Sometimes you don't have an intranet problem but a search problem

Sometimes you don’t have an intranet problem but a search problem

Summary : there’s a common belief according to which the raise of user generated content will improve information sharing in the workplace. It’s obviously a part of the solution but not the whole one. In many cases, organizations are not able to find anything on their existing intranet and the expected multiplication of content will even make things worse. A shared information that can’t be found is not better that no shared information at all. Thinking the social layer of the intranet also means thinking about search that is a strategic tool to browse and is also key to bring content and people closer in a relevant and contextual way.

Most of today’s intranets, those that are beginning to look really outdated, are often being criticized by users because they don’t help them to access relevant information and resources. Hence the wish to move to a social intranet (or intranet 2.0), thinking that allowing more user generated content will fill the gap by a better sharing of “field” information.

If this value proposition of the next generation of intranets makes sense, the keen interest for “social things” may turn heads away from core issues. Anyone who observed intranets in “transition phase” these last months must have noticed one thing : increasing information sharing from field people solves part of the problem but intranets don’t make things findable today with the current amount of content, there are few chances things will improve in the future.

Bottom line : before thinking of socializing intranets (or at the same time), it’s essential to think about search engines. Specialists will find I’m laboring the point but the fact is this point is often underestimated.

A good search engine, when used smartly, helps to do many things :

- first, it helps to find contents. Not necessarily because people know the exact title of what they’re looking for but because the engine can understand the meaning of things.

- then, it finds things inside documents. When an intranet is made of thousands of things to .doc or pdfs people needs to download it’s vital. Building the intranet of the future does not mean neglecting documents of the past : they have to be, finally, made findable.

- we can also rely on the engine to link different kind of contents. It can be used to suggest relevant communities, documents and people within any other tool (CRM, BI….). Vital when it comes to linking social and business.

- building an unified search. It’s not acceptable, today, to have as many search engines as there are tools. Is it a user-centric attitude ? Search may be global and users may be able to get, with a single request, “official” content, user generated content, user profiles etc… Legacy existing content should also be indexed (Notes bases, ECM, shared directories etc…) because life was existing before the new intranet.

Thinking the social part of the intranet means thinking the whole intranet. Thinking that tags and tool-specific search engines, as powerful as they can be, will solve all the problems is a mistake. Intranets need a global search strategy that is at least is important as the question of content organization that will never be perfect and is destined for failure as the mass of available data will be skyrocketing in a near future.

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http://twitter.com/gordonr Gordon Ross

Your question about user-centric prompted me to point out a very important distinction that we make when we speak about search on the intranet, and in particular the social intranet, Bertrand. There are many different types of search behaviours, as people like Peter Morville have pointed out. And for every behaviour, a different strategy may be more appropriate than another. A major difference on the intranet that we have observed is the high degree of “existence searching” that happens. Existence searching is where a specific document or resource or page is required, but users can’t often remember where it lives (therefore unable to browse to it), or remember the specific title. But they can remember things like who wrote it, when it was created, and roughly what it was about. “Oh yes, Betrand wrote that great post about intranet searching back in April 2011… Um… I can’t remember the title… intranet search something…” nnIn this case, facets which refine the search results following the first onslaught of results on the term “intranet search” that might be used as a keyword, can help narrow. You can filter by Author (Betrand) [the key attribute of *social* is who created the content] and then by Date (1 week ago) and very quickly narrow the results, resulting in the precision you were unable to provide in your first attempt. nnExistence searching is different than “sample searching,” the behaviour we perform often on Google on the public web everyday: bring me back a few good resources, generally authoritative, that will answer my question. The first page of Google results is often good enough to provide me with the answer of “what temperature must I cook my chicken for it to be done” — I’m not looking for a specific whitepaper about cooking chicken, but I know that in the world, several authoritative sources probably exist (recipes.com, epicurious.com, etc.) and I’m sure that I’ll find something that meets my needs. nnIntranets have that sometimes, but not as much as the public web. “Any old HR policy will do…” is probably not the type of searching your intranet user is most often performing.
Kate Simpson

Excellent post. Thanks. nAnother great advantage to search is that, after you’ve identified that content that is more likely to involve search behaviours as discussed below (ie. over browse or ‘asking an expert’ behaviours), you can avoid having to design shallow user journeys in your navigation to it all.nnIntranet clutter & bloat often happens because we end up providing broad & shallow navigation schemes to support hundreds of different journeys to the entire organisation’s different content. Powering search allows you to ‘hide’ certain content until the user requests it (by entering their search term into the box).nnThanks againnKate
Pamela Lagahid

Good article. I like the way you explained thru your article the importance of search engine and other search tools before jumping over to something.