Implementing Enterprise Search
Establishing requirements
-------------------------
The main tasks a search engine
undertakes are the acquisition of content to be searched (through
spiders or scripts), indexing (together with taxonomy generation and
metadata enhancement), query management, results presentation,
document presentation and, finally, performance management. The way
in which each of these tasks is carried out varies between vendor,
and it is essential to have a good
understanding of which approaches are best for a particular
collection of documents and applications in order to evaluate
possible vendors. |
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There are three interlinked elements in the
process of establishing
requirements for an enterprise search engine:
1) A thorough audit of current and anticipated document types and volumes needs
to be carried out. The rate of addition is important as the indexing of the
documents needs to be carried out on a schedule that ensures the documents are
available to be searched within an appropriate time.
2) Assessing the implications for server architecture, storage, application
integration and network bandwidth is important, because the search will almost
certainly be extended over time , and then IT scalability issues become
critical. The most intensive server element is the indexing of the documents,
but the ability to then serve up the documents rapidly as a user identifies them
can put quite a load on servers and networks.
3) Determining the range of user requirements for search will assist in ensuring
that the right information/metadata elements are presented in the search results
page. Knowing how long a search engine took to do the search is one of the most
useless bits of information ever presented on a desktop.
Implementation never stops
--------------------------
Having selected and installed an enterprise search engine is just the start of
the implementation. There will be a continuing need to optimize search engine
performance through changes to the indexing routines, enhancing taxonomies and
other metadata, reviewing the results page presentations, undertaking ongoing
usability tests and
responding to feedback from users who can't find what they are sure is in the
document collection.
This means that there needs to be an appropriate range of skills in the project
team that is maintaining the search engine, and that can be difficult to set up
as the demand may be periodic rather than daily.
Ten critical success factors
----------------------------
There are at least ten critical success factors for selecting and managing an
enterprise search application:
1. Excellent project management
From the outset, a broad-based project team and a senior-level sponsor are
essential because of the range of knowledge and skills required to develop the
initial specification and then to evaluate the products.
2. Knowing what there is to be searched
The characteristics of the document collections that will be initially and
potentially indexed and searched need to be audited to a high level of
reliability. Just a few important documents in an unusual file format may remain
undiscovered forever.
3. Rigorous testing as part of the product evaluation
One outcome of the document audit should be a representative test collection of
documents so that all the relevant functionalities of the search engine can be
evaluated before any decision to purchase is made.
4. Understanding user requirements
In any organization there will be a range of different search requirements from
users, depending on the purpose for which they are searching and their previous
experience of searching. These requirements are best identified though the
development of search
personas and scenarios.
5. Understanding the technology of search
All search software products index documents, run queries against the index and
then present the results of the search to the user. Understanding clearly how
this is carried out is important in assessing the relative merits of each
product.
6. Anticipating scalability and extensibility issues
Most enterprise installations start small and then grow. The implications of
scaling up the indexing process and extending the functionality (for example for
multiple languages) need to be assessed at the outset and kept under continuous
review.
7. Assessing integration issues
The ease with which a search engine can be integrated into, or with, other
applications (for example a database of clients) is not easy to determine in
advance of the work being undertaken. A minor upgrade in either the search
software and the other application(s) may give rise to a substantial loss of
search performance.
8. Testing for usability
Providing a high degree of usability of the search interface is essential, and
should be based around the search personas and scenarios developed in the
specification phase. A small change in the presentation of search results can
have a significant impact on
usability.
9. Meeting changing user requirements
A search
engine needs to be continuously monitored and tuned to ensure that search
performance and changing user expectations and requirements are identified as
quickly and unambiguously as possible, and feedback provided on the extent to
which they can be met.
10.Appreciating that 'trust' is the best metric of search performance
Raw computer power will, in itself, not meet user requirements for search.
Effort has to go into developing and applying appropriate metadata, taxonomy and
categorization schemes that enable the user to trust the search engine to either
deliver the information being sought or confirm that no relevant information
exists.
-- FROM: <http://www.freepint.com/issues/290905.htm#feature>
"Specifying and
Implementing Enterprise Search"
By Martin White