When Microsoft's Knowledge Network Group (KNG) conducted a user needs assessment as part of product planning for a new library Web site, we discovered our users were hungry for authoritative, organized internal information in combination with third-party content. Previously, we had focused on external, publicly available content, but data gathered in surveys, focus groups, and in one-on-one research indicated that Microsoft's employees needed seamlessly integrated internal and external business information. Today, the Library portal delivers integrated content on topic pages and through search. Soon we will also integrate content directly into the user's workspace.
The Portal
The primary driver for the new portal was to simplify the user experience while improving the quality of the content and placing it in the context of the information need. Our new one-search-across-collections simplifies the information-seeking experience. The topic pages aggregate the best content available on a topic and deliver it in the context of Microsoft's businesses. Portal customers have the opportunity to create their own views of the content by pulling information from wherever they choose and saving it in the clipboard feature.
Search
Search on the Library Portal runs against six different data stores, the Library Catalog, internally and externally produced market research, News, Internal Presentations, and the Library Topics. The user conducts one search and receives the results segmented by the six types.
Portal metadata and content are managed in an extensible associative data store in Microsoft SQL Server 2000, and indexing for search is done via Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001 and SQL Server full-text indexing. The metadata is created using KNG's Search and Taxonomy Services,and is then dynamically combined with the full-text content and indexed to get the benefit of controlled metadata, for improved precision and display, and rich, full-text indexing, for improved recall.
Although the portal's search interface is effective, search does not crawl all of our content. The biggest challenge is journal content in aggregated databases outside our firewall. For in-depth research, our customers have to conduct separate searches in each database. This is both a licensing and a technology challenge that the industry needs to solve before we can truly simplify the information-seeking experience.
Topics
To provide our customers with high-quality information in context, we created individual topic pages covering the top issues of interest to Microsoft. The topic pages are dynamically rendered using ASP and XSLT each time a user opens a page, ensuring that only the most current information is posted. A publishing workbench makes this possible and eliminates the need for a Web publisher to touch each page to update content. Each item selected for the portal is assigned core metadata. When it is selected for a topic page, it receives publishing metadata for that particular page. The same document can be published on as many pages as desired by assigning additional publishing metadata to the core document. This allows the editors to easily manage content and reduces staff time spent supporting the portal.
Each topic page contains the best third-party and internal content available, including news. News is delivered to the portal through a database that updates every 15 minutes combining XML streams from two news sources. The team worked closely with the news vendors to ensure their XML streams conformed to our mapping and schema requirements. The stories appear in the publishing workbench as candidates for topic pages, for the dynamic queries on the topic pages, and for search. KNG has shared this solution with other groups at Microsoft, helping them stream news from the database into their portals using dynamic queries.
Clipboard
Research conducted for the portal redesign revealed that our users needed a place to manage their own research and to share their results within the company. The Library Clipboard allows the users to "clip" any items they find on the portal and save them in personal folders. They can select items from any location, including external Web sites, and add them to the clipboard as well. Once in the clipboard, the files can be shared out with Microsoft colleagues.
The Clipboard is a good first effort, but future versions of the portal need to have better personalization that makes it even easier for users to save their work and to share it. The "MySite" feature in SharePoint Portal Server version 2.0 promises to fill this need. Linked from Microsoft Web, our other portal, KNG provides access to MySite workspaces for everyone in the company. From their personal MySite, users can manage their work, customize the content with Web parts and create workspaces to share with internal colleagues. The MySite feature allows the individual to create and customize a personal Web environment with both private and collaborative workspaces.
The Library Portal redesign project was a big learning experience for KNG. The portal experiences high volumes of traffic and user satisfaction is high, but in retrospect we know we tried to do too much at once. Over the course of the project, we had to trim the plan to essentials, and we lost some good ideas along the way. Our new approach to projects is to deliver incrementally over time rather than in one huge release. This allows us to steadily improve the customer experience while gathering feedback on new features. This also makes it possible for us to be more flexible as user requirements and technologies evolve.
The Future
Since the Library Portal was released, KNG has joined a new organization at Microsoft. The Microsoft Knowledge Network Group is part of Information Worker New Markets (IWNM) in the Productivity and Business Services division, the same division as the Microsoft Office team. The IWNM team's focus is on developing customer solutions using Microsoft products. As part of the team, KNG's charter has expanded from providing information services internally to include developing information services delivery solutions that Microsoft's customers can use.
Our implementation of Microsoft software also contributes to the development of future versions. As a result of our work on the Library Portal with SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) version 1.0, we worked closely with the SPS team on feature requirements for version 2.0; in fact, a member of our team spent 50 percent of his time with the SPS team during development. Microsoft's customers will directly benefit from our work on the product.
KNG integrates content throughout the Office System.
- In the MySite feature discussed above, KNG delivers frequently used information such as news alerts, a people finder, and a glossary via Web parts.
- Smart Tags and the Research Pane make it possible for the users to obtain information on-the-fly without leaving their document workspaces. KNG has worked closely with the Office team and the internal IT group to select content for the internal deployment of Office 2003, and we are working with external content providers who are deploying their content in the system. We are the testing environment to improve the end user experience for deployment in large organizations.
- KNG makes it easy for internal portals to leverage news, journals, library materials and market research. Current projects will enhance delivery mechanisms to the portals this year.
In Conclusion
The launch of Microsoft's Library Portal was a significant milestone in content integration for KNG. For the first time, we provided internal and external content together in context to our customers. Today it is understood that content regardless of source will be integrated not only in the context of the information need but also in the user's workspace. The mission of the Knowledge Network Group is to connect employees with information and knowledge for competitive advantage, demonstrating the value of Microsoft's iWorker product suite. Becoming a showcase for Microsoft products is a huge opportunity for us to improve our services. The Microsoft Office System 2003, the cornerstone of the product suite, enables content delivery directly into documents, eliminating the need for users to leave the task environment to find information. This has revolutionized our thinking about content integration. Portals continue to be a crucial part of the information delivery story, but now we have the capability to actualize our dreams of delivering information where and when the need arises. As Office System 2003 launches, KNG launches into a new line of business that combines meeting information needs with contributing to the core business of our company. That's content integration. v