|
An effective search tool on an intranet can make an enormous difference to its usability. In fact, usability expert Jakob Nielsen found that "Poor search was the greatest single cause of reduced usability across intranets" A good search engine ensures that users find what they're looking for, first time, regardless of the format or location of the information. This means that a wide variety of information can be effectively dispersed and made available to staff, without the need for complex navigation systems or filing conventions.
Most intranets evolve over time, and search functionality need not be a daunting task. A search tool can be implemented quickly, and then refined as the intranet grows and the needs of the organization change. Importantly, a flexible search engine that is cost-effective and expands to suit your growing requirements can be a much better investment than a cheap product with no ability to scale or an expensive solution where the majority of its functionality is wasted.
It is important to recognize that every intranet is different, with its own objectives, requirements and environment. This document is designed to guide you through the process of selecting an intranet search engine, by addressing in turn a range of key variables that need to be considered. You can use the 12-step checklist at the end as a template for defining your own requirements and evaluating vendors.
1. THE BASICS - OBJECTIVES
A good start to understanding what you need from your intranet search engine is to firstly understand the role of the intranet for your organization. What is the objective of the intranet? Is it to provide human resources information to staff? To provide information to your help desk? Or to support the sales team? Perhaps the intranet is designed to meet a number of different objectives. Once these are clearly defined, you can begin to determine how a search engine can best add value.
The functionality you require from a search engine will depend on your intranet objectives. Keeping these in mind, the following sections of this document outline some of the issues that you need to consider.
2. DATA SOURCES & FILE TYPES
Once you have your objectives clearly defined, you can work out what type of file formats and data sources your search engine will need to support. List out every file type used in creating the information that you want to share on your intranet. These usually fall into one of three categories:
Unstructured formats are file formats that contain primarily text-based information. These include text files, word processor files, PDFs, emails and formats used to create most documents. There is no real structure to these file formats and few relationships exist between elements within them.
Semi-structured formats are file formats that contain a mixture of text-based and databased information, with a basic structure. These include file types such as HTML, spreadsheets, XML. There may be relationships between elements within these files, however they are not as rigidly defined as they are in structured formats, and there may be sections of textual information where no structure exists.
Structured formats are file formats where the information is contained in a well-defined structure, such as a relational database. Many enterprise systems have a structured architecture, such as ERP and CRM systems, as well as many legacy databases.
For example, you may want to start your search engine implementation by simply making available all of the HTML content on your intranet. Then you may decide to include PDF and word documents. Eventually, you may want to provide access to your customer database or to XML data created in other systems. Your intranet search engine needs to be able to support the full spectrum of file types that you require, even in multiple languages, if that is a concern for your organization.
In addition, you should consider how many files will be in the intranet data repository. This can affect search engine performance, and may impact the price you are ultimately charged, since many search engines are priced according to the number of documents indexed. Be careful in such situations, as any expansion in the size of the intranet can push the search engine into the next pricing bracket, thereby attracting additional charges from the search engine vendor.
|
