What We Know About SharePoint 2016
July 23, 2015
Everyone is vying for a first look at the upcoming SharePoint 2016 release. In reality those details are just now starting to roll in, so little has been known until recently. The first true reveal came from Bill Baer at this spring’s Microsoft Ignite event. CIO distills Baer’s findings down into their article, “SharePoint 2016: What Do We Know?”
The article says:
“The session on SharePoint 2016 was presented by Bill Baer, the head of SharePoint at Microsoft. This was the public’s first opportunity to learn what exactly would be in this version of the product, what sorts of changes and improvements have been made, and other things to expect as we look toward the product’s release and general availability in the first quarter of next year. Here’s what we know after streaming Baer’s full presentation.”
The article goes on to discuss cloud integration, migration, upgrades, and what all of this may point to for the future of SharePoint. In order to stay up to date on the latest news, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com, in particular the dedicated SharePoint feed. Stephen E. Arnold has made a career out of all things search, and his work on SharePoint gives interested parties a lot of information at a glance.
Emily Rae Aldridge, July 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Magic May Not Come From Pre-Made Taxonomies
June 17, 2015
There are hundreds of companies that advertise they can increase information access, retrieval and accuracy for enterprise search by selling prefabricated taxonomies. These taxonomies are industry specific and are generated by using an all-or-nothing approach, rather than individualizing them for each enterprise search client. It turns out that the prefabricated taxonomies are not guaranteed to help enterprise search; in fact, they might be a waste of money. The APQC Blog posted “Make Enterprise Search Magical Without Money” that uses an infographic to explain how organizations can improve their enterprise search without spending a cent.
APQC found that “best-practice organizations don’t have significantly better search technology. Instead, they meet employees’ search needs with superior processes and approaches the content management.”
How can it be done?
The three steps are quite simple:
- Build taxonomies that reflect how people actually think and work-this can be done with focus groups and periodically reviewing taxonomies and metadata. This contributes to better and more effective content management.
- Use scope, metadata, and manual curation to ensure search returns the most relevant results-constantly the taxonomies for ways to improve and how users are actually users search.
- Clear out outdated, irrelevant, and duplicate content that’s cluttering up your search results-keep taxonomies updated so they continue to deliver accurate results.
These are really simple editing steps, but the main problem organizations might have is actually implementing the steps. Will they assign the taxonomy creation task to the IT department or information professionals? Who will be responsible for setting up focus groups and monitoring usage? Yes, it is easy to do, but it takes a lot of time.
Whitney Grace, June 17, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Solcara Is The Best! Ra Ra Ra!
June 15, 2015
Thomson-Reuters is a world renowned news syndication, but the company also has its own line of search software called Solcara Federated Search also known as Solcara SolSearch.” In a cheerleading press release, Q-resolve highlights Solcara’s features and benefits: “Solcara Legal Search, Federated Search And Know How.” Solcara allows users to search multiple information resources, including intranets, databases, Knowledge Management, and library and document management systems. It returns accurate results according to the inputted search terms or keywords. In other words, it acts like an RSS feed combined with Google.
Solcara also has a search product specially designed for those in the legal profession and the press release uses a smooth reading product description to sell it:
“Solcara legal Search is as easy to use as your favorite search engine. With just one search you can reference internal documents and approved legal information resources simultaneously without the need for large scale content indexing, downloading or restructuring. What’s more, you can rely on up-to-date content because all searches are carried out in real time.”
The press release also mentions some other tools, case studies, and references the semantic Web. While Solcara does sound like a good product and comes from a reliable new aggregator like Thomson-Reuters, the description and organization of the press release makes it hard to understand all the features and who the target consumer group is. Do they want to sell to the legal profession and only that group or do they want to demonstrate how Solcara can be adapted to all industries that digest huge information amounts? The importance of advertising is focusing the potential buyer’s attention. This one jumps all over the place.
Whitney Grace, June 15, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Public Living Room
June 6, 2015
While much of the information that libraries offer is available via the Internet, many of their services are not. A 2013 Gallup survey showed that over 90 percent of Americans feel that libraries are important to their communities. The recent recession, however, forced local governments to cut library funding by 38 percent and the federal government by 19 percent. Some library users see the “public living room” (a place to read, access computers, research, play games, etc.) as a last bastion for old technology and printed material.
Alternet’s article. “Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever In The Age Of Google” highlights a new book by John Palfrey called BiblioTech that discusses how libraries can maintain their relevancy and importance in communities. Palfrey’s biggest argument is that humans are creating huge amounts of data, which is controlled by big and small tech companies. These companies are controlling what information is available for consumption, while libraries offer people the ability to access any type of information and free of charge.
Palfrey offers other reasons to continue using libraries: print and ink archives are more reliable than digital, how physical, communal space is important for communities and education, and how librarians are vital components.
“These arguments, however, rely too heavily on the humans-are-better-than-technology rationale where “better” is measured by technological rather than humanistic standards. If librarians have a higher success rate than Amazon’s algorithm at recommending books, this might not be true forever. Does that mean we won’t need librarians at some point? No, the dilemma of disappearing libraries is not just about efficiency, it’s also about values. Librarians recommend books because they are part of a community and want to start a discussion among the people they see around them—to solve the world’s problems, but also just to have a conversation, because people want to be near each other. The faster technology improves and surpasses human capability, the more obvious it becomes that being human is not merely about being capable, it’s about relating to other humans.”
Palfrey’s views are described as ideological and in many ways they are. Politicians cut funding, because they view libraries as archaic institutions and are blinded when it comes to the inequity when it comes to information access. Libraries indeed need a serious overhaul, but unlike the article explains, it is not simply updating the buildings and collections. It runs more along the lines of teaching people the importance of information and free information access.
Whitney Grace, June 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Forgotten List of Telegraph
May 13, 2015
Technology experts and information junkies in the European Union are in an uproar over a ruling that forces Google to remove specific information from search results. “The right to be forgotten” policy upheld by the EU is supposed to help people who want “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant” information removed from Google search results. Many news outlets in Europe have been affected, including the United Kingdom’s Telegraph. The Telegraph has been recording a list called “Telegraph Stories Affected By ‘EU Right To Be Forgotten’” of all the stories they have been forced to remove.
According to the article, the Google has received over 250,000 requests to remove information. Some of these requests concern stories published by Telegraph. While many oppose the ‘right to be forgotten,’ including the House of Lords, others are still upholding the policy:
“But David Smith, deputy commissioner and director of data protection for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), hit back and claimed that the criticism was misplaced, ‘as the initial stages of its implementation have already shown.’ ”
Many of the “to be forgotten” requests concern people with criminal pasts and misdeeds that are color them in an bad light. The Telegraph’s content might be removed from Google, but they are keeping a long, long list on their website. Read the stories there or head on over to the US Google website-freedom of the press still holds true here.
Whitney Grace, May 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Improving the Preservica Preservation Process
April 17, 2015
Preservica is a leading program for use in digital preservation, consulting, and research, and now it is compatible with Microsoft SharePoint. ECM Connection has the scoop on the “New Version Of Preservica Aligns Records Management And Digital Preservation.” The upgrade to Preservica will allow SharePoint managers to preserve content from SharePoint as well as Microsoft Outlook, a necessary task as most companies these days rely on the Internet for business and need to archive transactions.
Preservica wants to become a bigger part of enterprise system strategies such as enterprise content management and information governance. One of their big selling points is that Preservica will archive information and keep it in a usable format, as obsoleteness becomes a bigger problem as technology advances.
“Jon Tilbury, CEO Preservica adds: ‘The growing volume and diversity of digital content and records along with rapid technology and IT refresh rates is fuelling the need for Records and Compliance managers to properly safe-guard their long-term and permanent digital records by incorporating Digital Preservation into their overall information governance lifecycle. The developing consensus is that organizations should consider digital preservation from the outset – especially if they hold important digital records for more than 10 years or already have records that are older than 10 years. Our vision is to make this a pluggable technology so it can be quickly and seamlessly integrated into the corporate information landscape.’ ”
Digital preservation with a compliant format is one of the most overlooked problems companies deal with. They may have stored their records on a storage device, but if they do not retain the technology to access them, then the records are useless. Keeping files in a readable format not only keeps them useful, but it also makes the employee’s life who has to recall them all the easier.
Whitney Grace, April 17, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
The Enterprise is a Jungle Search
April 16, 2015
The word collaboration has become one of those corporate power words like “synergy” and “KISS method.” Many people groan inwardly at new ways to “collaborate,” because it usually means another tool they have to learn and will fall out of use in under a year. With the myriad of ways to collaborate digitally, getting any actual collaborating done is difficult. The SAP News blog says enterprise collaboration might be getting a little easier in the article, “EnterpriseJungle Tames Enterprise Search.”
EnterpriseJungle created an application with the SAP Hana Cloud Platform to help companies connect quickly find and connect with experts within or outside their company. The Principal at EnterpriseJungle states that a company’s people search is vital tool to locate and harness information.
“ ‘Large companies are desperate to get a handle on understanding and accessing the expertise available to them at any given moment,’ said Sinclair. ‘Our solutions help companies solve fundamental questions like how do we find the people who are fantastic at what they do, but only known to their closest core group of co-workers? And, how do we easily bring their knowledge and expertise to the front line with minimal extra work? If we can help get information to employees that need it, we’re fundamentally making their lives easier, and making the company’s life easier.’ “
After a description of how EnterpriseJungle’s works and its usefulness for companies, it makes a claim to offer Google-like search results. While it might be a people search tool, the application is capable of much more. It can help people locate experts, track down skill sets, and even improve IT relations.
EnterpriseJungle is hitting on a vital tool for companies. People search has a severe need for improvement and this might be the start of a new enterprise niche market.
Whitney Grace, April 16, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
