Microsoft SharePoint Search Optimisation Programme
Enterprise Search is fundamentally changing the way we work with and access information. But are you getting the most out of your SharePoint search implementation?
A 2007 South African market analysis on intranets and portals found that searching for information was the most important capability of the corporate intranet. The same study, however, showed that 86% of respondents were not effectively using Enterprise Search, this despite the fact that most of them had already deployed Office SharePoint Server 2007, which includes a feature-rich and competitive search engine.
The reason? The default deployment configuration of SharePoint search is designed to provide a platform for designing and delivering enterprise search solutions and does not provide out-the-box best practise capabilities.
Few organisations have realised that with minimal effort and the required knowledge, their existing SharePoint search capabilities can be greatly improved.
Situation
Today, a wealth of best-practice resources have made it relatively easy to deploy sophisticated and highly scalable SharePoint implementations. Microsoft SharePoint Search however, tends to be treated as an afterthought, often overlooked and neglected during these implementations.
Most SharePoint deployments regard search as a simple flick of the switch implementation – the content is crawled and then users expect an experience similar to what the Internet has familiarised us with. A tremendous amount of value is never realised – systems are biased towards expertly storing content without enough focus being placed on finding and delivering information.
The reality is that search needs to be treated as a separate component of a SharePoint implementation with its own planning, testing and monitoring. Research company IDC reports that an employee typically spends an average of two hours a day searching for information. This is clearly an area where improvements can lead to direct increases in productivity.
Solution
Intervate’s SharePoint Search Optimisation programme is a week-long rapid search optimisation process designed to correctly configure SharePoint Search and greatly improve the effectiveness and benefits realised.
The optimisations leverage SharePoint’s existing functionality and entail a number of no-code, pre-defined areas of improvement for existing SharePoint implementations. This allows organisations to extract additional value out of existing SharePoint investments.
What You Get
The Search optimisation programme will begin with a 3 hour strategy workshop to plan the details of each optimisation. We will then benchmark a list of searches in order to have criteria against which the improvements can be measured. After all enhancements have been implemented, we will provide a 2 hour configuring and monitoring training session to ensure you have the knowledge to tweak and maintain your organisation’s search on an on-going basis.
The enhancements include:
People Search refinement + mobile people search configuration
The people search results page will be enriched with metadata relevant to the people in your business. Also included will be a stripped down people search for windows mobile phones.
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Specialised image search
An image search will be configured to provide thumbnail results, similar to a Google Images or Live Images search on the Web.
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Installation of important iFilters
iFilters allow SharePoint to perform a full-text index on non-Office file types. Important and often overlooked iFilters will be installed and configured.
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Word Stemming configuration
Word stemming enhances the recall rate of the search by reducing a search to its root and then executing against all of its inflections, i.e. “run”, “running” and “runner”.
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Faceted Search installation and configuration
A free download from Codeplex, Faceted Search transforms search into a visual point and click experience allowing you to discover more information than ever before for an enhanced search experience.
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Best Bets configuration
Best bets allow you to editorialise important search results giving you the power to call up salient search results to the top of the list. |
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Relevancy and ranking tuning
The entire server farm will be assessed in order to make use of a variety of SharePoint options which can improve the relevancy and ranking of search results. |
Thesaurus implementation
Often ignored, the thesaurus allows you to augment your content with synonyms for better discoverability. Your thesaurus will be configured with a list of local acronyms and synonyms from the ICT sector.
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Noise words configuration
Noise words add zero value to a search. A list of domain specific noise words will be created, to be removed from search keywords. |
Advanced search configuration
The out-of-the-box advanced search needs will be configured to suit your business domain.
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