driving value with search

Driving Value with Search: Working Smart, Not Hard

Michal PisarekSharePoint MVPFounder Dynamic Owl Consulting Inc

Driving Value with SearchWhy is search so difficult?

Common mistakes and finding value

Tips to improve your search

Who am I

SharePoint MVP

Based in Vancouver, Canada

Author of sharepointanalysthq.com

SharePoint Analyst:BusinessTechnical

Founder of Dynamic Owl Consulting

michalpisarek@sharepointanalysthq.com@michalpisarekmichalpisarek

WHY IS SEARCH SO DIFFICULT?

Why simple does not mean easy

The Google Effect

Fooled people into thinking search requires no effort

Users have a very low tolerance for failure

Enterprise search is fundamentally different in context

The Google Effect Part 1

Search requires

little to no effort on the part of

users or administrators

The Google Effect Part 2

Users have little to no tolerance

for failure with search

The Google Effect Part 3

Consumer and enterprise search

are the same thing

COMMON MISTAKES AND FINDING VALUE

Custom Scopes

Search Refiners

Custom Results Pages

Advanced Search

Bets Bets and Keywords

Content Sources

Search Suggestions Expansion Sets Replacement

Sets

Custom Ranking

Algorithms

Search Syntax Training People Search

Lack of vision for search

“Improved Search Experienc

e”“Intuitive Search”

“Increased Findability”

“Google Like Search”

“Better Search”

“Encourage cross departmental

knowledge sharing by surfacing

related content”

“Provide access to the correct experts

through skills, expertise and qualifications”

“Encourage compliance by

surfacing authoritative,

approved content”

“Improving the search experience

by allowing employees to

directly influence the results”

You don’t have to index all

content to provide a

compelling search experience

Seeking ValueConcentrate on the

10 most common search

actions that provide the most

value

The cost of configuring search is far out weighed by

the value you receive

Measuring the value search provides

“Find the phone number and department of any

user by first or last name”

“Find the latest 10 documents that I have authored over the last

week”

“Find all policies and procedures that have

been approved”

“Ability to filter by news category, author or

department on Intranet news articles”

FANTASTICO INC SEARCH STRATEGYFANTASTICO INC SEARCH STRATEGYOUTCOMES

MEASURES

TARGET STORIES

SHAREPOINT SCOPE AND CONFIGURATION

OUTCOMES

MEASURES

TARGET STORIES

SHAREPOINT SCOPE

19

The Golden Rule of Gathering Search Requirements

Never ask users the question “So what

search requirements do you have?”

OUTCOMES

MEASURES

TARGET STORIES

SHAREPOINT SCOPE

TECHNIQUES DELIVERABLE

Search Vision Statement

KPI Workshop

List of measures that make sense

Backlog of stories

Functional Spec and Solution

TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR SEARCH

Best Bets and Keywords

Inject your own search intelligence

Applicable to any organization

Easily Configurable

23

Typical Examples

AcronymsAny TLAs

Department Names:AccountingHuman ResourcesMarketing

Common Business TermsEngineering Organizations: Topics Banking: Task Based

General TermsCommon Actions: Printing, Mail, Car Hire, Travel, BankingLocations: Office locations, Project LocationsLeave: Leave forms, holiday forms, travel requestSharePoint Based: Intranet, Projects, TrainingIntranet Based: Events, News, Stories

asd

Best Bets Workshop

24

Get diverse people in a room

Hand out cue cards with the Best Bet format

Write 10 each, then shuffle and swap

At the end review all Best Bets

Custom Scopes

Metadata or Content

Source Driven

Partition Content for improved

results

• Metadata• Content Type• Content Source• Content Class

PeopleSiteLinksContactsAnnouncementsDiscussionsTasks

Scopes

How does your organization think about information?

Content Based: Contracts, Policies, ProceduresTask Based: New Member Account, Termination, New Loan ApplicationStorage Based: C Drive, SharePoint Sites, CRMTime Based: Yearly Financial CyclesDepartment Based: Accounting

My Experience

Always have a Documents search scope implemented

Users are more comfortable with the word ‘filter’ than ‘scope’

Too many scopes can be confusing

Card Sorting

Lets people group related information together

Powerful way to see how users think about information in groups

Great to see how scopes should be structured

Two types:Open: Users create categoriesClosed: Pre-defined categories

Running a card sort

Create cue cards

Users sort into categories

Can be done online or in person

Custom Results Pages

Custom Results Pages

Images blatantly stolen from Corey Roth, Matthew McDermott and Todd Carter

Add Ratings

View Folder

Customize results for different content

32

Custom Results Workshop

Select the content that you want to target (this is usually tied to scopes)

Sit users in a room with a facilitator

Get users to choose which pieces of metadata are important and how they should be displayed

START DATE

CUSTOMER

PROJECT NUMBER

YEAR

OFFICE/BRANCH

LAST MODIFIED

EXCERPT

TITLEFILE SIZE

FILE TYPE

EXECUTED BY

PROJECT ID

START DATE

CUSTOMER

YEAR

OFFICE/BRANCH PROJECT NUMBER

Invest in People Search

“People usually don't

want to know the answer, people usually

want to know who knows the answer”

Invest in people search

Finding the right person is usually more important than finding the right content

Determine what users are looking for

Leverage User Profiles

Expose in search

Search Reporting

SharePoint offers great search reporting capabilities to help you

How was your search web part

Great way to gather feedback about search

Simple way for end users to communicate their feedback

The information can be a goldmine

Conclusion

Plan and implement search like anything else on SharePoint

Seek true value and then drive your efforts towards it

It is possible to make a huge difference to your organization

Q/A & Contact Details

Michal PisarekSharePoint MVP

www.sharepointanalysthq.com michalpisarek@sharepointanalysthq.com

michalpisarek@michalpisarek