Enterprise Search

Martin White is an intranet and information management strategy consultant, running Intranet Focus Ltd since 1999. He has been Visiting Professor at the Department of Information Studies, (now renamed the iSchool) at the University of Sheffield, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2006 for his work in information management for the pharmaceutical industry.

Chapter 1 Searching the Enterprise
Every Day Is a Decision Day
Information as a Corporate Asset
Chapter 2 Enterprise Search Is Difficult
A Day at the Office
A Short History of Search
A Short History of Information Retrieval
Recall, Precision, and Relevance
Why Can’t Our Search Be Like Google?
With Web Search You Have Options
Information Quality
Language
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 3 Defining User Requirements
Information Seeking Models
Another Search Engine! Why?
User Requirements and User Satisfaction
Climate Surveys
Diaries
Focus Groups
Help Desk Calls
Microsoft Product Description Cards
Personas
Team Meetings
Usability Tests
Use Cases
User Interviews
User Surveys
Search Benchmarking
Search Logs
Stories
User Feedback
Writing the User Requirements Report
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 4 Planning for Search
Making a Business Case
Invest in Skills Before Software
Search Support Team
Stakeholder Analysis
Business Impact
Search Owner
Content
Technology
Infrastructure
Disaster Recovery
Security
Performance
Metadata and Taxonomies
Help Desk
Usability
Training and Support
Risks
Web Site Search
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 5 Search Technology Part 1
Content Gathering
Connectors
Document Filters and Language Identification
Parsing and Tokenising
Stop Words
Stemming and Lemmatization
Dates
Phrases
Processing Pipeline
Building and Managing the Index
Security and ACLs
Query Management
Spell Checking
Retrieval Models
Ranking
Summarization
Document Thumbnails
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 6 Search Technology Part 2
Entity Extraction
People Search
Federated Search
Duplicate and Similar Documents
Mobile Search
Faceted Search
Multilingual Search
Search-Based Applications
Semantic Search
Social Search
Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 7 The Business of Search
Industry Structure
Independent Search Vendors
Open Source Search Software
Google and Search Appliances
Microsoft SharePoint
Specialized Search Components
Cloud-Based Search
OEM Applications
Systems Integrators
e-Discovery
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 8 Specification and Selection
The Project Teams
The Global Dimension
Risk Management
Project Schedule
Writing the Specification
Functional Specification
Questions for the Vendors
Building the Vendor Short List
Using a Consultant
Using a Implementation Partner
Open Source Software Procurement
The Best of Both Worlds?
Proof of Concept
Contract Negotiation
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 9 Installation and Implementation
Project Management
Customer Responsibilities
Implementation Schedule
Knowledge Transfer
The Show Stoppers
Get Indexing!
User Interface Design
Usability and Accessibility Testing
Disaster Recovery Tests
Help Desk
Metadata Management
Communications Plan
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 10 Managing Search
Search Support Team Roles
Supporting Global Enterprise Search
Creating a Centre of Search Excellence
Search Team Skills
Help Desk Management
Security and Compliance
Search Liaison Specialists
Reporting Lines
Test Searches
Best Bets
Usability Tests
Search Logs
Feedback Forms
Training and Support
Establishing Good Communications
Summary
Further Reading
Chapter 11 A Future for Search
1. The Petabyte Challenge
2. Industry Consolidation and Expansion
3. The Impact of Microsoft SharePoint
4. Big Data and Text Analytics
5. Business Intelligence and Unified Information Access
6. Mobile Search
7. Cross-Session Search
8. Social Search
9. Federated Search
10. Developments in Information Retrieval
11. Enterprise Search Professionals
12. The Digital Workplace
13. Does ‘enterprise search’ Have a Future?
Further Reading
Chapter 12 Critical Success Factors
Appendix Resources
Enterprise Search – A Reading List
Enterprise Search - Blogs
Further Reading
Appendix Vendor List
Glossary