MARCH 2018CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8THOM WISINSKI, DIRECTOR OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT, HAYNES AND BOONE, LLPnterprise search as defined by AIIM is "the practice of identifying and enabling specific content across the enterprise to be indexed, searched, and displayed to authorized users", authorized users being key. At its face this seems like a simple enough concept, but is it? In order to have a proper strategic plan for enterprise search, there are several points to consider that will have an impact on the user experience, the usability and the security of the system. Additionally, this plan should also line up with the goals of the company's knowledge management plan, the Information Technology department, the business stake holders and the legal department.As the definition implies, enterprise search crawls identified silos of data and creates a searchable index for retrieval of information. Careful consideration should be given in determining what silos of data to use and to identify the relation to each of the data sets and what might be missing that could create a relationship. As an example, a drug company may have a file share that has folders for each of the drugs it manufactures. In this example the folder name of the drug could be a useful piece of data that could be used to create a relationship (relational link) to revenue data in an accounting system assuming that the accounting system has a reference to the same drug name. Remember then, as data sets are added to the index that there is some common data element that creates a relationship or if one needs to be created. Creating a relationship could be as simple as renaming a folder, as in the example above, to match that of the way the drug name may be stored in other data sets or creating a cross-reference table in a SQL database. As an example, the accounting system and the purchasing departments may refer to the drug name as `Acetaminophen C8H9NO2' but the folder name is labeled as simply `Acetaminophen'.In thinking about types of data to consider, the typical low hanging fruit is typically loose files (unstructured data) that have some organization to them that may lend itself to relational links.Sometimes, as in the example above, it is helpful to rename or add Demystifying Enterprise SearchcXo insightsThom WisinskiEIN MY View
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