Delivering great search experiences with User ContextBest practices for applying User Context with FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

Tony Hart & Mark Stone

Microsoft Corporation

Table of ContentsIntroduction...........................................................................................................................................2

Context matters for great search experiences.......................................................................................2

So what is User Context and how can FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint help?..........................3

Simplicity............................................................................................................................................4

Ease of Administration.......................................................................................................................6

Extensibility........................................................................................................................................7

Best practice approaches to great search experiences with User Context.............................................8

Discover audience information: use what is in place today...............................................................9

Start with simple OOB capabilities and then extend........................................................................10

Enable users to self-manage context via user profiles.....................................................................10

Combine search and user context management activities and monitor periodically.......................11

Don’t forget good relevancy and good usability practices...............................................................11

User Context in Action: Financial Services............................................................................................12

Conclusion: User Context provides the ingredients for a great search.................................................13

Useful resources and further reading...................................................................................................14

Table of FiguresFigure 1 Understanding and knowing the needs of your diverse user population.................................2Figure 2 Contextually relevant results....................................................................................................3Figure 3 Out-of-the-box User Context capabilities in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.............4Figure 4 Tailoring the search experience via User Context.....................................................................6Figure 5 Ideal approach to managing and administering User Context in the enterprise......................7Figure 6 Extending User Context to a dynamic environment.................................................................7Figure 7 Capturing user profile data from enterprise systems...............................................................9Figure 8 User controlled and managed context...................................................................................11Figure 9 User Context in action: Wealth Management Advisor investigating real estate risk..............12

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IntroductionThere is no question that enterprise search delivers excellent value to organizations from a productivity perspective, especially when it is aligned to an organization’s business processes. Confident and efficient decision making in addition to increased employee collaboration are only some of the benefits that can be experienced. The next evolution of enterprise search is to extend the relevancy model idea and make the search application contextually aware of its users so that it can deliver information based on the profile or context of a user or a group of users. In this scenario, context is very simple and can be based on the role of the user, their location and on-going business/social interests, with the aim of further improving the search experience.

This white paper is intended for all audiences that are required to know more about User Context, its application in the enterprise, how to take advantage of FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint to deliver hyper-relevant results and best practice approaches for success.

Context matters for great search experiencesUser Context in search is all about augmenting a search query with information that gives the query a greater level of meaning, or ‘context’. 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 are doing, and what they need. It’s important to highlight that by knowing the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘who’ of a search query, you have better 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. Imagine trying to issue a query without the ‘what’. In many cases enterprise search in large organizations can narrow down a set of results quicker with the ‘who’ than the ‘what’.

Figure 1 Understanding and knowing the needs of your diverse user population

For example, consider a technology company that develops, markets, sells and implements Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions. When a user is looking for information about “ERP”, what do they mean and what information do they need? This is a very vague query at the best of times. However, users have high expectations that the search application will give them the specific

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answer that they are looking for. How do you deliver the needle in the haystack for an organization with so many different audiences, responsibilities and tasks?

Out-of-the-box User Context in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint extends the in-built flexible relevancy models to provide hyper-relevant results by combining the ‘why’ and the ‘who’ to target the right results at the right time. So in this scenario, search and user context can be defined to provide a person working in sales with relevant sales materials, presentations and go-to-market pitches, whereas a consultant that implements ERP will be provided with results that showcase implementation guidelines, toolkits, requirements documents and so on. By having a better understanding of who is asking the question, it gives the search application all the ingredients to answer the question and provide a great contextualized user experience.

Figure 2 Contextually relevant results

So what is User Context and how can FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint help?There is the concept of SharePoint Audiences in both SharePoint 2010 and FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. SharePoint Audiences are also used to target content to specific audiences, such as lists, library items, navigation links and Web Parts. This is useful when you want to present information that is relevant only to a particular group of people. For example, you can add a Web Part to the legal department's portal site that contains a list of legal contracts that is visible only to that department. Audiences are defined by using audience rules based on properties in user profiles or membership in distribution lists and SharePoint groups. Properties and distribution list membership information are imported from directory services or from line-of-business applications that are registered in the Business Data Catalog. SharePoint groups are configured within each site or site collection.

One way to understand the differences between SharePoint Audiences and User Context is that Audiences can be considered the “static” targeting of content to particular users, whereas User

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Context, which is a feature/functionality unique to FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint , can be considered a “dynamic” approach to targeting content and sites based on who the user is and what they are searching for at any given time. The fact that User Context is more dynamic does not mean that administration requirements get more complex. The administration of User Context can be seen as an extension to the administration involved in today’s SharePoint Audiences. This means that all of the user profile properties used for Audiences can be used to influence User Context profiles. More information about discovering audience information is given later in this white paper.

The out-of-the-box User Context functionality of FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint enables you to associate Best Bets, Visual Best Bets, document promotions/demotions and site promotions/demotions with defined user contexts in order to contextualize (or customize) the user experience and create targeted communication.

User Context is focused on three foundational pillars to enable business value:

1. Simplicity: User Context is easy to understand, easy to deploy and easy to achieve out-of-the-box;

2. Ease of administration: enables organizations of all sizes to easily administer and improve the natural rhythm of the business; and

3. Extensibility: User Context is built on the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint framework. This means that you can extend the solution to further improve its capabilities to meet almost any user context need.

Simplicity Starting with the simple and out-of-the-box approaches to User Context:

Figure 3 Out-of-the-box User Context capabilities in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

1. Keywords & Synonyms: Keywords provide definitions for common terms that are used within your organization and are applied to the complete user population. Each keyword entry can also include a list of synonyms that can be either two-way or one-way (e.g. vacation = holiday; or ERP = Enterprise Resource Planning). Keywords and synonyms are associated to Best Bets, Visual Best Bets and document promotion/demotion when there is an exact match. There is no limit to the number of Best Bets that you can have. Therefore, if

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a user searched for “support” the Best Bets could display links to “IT Support”, “Customer Support”, “Manufacturing Support” and so on. You can have as many Visual Best Bets that are associated with keywords and their synonyms, but it is recommended to only have one in order to not ‘spam’ the user;

2. Best Bet’s & Visual Best Bet’s: This is one of the most powerful, and easy to understand, features within Fast Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. It provides a simple way for administrators to configure search results improving the perception and quality of specific search queries. Targeting Best Bets can perform actions as simple as responding correctly to the question “What public holidays does our company get off?” This question might very well be answered differently for full-time versus part-time employees; and definitely for US employees versus French employees for example. This is where User Context can be used: by targeting results based on their location. Visual Best Bets can provide the sex appeal to search results, because they are not limited to text or links and can include images, banners, video content, maps, interactive Silverlight controls, and so on.

3. Document Promotion & Demotion: This allows the actual search results to be tuned based on a specific query and context. This takes ‘best bets’ to the next level, by letting administrators to define what content should appear first in the search results for specific queries that are based on who is asking the question. A practical example of this might be when a user is looking for information about payroll, to promote documents by country to ensure they are seeing information that applies to them first, versus always seeing information from the country where the company has the greatest presence. It is possible to promote certain documents for a keyword/synonym and the order of the promoted documents at the top of the result list will be determined by their initial relevance ranking;

4. Site Promotion & Demotion: This enables true contextual search experiences for an organization’s population. Here, documents from highly relevant sites can be promoted to users based their original query and on context such as role and area of interest: promoting the marketing collateral site for people in the sales and marketing organization, while demoting the R&D wiki for the same users. By using context in this scenario, noise is effectively tuned out which makes the user experience very relevant.

In addition to the simple capabilities defined earlier, an administrator can define different search refiners based on the context of the user, while avoiding the “one size fits all”. This is an area where many enterprise search deployments do not deliver. On-the-fly relevancy models can also be selected by the user to provide dynamic capabilities to define the information pivots that are important to them at any time. The example earlier in this section where a salesperson located in Oslo, Norway who is responsible for the financial services industry is looking for “sales” information highlights this in action. Here, information is targeted to the context of the user by showcasing Visual Best Bets that promotes videos for reducing operational costs in financial services companies; Best Bets link to the Oslo sales site and relevant documents have been promoted to provide high relevance to the user.

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Figure 4 Tailoring the search experience via User Context

Ease of AdministrationSo now that you have a sense for how FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint can enable contextual searches out-of-the-box, the natural next question is as follows: how easy is it for my company, which does not have an army of resources, to administer?

The answer depends on the approach the organization takes to administration of user context. Microsoft advises that companies start at a very high level. Do not attempt to manage context from a user-by-user level, but instead work to create higher level groups (e.g. by location, role, high-level business function etc.) and look to improve search for those basic groups before trying to narrow it down even more. The cost of administering user context at the micro level is significantly higher than the cost of administering context for a few high-level groups. Most organizations find that by organizing context at a high level the results seem more personal than they ever have in past, without the overhead of managing context at the lower level.

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Figure 5 Ideal approach to managing and administering User Context in the enterprise

Note that from the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint perspective it can support high-level and low-level management out of the box, it is really only a matter of what fits the organization’s needs.

ExtensibilityOnce you have driven value and targeted search experiences with the out-of-the-box capabilities, you are able to extend and customize User Context as much as you want based on your priorities and available information to base context on. The key goal here is to extend User Context from being a manually defined keyword and context mapping approach to a fully dynamic environment where the context of the user begins to influence things such as the relevance profile, search scopes and the overall user experience, relative to the question they are asking of the search application.

Figure 6 Extending User Context to a dynamic environment

Dynamic User Context can be used to drive:

1. Relevance tuning: The goal is to make the relevance of the search experience dynamic and reflective of the audience at any moment in time. Different relevance profiles, different results and different refiners can be provided on a per-user profile basis. The advantage of FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint is that it enables multiple relevancy profiles, where one can be selected at query time based on the context of the user to provide better targeting of information. The “sortby” option is used to select the relevancy profile at query time, based on a known identifier. For example, a marketing team working on the launch of a new product in the Portuguese market can have a multi-faceted relevancy profile that not only promotes documents that have language = “pt”, but also promotes documents from the Brazil team that can be in both Portuguese and English and promotes marketing orientated information such as campaign materials, financial impact analysis and customer data so that the emerging Portuguese market can benefit from the knowledge and experiences of the Brazilian department;

2. Contextual Refiners: Refiners help users formulate a better “question” when they search. Enabling different refiners to be presented to users based on their context and providing carefully designed search results ensures a dynamic and targeted experience. For example, if

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you consider a salesperson versus a technical salesperson, the salesperson is more likely to be interested in customer status, client type, contact history and geography, whereas a technical salesperson is more likely to be interested in technical subjects, document types, project names and so on. Making this happen is a two stage process. Firstly, organizations have to use the content enrichment process to automatically populate documents with relevant metadata so that the needed refinement options are available; and secondly at search and results time, the refiner web part reads a table on-the-fly that defines which refinement options it should apply based on the context and the results delivered. Fairly simple overall.

3. Search Scopes: Search scopes let users narrow their searches based on the topics, areas, and content sources of items on the portal. For example, based on the contextual knowledge of a user in R&D, search scopes in the search center can be restricted to information that is pertinent to them based on particular content sources, research programs, design patterns, technical information – whereas a user in finance will be able to drill into information by using search scopes that are contextually relevant for them, such as contracts. The out-of-the-box capabilities can be extended to any known metadata field for inclusion in scopes to provide a narrow search focus for particular tasks.

4. User Experience: The user experience can dynamically switch from being very visual to being textually based depending on the context, the task and the original search query that the user submits. For example, an employee working in product marketing for a media and entertainment organization can be presented with artwork and past marketing campaigns in similar geographic regions for the query term “Xbox”. Whereas when the same user requests “Xbox policies” they are presented with corporate and localized legal policies, branding policies and possible restrictions for their local market, guaranteeing corporate governance.

Best practice approaches to great search experiences with User ContextSo if User Context is so great, why does not everyone use it? The simple answer is that many organizations take a “one size fits all” approach to enterprise search and assume that the out-of-the-box search experience and relevancy model will satisfy user’s needs, or tailoring search to the needs of the user is too difficult. There are three typical components of User Context that make it traditionally ‘difficult’:

1. Understanding your audience and content: or more precisely you need search to be able to understand your users and content. This means that in order to give ‘context’ to a search query, you first have to understand your audience and then your content. After all, it is no good asking for documents from a specific region or location if the content is not tagged with this information;

2. Audience profile information can be scattered across the enterprise: in Active Directory, other corporate databases, dated organizational hierarchies, enterprise social networks, and so on. Quite often organizations think that pulling this information together is too difficult. Therefore, context-driven search gets sidelined. In reality, it is no more difficult than the search project that is probably underway;

3. Finally, search and user context information should be kept up-to-date. This information has to flex dynamically based on the business environment and user demands. Maintaining user

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profile data, the raw ingredients for context, should be a periodic task where known systems are maintained and new sources of user profile data are discovered.

All in all the number of hurdles that organizations may face when they implement enterprise search have meant that, even though the advantages are clear, the path to success has been challenging and risky. The following best practice approaches to successful User Context will assist you in overcoming the challenges that you currently face.

Discover audience information – use what is in place todayWith User Context, you do not have to reinvent the wheel from the outset: see what audience or profile information is available today and take advantage of that. It is useful, even at a high level, to segment and profile your audiences based on roles, organizational structures, locations and areas of interest. Understanding how clean this information is will also help you identify and prioritize which profile information will give you the biggest bang for your buck. If you find that the elements of the user profile stores are not sufficiently populated for User Context, where do you find the necessary information?

Figure 7 Capturing User Profile data from enterprise systems

Immediate sources of user profile information can include, but are not limited to the following:

Active Directory; Membership groups and distribution lists, which indicate areas of interest; Corporate directories (LDAP); My Site Web sites.

Depending on the quality of information from these sources, it is always useful to identify additional sources of information to base context profiles on, such as the following:

HR applications; HR databases; Job history database; Skills inventory; Internal resumes/CV’s;

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Training transcripts; Enterprise social networks; Any other enterprise applications/databases that contain information about the user

population.

Start with simple OOB capabilities and then extendStarting simple will enable you to manage and control the impact of User Context without too much effort. The out-of-the-box capabilities in FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint focus on the location of the user and the “Ask me about” element in the user’s My Site. Having two initial ‘levers’ to control User Context will give you improved governance and will let you easily improve context-driven search if it is not perfect from the outset. Over time, you can extend the levers that control User Context to include additional dimensions, such as the following:

Organizational roles and policies; Business units/departments; Language preferences; Social information (e.g. University/School from My Site); and Enterprise social network.

As the use of User Context matures within your organization and by including these additional dimensions, you are able to move from a simple context environment to one that is much more dynamic and begins to take advantage of the full capabilities of the search application to deliver improved and compelling user experiences.

Enable users to self-manage context via user profilesOver time, My Site Web sites will drive a good proportion of User Context profiling. However, many organizations do not fully use My Site Web sites, so that information may be limited from the outset. Rather than being dictatorial, it is often best to take an opt-in approach to My Site Web sites and let users gradually embrace the collaborative, expert location and social networking functionalities on offer. Users will soon realize that their contextualized search results will improve through increased use of My Site Web sites to populate their profile information, especially as their skill sets and experience evolves with careers and roles.

While the use and uptake of My Site Web sites matures to deliver deep and dynamic contextual experiences, users should start with the basics of their working lives, collaborating and sharing knowledge via sent emails (that can automatically populate My Site profile information in SharePoint 2010), memberships of DL’s, periodic updating of internal skills databases and participating in social networks (both professional and hobbyist). All of this information generates an “aboutness” of a person, which can be leveraged to populate user profiles and flavor User Context settings, driving the dynamic control that organizations want.

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Figure 8 User controlled and managed context

Combine search and user context management activities and monitor periodicallyEnterprise search applications are like living and breathing organisms – they have to be nurtured in order to be successful. Therefore, it is important that the activities of search and User Context management are somebody’s job (or a group of people) to monitor and manage. On top of this, it is important that this person or group of persons is empowered to monitor, refine and improve the service continuously. Devolving management to the business unit and/or geographical level ensures a more ‘contextual’ and proactive approach to management, and can also remove bottlenecks for improvement.

Remember that users can participate in multiple User Contexts. Therefore it is useful to periodically check the memberships that employees belong to (every 2-3 months should be sufficient) and update them accordingly. Taking a social network approach can also be very effective. This is where you publish a list of available User Contexts on an internal site that can be accessed globally and let users determine whether they should be part of a context or not. By knowing that they are responsible for governing their own User Context destiny, they are increasingly likely to update their skill sets and My Site information. This gives you additional ‘levers’ to base future context scenarios.

Don’t forget good relevancy and good usability practicesYou must not forget approaches to good relevancy and good usability when you deploy search and User Context. Good relevancy should be at the heart of any search application and User Context should be used to complement the underlying relevancy model and not replace it completely. It is important to showcase a few good sites/documents that are meaningful to the user, instead of “spamming” them with too many Best Bets, while maintaining a focus on tuning relevancy over time as user needs evolve.

Good usability applies to the number and positioning of Best Bets and Visual Best Bets, refiner positions and naming conventions, document titles, teasers, and so on. If users are participating in multiple User Contexts, it is useful to inform them of which context is being applied so they know why they are receiving their search results in a particular way or order. This becomes more important as you move towards a dynamic approach to context through extensibility.

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User Context in Action: Financial ServicesVarious User Context scenarios have been discussed throughout this white paper and it is clear that an organization of any size can use context-driven search experiences to drive noticeable efficiencies and confident decision making by targeting information to users based on their role, location and preferences: all the correct ingredients for great search.

Focusing in on Financial Services, user context can be leveraged to reduce risk and improve customer communication and satisfaction. Woodgrove bank has a team of Wealth Management advisors that pride themselves in providing timely advice to its clients in order to provide better returns on its client’s investments.

An advisor has discovered that some new governmental policies are affecting and increasing the risk of their real estate portfolio. The advisor has to act quickly to identify customers who are affected by the increased risk, understand what to tell them and identify relevant people who can help. Here, User Context has to provide the right information at the right time to help provide the correct advice for clients.

By understanding ‘who’ the advisor is, role specific and customer specific information can be promoted, such as research documents related to risk in real estate and data indicating customers who have the greatest exposure to the new policies. The value that User Context can provide is very tangible in this scenario, providing better relevance and reducing the noise for the advisor enables them to provide better advice to clients.

Figure 9 User Context in action: Wealth Management Advisor investigating real estate risk

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Conclusion: User Context provides the ingredients for a great searchCompanies that take a proactive approach to aligning search and User Context to the rhythm of the business are able to experience significant productivity gains, improved decision making and ongoing collaboration and innovation.

User Context is easy to understand, easy to deploy, easy to manage and easy to extend: why are you waiting to provide targeted and hyper-relevant search experiences to your users?

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