This document summarizes a presentation about SharePoint search best practices. It discusses case studies of companies like ADP, Accenture, P&G, and Ace Hardware that improved search experiences and results by focusing on authoritative sources, contextual search, refinement tools, taxonomy, and metadata. The presentation argues that enterprises often fail to deliver useful search because they do not focus on building applications centered around search or optimizing the user experience.
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SharePoint Search for Dummies
1. SharePoint Search for Dummies
Real World Value through SharePoint “Enterprise Search”
Case Studies
Joel Oleson
Director Enterprise Search Strategy
BA Insight
@joeloleson
2. Microsoft’s go-to ISV for
Enterprise Search
Focused on Search and
SharePoint since 2004
Search Industry Leader
About Joel Oleson
• Director of Search
Strategy, BA Insight
• First SharePoint admin
• Top social media
influencer
Who Am I?
Passionate About
• Search
• SharePoint
• Search-based
applications
• Community
• Travel
Connect
@joeloleson
CollabShow.com
TravelingEpic.com
10. Killer Apps are Search Apps
Enterprise search projects often fail because they do not meet users’
expectations and do not deliver a remarkable user experience.
12. 12
71% percent of Company executives say Search is VITAL
or Essential to their day to day business…
Why do only 18% have cross repository search
capabilities?
- AIIM 2014 Findability Survey
13. What do you think you are searching here?
The entire World Wide Web?
15. What is an Authoritative Source?
They have learned to only index authoritative sources
16. Context Matters for Great Search Experiences
Marketing Sales Consulting Procurement Production Research IT Support HR / Legal
Users need to find different information depending on their role ,
location, responsibility and task at hand
Enterprise
content
19. 19
If the product can’t be found, does the
product exist? If the feature can’t be found,
does the feature exist?
34 percent of the sites don’t return useful
results when users search for a model
number or misspell just a single character in
the product title.”
- 2014 study by Baynard Institute
20. The New Role of Taxonomy at P&G
“Dawn”
Product Time of Day Person
Query Disambiguation
22. 22
Is Metadata more powerful than content?
Stewart Baker, former general counsel of
the NSA, said last year: "Metadata
absolutely tells you everything about
somebody's life. If you have enough
metadata, you don't really need content."
23. Searches Need to be Precise for Best Results
Give me a search box
and I will formulate my own query to find it
“sales forecast” OR (“sales“ NEAR “forecast”) AND (author:”William
Zuckermann") AND (format:”XLS”) OR (format:”XLSX”)
Users with a combination of high technical / high domain expertise
will achieve the best search results.
search
24. The New Role of Taxonomy – Noise Reduction
Eliminate Noise from Queries
User Context in search is all about augmenting a search query with information that gives the query a greater level of meaning, or ‘understanding’.
As an organization we have access to information about a user that Web Search engines could only dream of – this is one of the levers that enterprises can use to bring a greater level of relevance to search inside the firewall.
Context is about information flowing to a user – the right information, at the right time – depending on where they are, what they’re doing, and what they need – one view.
It’s important to highlight that knowing the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘who’ of a search query you have greater control in bringing back better quality results.
In this case the ‘what’ is the question that the user is asking of the search application, the ‘why’ is a reflection of the business need, and the ‘who’ is the context or environment of the user.