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Intranet Portals Search And Taxonomies
nowledge Management for among employees, departments and
beginners even with other companies in an
effort to reach - or go beyond -
Knowledge Management (KM) can be best practice. For explicit
defined simply as the process knowledge, the focus can usefully
through which organizations be described as "connecting
generate value from their people to things", whilst for
intellectual and knowledge-based tacit knowledge, the focus is
assets. Knowledge assets are "connecting people to people".
often grouped into two
categories: Search technologies made simple
(1) Explicit Knowledge:Generally, There are essentially two types
everything and anything that can of search technology: structured
be documented, archived and search and unstructured search:
codified. Examples include
patents, trademarks, business 1) Structured Search:In a
plans, marketing research and structured search (example Yahoo)
customer lists. the user clicks down through a
directory of categories to find
(2) Tacit Knowledge:The rest. the material sought. The tree
Tacit knowledge is the know-how structure of the directory is
contained in people's heads. The called a taxonomy, with a root
challenge inherent with tacit node at the top that applies to
knowledge is figuring out how to all objects and nodes below that
recognize, generate, share and classify more specific subsets of
manage it. the total set of objects. A
well-known example of a taxonomy
Most often, generating value from is Carolus Linnaeus's Scientific
such assets involves sharing them classification of organisms. The
root node is (implicitly) the taxonomy), there is another
"organism" and nodes below are key con. As our wedding example
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, illustrates so well, there are
Family, Genus, and Species. often two or more places one
could put any given information.
In Yahoo, the root is "Directory" Oh the agonies of choice!
and there are 14 main nodes,
including Society & Culture, 2) Unstructured Search:In an
Social Science and Reference. If unstructured search (example
I were searching for best man's Google) the user enters a series
speech tips (which I was not so of keywords into a search engine,
long ago), I could try (on Yahoo) which searches an index of
clicking down the branch of the content (regularly crawled) and
tree: Directory > Society and brings back results, ordered by
Culture > Weddings > Speeches and closest match to the search
Toasts. Alternatively, I could string.
try Directory > Social Science >
Communications > Public Speaking. The main pro of an unstructured
search are that I do not have to
There are obvious pros and cons second-guess where the right
to structured search. The main branch is on the taxonomy tree,
con is that I might head down but rather leap in at the leaf I
several blind alleys on the tree am looking for. The cons are
before finding the most useful rather less obvious and the main
branch. The main pro is that - one is that some materials I
once I have found that branch - I might actually find very useful
am likely to find a whole may not come up in the search.
collection of relevant material This can be due to my poor
gathered together in one place. selection of search terms,
For the librarian (maintaining deficiency in indexing / search
algorithms or poor metadata in To implement the structured
the content itself. search part of your solution, you
will need to develop a taxonomy
Should I implement search structure for your organisation
functionality and, if so, and the information resources
how?Search invariably scores well your people need to do their
on any prioritisation of intranet jobs. This can be quite a
functionality and is generally challenge! For example, should
"out-of-the-box" with your portal an HR grievance policy be found
solution, so I would definitely under ABC Co > Human Resources >
recommend you include it in the Employee Services Unit > Policy
scope of your project.It may not or under an ABC Co > My
surprise you to hear that the Employment > My Rights >
most effective search Grievance branch?
implementations allow the user to
chose between structured and My advice is to keep it simple
unstructured search options and and give it room to evolve and
to easily navigate between the change. An ideal taxonomy should
two. For example, my be flat and broad (having no more
unstructured Yahoo search on than three levels) and should
"best mans speeches" takes me suit the provider or creator of
straight to a relevant document, information rather than the user
but also tells me where it sits of it (as they are the people who
in the directory. By clicking on will populate your library and
the directory category, I can you need it to be easy for them
bring up all the other materials to do so).
in that area (where I ultimately
find the best resource for my To ensure the unstructured
need). component of your solution is
effective, you need to ensure
firstly that people avoid jargon details (job title, email
in the body of their documents address, telephone number) with
(using instead keywords that information about their skills,
users will recognise) and experience and interests. Then -
secondly that a high percentage when someone searches for
of documents contain decent grievance - in addition to (a)
metadata. Metadata can be simply the word document policy, the
defined as "data about data". For results also include (b) a link
example, the grievance document to Tessa Jones' Yellow Pages
metadata might include author: entry and (c) a link to the
Tessa Jones, job title: Employee Employee Relations teamspace,
Relations Officer, department: where Tessa - and her line
Employee Services, function: HR, colleagues across ABC Co -
subject: Employment, title: collaborate on policy development
Grievance policy. and employee relations
management.
Can search help with tacit
knowledge sharing?Absolutely! Some final thoughts
Many organisations fail to
recognise this. Connecting The humble search function can be
people to people (for that 10 the most powerful agent for
minute telephone conversations improved knowledge management
that could save a week's work) is your organisation has ever
often much more valuable than invested in. By extension,
storing documents. therefore, it can become the
definitive "killer application"
You should create a well on your intranet portal.
developed yellow pages database, However, it is vital that the
where people have entered search capability can acccess all
augmented their white pages the information and people in
your organisation and that result proper planning and detailed
relevancy is high. This is not work.
as easy as it sounds and requires
About the Author:
David Viney (david@viney.com) is the author of the Intranet Portal Guide; 31 pages of advice, tools and downloads covering the period before, during and after an Intranet Portal implementation.Read the guide at http://www.viney.com/DFV/intranet_portal_guide or the Intranet Watch Blog at http://www.viney.com/intranet_watch.
Read more articles by: David Viney
Article Source: www.iSnare.com
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