In this issue:

1. Customer Spotlight
2. Microsoft Search
3. Intranets and Enterprise Search - Why Are They Separate?
4. Customer Survey
5. Feature Tip
6. Legal Webinar Archive
7. Three Ways to Quickly Improve Your Search Experience

Customer Spotlight: 

In this podcast, the Knowledge Architect at a California-based international law firm with 1,000 attorneys discusses an enterprise search initiative his firm undertook with the ultimate goal of saving their employees valuable time. He talks about how saving legal professionals even five minutes by helping them find similar work the firm has done in the past or how eliminating the need to produce something from scratch enables them to serve clients more efficiently while improving the quality of work. Thus, search is incredibly important to this firm as it can provide a strong competitive advantage over other firms who may be less efficient in finding critical information.

This law firm set out to launch a new enterprise search and intranet platform at the same time, and they wanted the technology to work together as much as possible to deliver a seamless user experience. They wanted to ensure their users couldn’t differentiate between search and the rest of the internal-facing information they share - whether it was from their intranet or otherwise. They also felt it was important to connect their critical internal data sources as they knew there had to be a better way to deliver search results from distinct areas, eliminating the need to bounce from one search box to the next. The firm wanted an environment in which users could find everything in one place, providing them with an easy way to see the consolidated search results, which they have ultimately coined the “everything screen”.

In this initiative, they always focused on the needs of the users, remembering the goal of getting information to them as quickly as possible through an easy to use interface that is also aesthetically pleasing. As a result, their internal search has been widely adopted by their users, and they have experienced a significant increase in its use - which they estimate is about twice as much as it was before the launch.

Listen to the full podcast to learn more about this game-changing enterprise search implementation, including some of the technology used to help them achieve their goals.

Microsoft Search
Sean Coleman, Chief Customer Officer

I wanted to share an update on Microsoft Search and our connector platform, ConnectivityHub.  As a quick refresher for everyone, at Ignite last year, Microsoft announced their plans around Microsoft Search and its support for connectors.  We were happy to see this, as behind the scenes our team had been working closely with Microsoft to make this capability possible.  It is through our ConnectivityHub that the connectors Microsoft spoke of are made possible.  Since Ignite, we’ve continued to work shoulder to shoulder with Microsoft as they design and complete their Microsoft Search APIs.  We are in active beta testing of our ConnectivityHub for the Microsoft Search release and are working with customers who wish to test out this capability as early adopters. 

There are still features being developed on the Microsoft side to enable Microsoft Search to be a complete enterprise search solution, but the foundation is laid and the future is bright!  In terms of what this means to our customers, the great news is that all of our existing connectors will automatically work with this version of ConnectivityHub. The configurations and set ups are the same process you use today, so adopting this platform will be familiar and easy. 

We’re actively offering Microsoft Search strategy meetings to any and all customers who want to understand the complete offering to determine if and how it would fit into your search strategy.  Email me at scoleman@bainsight.com to get that set up.  

Intranets and Enterprise Search - Why Are They Separate?
Massood Zarrabian, CEO

Does your organization have an intranet?  If so, is it the same solution as your enterprise search solution…or is it separate?  Our experience working with organizations is that in 90% of cases, intranets and enterprise search are separate and independent solutions. And at BAI, we wonder why?

Wikipedia defines an intranet as follows: 

“Not to be confused with the Internet.”

An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services only within an organization, and to the exclusion of access by outsiders to the organization. The term is used in contrast to public networks, such as the Internet, but uses most of the same technology based on the Internet Protocol Suite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intranet 

And then enterprise search is described as follows:

Enterprise search is the practice of making content from multiple enterprise-type sources, such as databases and intranets, searchable to a defined audience.

Enterprise search is used to describe the software of search information within an enterprise (though the search function and its results may still be public). Enterprise search can be contrasted with web search, which applies search technology to documents on the open web, and desktop search, which applies search technology to the content on a single computer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_search

So why this separation?

Is it historical because in the 2000-2010 era we had portals, and after they disappeared, Microsoft developed SharePoint 2010 with the FAST search engine and positioned it as enterprise search with the ugliest user interface imaginable, which then drove a number of vendors to develop an “Intranet in a Box” to address the UI issue?

Or is it driven by customers and users asking for two separate solutions? My guess is that users prefer a combined solution.

So, shouldn’t we combine these into a single definition, which simply extends intranets to have content available from multiple systems, even if the two technologies are coming from different vendors? Shouldn’t any intranet have advanced search and be able to access information from all kinds of business systems? Or do we want intranets to be able to just search their own files?

Well, the former is the direction we are driving towards. In fact, we have already announced a partnership with Akumina and are looking to do more.

So, if you have an intranet that is not integrated with your enterprise search solution, let us know. We would love the opportunity to bring them together. If you use one of the solutions in the marketplace, then we will work with them to see if we can develop a solution that meets your requirements.  

Customer Survey

We are continuously improving our products and expanding their capabilities, and new features are often driven by customer feedback and “wish lists”.  Thus, it would be invaluable to us if you could please take a few moments to answer five simple questions about your internal search experiences.  Click here for the survey.

Feature Tip

Did you know that you can take identifiable sections of a document and turn them into direct answers to a users’ query?  

Through a combination of our AutoClassifier and SmartHub, this is a powerful feature that users love. The process is basically two-steps:  1.) Using AutoClassifier’s document extraction capabilities, the search system is trained to identify and categorize components of a document that answer specific questions. This could include steps to complete an IT process or a list of adverse reactions for a drug.  These sections are then stored as metadata within the search index.  2.) Using SmartHub and the “Bot Q&A” capability, the keywords/queries that can be answered by this data are identified and users are presented a “Best Bet” above their search results with the exact text from inside the document that answers their queries.  They can even preview the entire document via our Smart Previews product.  If you want to learn more about this, please let us know.

Legal Webinar Archive

We recently partnered with Microsoft on a webinar entitled: Empowering the Modern Lawyer through Search and Collaboration.  We have received a lot of positive feedback on this event and have made an archive available for viewing at your convenience.  You can access it here. 

Three Ways to Quickly Improve Your Search
Experience

In this vlog, Jason McCullagh, Manager of Technical Services for EMEA, demonstrates how you can take internal search to the next level by connecting users to many systems, delivering personalized and relevant results, all while taking advantage of AI platforms.