director Solutions Consulting Earley & Associates June 18, 2009 SharePoint Jumpstart Series Session 3

Recap of Native SharePoint Capabilities Integration of Taxonomy with SharePoint Search Approaches to SharePoint Search Vendor Landscape: Tagging and Auto-classification Search and Navigation Key Findings Agenda

Tagging Out of the box: just keywords Can be extended to hierarchical controlled vocabularies with third party extensions Search and Navigation Search out of the box: no faceted search, but advanced search can behave in a faceted way Navigation out of the box: based upon the site structure Can be extended to use hierarchical taxonomies for facets, search suggestions, and navigation with third party extensions Wealth of third party extensions, ranging from free plug-ins to enterprise-class Tagging/Search/Navigation in SharePoint

SharePoint Search Integration There are several points of integration for tagging and search technologies that use taxonomy: Content Metadata: Tags as basis for metadata search SharePoint Thesaurus: Equivalent terms can be extracted from taxonomy Query API: Custom Search UX calls SharePoint Search, customizes results display Content Index: Some technologies use taxonomy and user behavior to tweak the relevancy ranking in the index 1 2 3 4

SharePoint Search Integration There are several points of integration for tagging and search technologies that use taxonomy: Content Metadata: Tags as basis for metadata search SharePoint Thesaurus: Equivalent terms can be extracted from taxonomy Query API: Custom Search UX calls SharePoint Search, customizes results display Content Index: Some technologies use taxonomy and user behavior to tweak the relevancy ranking in the index Replacement: Some technologies replace SharePoint Search altogether 3 rd Party Query Engine 3 rd Party Index Engine 1 2 3 4 5

Third Party Application Scope Applications vary in depth, breadth, and complexity Tagging plug-ins Search UX plug-ins Taxonomy management suites Search engines with user experience toolkits

Keyword tagging Users can generate keywords for specific SharePoint columns, either as free text, or as controlled vocabularies defined during configuration of the column. Taxonomy-driven manual tagging Taxonomy is source of preferred terms for tagging metadata. Third-party tools provide a user experience for manual tagging, based upon a hierarchical taxonomy. Auto-classification Third party classification engine uses taxonomy and/or other methods to inform a rules-based classification of documents. Metadata are generated, usually as a flat list of terms in a keyword column that can be manually revised, often with a hierarchical view of the vocabulary. Approaches to SharePoint Tagging

Key capabilities: Ability to ingest a hierarchical taxonomy from outside of SharePoint Use tags from the hierarchy as preferred terms / controlled vocabularies Map vocabularies to SharePoint columns Ability to display a hierarchy to the user in tagging interface Persisting the taxonomic relationships in the metadata Auto-classification against a taxonomy Tagging with Taxonomy in SharePoint

Manual Tagging: WordMap Custom columns created by SharePoint Admin – Department, Product, Locations Controlled vocabulary from taxonomy mapped to columns

Manual Tagging: WordMap Creating new columns and pointing them to controlled vocabularies in Facet XML files

Manual Tagging: WordMap Hierarchy is preserved in the metadata (can be viewed on hover) and is available for search Controlled vocabulary presented for selection, then shown in view

Plug-in that manages taxonomy & tags in easy interface A-Z browse, tag cloud, tree view Taxonomy can be imported from a taxonomy management system Admin can opt-out of letting users create own tags Manual Tagging: KWizCom

Manual Tagging: SharePart XXL Tag documents based on a hierarchical taxonomy Tag based upon rules, last used, or inheritance Taxonomy tree can be displayed in the tagging dialog as well as in the site navigation

Auto-tagging Example: Smartlogic Documents can be auto-classified in SharePoint based upon policies

Auto-tagging Example: Smartlogic Documents can be auto-classified using a manual trigger

Auto-tagging Example: Smartlogic Auto-classify results shown in Edit Properties dialog Can be manually edited using Add or Remove

Auto-tagging Example: Smartlogic Tagging interface enables multiple terms to be selected from a taxonomy-driven CV to edit the automatically applied terms

Concept Searching Taxonomy management and concept search Classifier is concept-based, not taxonomy driven, but can manually tag from a hierarchical taxonomy Stores metadata as flat keywords in one column Dow Jones Synaptica Taxonomy management and tagging Can serve multiple CVs from taxonomy, each mapped to its own column Terms are flat lists, no hierarchy in UI or in metadata Auto-tagging available from Data Harmony Other Tagging Applications for SharePoint

Key capabilities: Ability to ingest a hierarchical taxonomy from outside of SharePoint Use tags from the hierarchy as preferred terms / equivalent terms in search Use taxonomic relationships to drive navigation (e.g. tree browse) and faceted search Use taxonomic relationships to suggest related searches Search and Navigation with Taxonomy in SharePoint

Taxonomy Mapping Concept Mapping Schema Mapping Three Approaches to Searching SharePoint Content using Taxonomy

Taxonomy mapping Taxonomy is source of preferred terms for tagging metadata (SharePoint columns). SharePoint provides metadata search. Third-party tools provide a search user experience based on taxonomic relationships. Example: Smartlogic Approaches to SharePoint Search Search on non-preferred terms Tag with preferred terms Refine / Suggest with preferred terms and relationships Index on preferred terms (metadata) and non-preferred terms (full text) using ET / BT / NT relationships or Auto-classify via rules-base to the taxonomy

Taxonomy-mapping: Smartlogic Related terms in Smartlogic Semaphore. The user searched for “rights” in the SharePoint search box. Smartlogic shows related terms on the right for “rights” from the taxonomy. Search term highlighting is native MOSS functionality, showing search terms, not taxonomy terms.

Taxonomy-mapping: Smartlogic Faceted search in Smartlogic Semaphore. The user refined their search for “rights” by selecting “Employment Rights” in related terms. A facet is added for “Employment Rights”; the suggestion box changes to show Related Categories. Multiple facets will be shown if the user drills down, and facets can be removed by clicking the X on the facet

Taxonomy-mapping: BA Insight “ Refine your search” for faceted search and tag clouds Facets can be hierarchical based upon taxonomy (not shown here), and can show calculated ranges (e.g. dates – shown here).

Taxonomy-mapping: BA Insight Document preview - User interaction with the ribbon affects relevancy rankings.

Taxonomy-mapping: BA Insight Note the customized search results showing popularity and key concepts for results that have been indexed by Longitude. Search term highlighting in the preview and in the abstracts is done by Longitude Key concepts are search terms used like folksonomic tags

Taxonomy-mapping: BA Insight The Longitude Search Center in “Edit Mode” showing the web parts that constitute the interface in the demo

Concept mapping Third party search engine bases index on Concepts (naive multi-term phrases that are likely to occur as search terms), mapped to a formal taxonomy for equivalence and / or faceted search UX. Tagging with preferred terms for metadata search. Example: Concept Searching Approaches to SharePoint Search Search on non-preferred terms Manually tag with preferred terms or Auto-classify to the taxonomy via concepts that are related terms in taxonomy (“clues”) Index on concepts (non-preferred terms) Refine with preferred terms (metadata) Browse with taxonomy structure

Concept-mapping: Concept Searching Concept Searching is its own search engine – concept-based searches look for compound search terms (e.g. water quality) Related topics are based upon coincident concepts, not taxonomy Separate view for taxonomy browse

Concept-mapping: Concept Searching In the Taxonomy Browse view using the SharePoint search engine, the user can narrow the search to a sub-tree within the taxonomy. Here they will search for the concept “Science technology” within the “Environment” sub-tree of preferred terms (and their clues).

Concept-mapping: Concept Searching Concept Searching can leverage the Codeplex web part for faceted search, and utilize the taxonomy from the Concept Searching Taxonomy Manager to set the Classifications. Everything else you see is core SharePoint functionality.

Schema mapping Third party search engine bases index on “dimensions” that can be related to the taxonomy and metadata (for unstructured content) or fields (for relational data). Metadata is mapped to dimensions and properties, which in turn are mapped to UX for facets and navigation. Example: Endeca Approaches to SharePoint Search Tag with preferred terms Search on non-preferred terms Index on dimensions and properties (which are mapped to taxonomy) Refine / Suggest with dimensions that are derived preferred terms and relationships Relate structured content thru dimensions

Schema-mapping: Endeca Faceted search in Endeca – the user experience is 100% customized SharePoint is just a search source Document metadata is mapped to Endeca dimensions (facets) and properties – used both for the UX and search indexing Taxonomy can be used for both document tagging and as basis for facets Taxonomic relationships can be used to inform related searches Search weighting for metadata

With so many options, it can be daunting to know where to begin Our advice: Choose Search technology first… Recall and relevance drives business results User experience drives adoption … Then decide on tagging tools … … Then decide on taxonomy management. Only required for large / complex taxonomies, volatile taxonomies, or to support auto-classification rules-base development How to decide?

How much do you need? SharePoint OOB Basic Faceted Search Taxonomy-Driven Faceted Search Advanced Faceted Search Use advanced search for filtering on metadata fields. Navigation is based on site architecture / folder structure Expose facets on main search screen, basic tree view (Codeplex, KWizCom, SharePart XXL) Related search suggestions, broader/narrower, thesaurus relates search terms to preferred terms, tree browse (BA Insight, Concept Searching, Smartlogic) Facets span content types, fully-flexible UX, deep indexing, relate to structured data (Endeca) Faceted Search in SharePoint

Earley & Associates SharePoint Services (in Partnership with Consejo) SharePoint Assessment SharePoint Strategy SharePoint Design (Information Architecture, Workflow, UI) SharePoint Implementation SharePoint Integration with Enterprise Search We help organizations succeed from an enterprise-wide perspective, ensuring findability of content through effective document tagging, metadata management, and search http://www.earley.com/SharePointServices.asp

Please fill out the survey that should be in your inbox. Let us know what topics you are interested in and how we can improve the series. Seth Earley [email_address] www.earley.com 781-820-8080

SharePoint Jumpstart #3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools

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SharePoint Jumpstart #3: Navigation, Metadata, & Faceted Search: Approaches & Tools