ontolica enterprise search case study with aana

SurfRay Inc. 5201 Great America Parkway, Suite 320, Santa Clara, CA 95054 *** Ph: 800‐625‐1175 ** Fax: 866‐906‐9747

AANA connects public users to content

through SharePoint, Ontolica Enterprise

Search, and Ontolica Search Preview

Business Need Provide intuitive public SharePoint search navigation and visualization while simplifying the backend administration. Solution AANA selected Ontolica Enterprise Search and Ontolica Search Preview to provide user communities access to customized search navigation, advanced search, and content preview accessible through any computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Website query and navigation time drastically decreased.

Simple and intuitive search page customizations with decreased demand on IT service resources.

Robust authentication and browser support with low overhead allows users to quickly view content without local programs.

In‐document search enables users to preview content with search query highlights and relevant page suggestions.

Accuracy of results also were improved, and the number of choices that we have on how we sort and present our results has increased.


“The implementation

training was

straightforward and well

supported. Our

developer was able to

put the Ontolica search

products in place easily,

saving AANA precious

configuration and

development time.”

Tim Rutter, Director,

Information Technology

AANA Background

The AANA promotes education, practice standards, and guidelines,

while affording consultation to both private and governmental entities

regarding nurse anesthetists and their practice. The AANA Foundation

supports the profession by awarding education and research grants to

students, faculty, and practicing CRNAs. More than 90 percent of the

nation's nurse anesthetists are members of the AANA.

SurfRay Background

Founded in 2000, SurfRay, a Microsoft Partner, is a global leader in search infrastructure

software for companies that deliver top notch developed enterprise search solutions

that are easy to try, buy and install. SurfRay has more than a 1,000 customers in over 30

countries through dual headquarters in Santa Clara, USA and Copenhagen, Denmark.

In 2006 SurfRay acquired Speed of Mind, followed by Mondosoft in October 2007, further strengthening SurfRay's

market position as a unified global provider of Search Technology. Today, SurfRay’s Ontolica Suite has

revolutionized how SharePoint users find content and SharePoint administrators customize search.

EKTRON CMS 400.NET TO SHAREPOINT 2010

Before migrating to SharePoint for their public facing site, aana.com was built on the

content management system, Ektron CMS 400.NET. This platform presented

configuration challenges, unnecessary strain on IT, and generally irrelevant search

results. In 2011, AANA established plan to find a more efficient solution in regards to

content management on its public facing website that would also integrate with new

financial and membership systems. After researching multiple solutions, consulting

with partner organizations, and contracting a new systems integrator, AANA

determined that SharePoint 2010 provided the desired foundation to deliver content

to the members and communities they serve.


A FOCUS ON SEARCH

The poor user search experience and relevancy of Ektron created significant challenges for AANA. As a result, simple, configurable,

and relevant search was recognized as a primary need within the new content management platform. Options for mixing content

management systems with separate search engines were analyzed but were not favorable due to complexity, cost, and loose

integration. With significant scalability, redundancy, and flexibility, SharePoint 2010’s native search functionality was recognized as

a strong backbone to meet AANA’s goals.

However it was not perfect, and still presented challenges to meet full search requirements. These requirements included a user

search experience with the ability for:

Simple configuration by non‐technical content editors

Custom relevancy and sorting

Visual, audience targeted, and timed best bets

Custom advanced search lookups

Automated query suggestions and related queries

Web page and document previews on all content

Complete access with tablets and smartphones

Unparalleled document preview

Preview support for over 500 file types

Decreased reliance on IT for organic relevancy

improvements and UX customizations

AANA’s IT and Content teams collaborated to qualify a solution to

meet these search enhancement goals. Additional consideration

would be given to seamless security, minimized architecture

investment, limited bandwidth consumption, and broad compatibility

across browsers and devices.

How much does findability really cost?*

1. According to industry statistics, users are typically

successful with their searches about 40% of the time;

and research by Gartner shows most executives

spend 30 ‐ 40% of their time searching for

documents.

2. On average, each employee spends 9.5 work hours/week finding information, and 6 hours is wasted recreating documents that exist but cannot be found according to IDC.

3. A 2011 article stated that MOST information workers are dissatisfied with their findability solution. 71% of that is due to poor search functionality.


The Ontolica Suite for SharePoint

Ontolica quickly connects users to content in SharePoint without weeks of coding through an aesthetically pleasing search UX and

easily configurable web parts. The complete Ontolica suite is easily‐deployed to unlock faster search navigation, lightweight

previews, actionable results, relevant suggestions, and complete GUI‐based configuration on SharePoint and FAST.

Ontolica Enterprise Search helps SharePoint administrators to rapidly deploy the

organization’s metadata and properties as search refiners, quick filters, grouping,

and sorting options, without having to involve developers in the project. With rich

navigation, intelligent autosuggestions, and actionable results, Ontolica upgrades

your search platform to true enterprise standard.

Some of the key features include:

Related Queries, Searches and Search Tags

Hierarchical Refiners

Result Navigation, Quick Filters and Grouping

Seamless Metadata Support

“Search as You Type”

Ontolica Search Preview enables users to visualize any content in search

without client‐side installs or burdensome server requirements. This lightweight,

mobile‐enabled preview quickly connects users to content with inDocument

search, query highlights, and relevant suggestions. With support for email, web

pages, and more than 500 file types, Ontolica Search Preview helps users rapidly

explore search result content regardless of the format.

Some of the key features include:

Full document graphical preview

Document Comparison

Hit highlighting

Relevant Page Links


With the complete Ontolica Suite for SharePoint, SurfRay improves every aspect

of the search experience from faster findability to full graphical rendering of SP

content in the search results and in the library. Administrators are now able to

customize the search experience without the need to spend hours upon hours

working on code. With Ontolica, search centers are now easily created and

altered with an aesthetically pleasing graphical user interface, which provides

administrator’s time to work on other important projects. End‐users are no

longer forced to paginate through page after page of search results to find their

content.

With Ontolica, users can easily drill into their results and remove irrelevant

content within a matter of seconds. Users are able to identify the desired

document with full graphical renderings of the content and immediately check

out the document directly from the search results. In addition to vastly improving

search efficiency, Ontolica products automatically mimic SharePoint security

protocols, so there is no need to configure any safeguards that are currently in

place.

AANA SELECTS ONTOLICA TO EXTEND SHAREPOINT SEARCH

AANA’s investigation included consulting with trusted management from other professional service organizations as well as systems

integrators. Through this investigation AANA became familiar with a recent project at Information Systems Audit and Control

Association (ISACA) with similar project requirements based on MOSS 2007. After rigorous investigation, ISACA had selected and

successfully implemented Ontolica Enterprise Search and Ontolica Search Preview on their public MOSS 2007 website. The

combination of SharePoint and Ontolica resulted in significantly reduced query times, efficient navigation, expanded social

networking, and inline previews on all documents. Ontolica’s tight integration with SharePoint, utilization of SP search serves as a

backbone, extreme flexibility supported a synchronized deployment of SharePoint 2010 with Ontolica to replace AANA’s legacy CMS.

In addition to the referral and a live success case on isaca.org, AANA’s systems integrator, SusQTech, worked closely with the

Ontolica solution in the past and supported a strategic recommendation for implementation.


DEPLOYING SHAREPOINT 2010 AND ONTOLICA

Implementation of SharePoint 2010 with Ontolica to aana.com was a closely coordinated effort between AANA, SusQTech, and

SurfRay. SusQTech was tasked to coordinate the migration from Ektron to the new SharePoint platform. Through close

collaboration, SusQTech worked with AANA for environment planning, installation, top level structure configuration, and branding of

SharePoint. In tandem, SurfRay assisted with search requirement planning, developing a roadmap for immediate results as well as

long‐term metadata nurturing, and search user interface customization. Utilizing SharePoint 2010 and Ontolica, SurfRay provided

top tier product training, guided solution installation, and configuration assistance. In a unique change to traditional ISV offerings,

these services are included as standard support to all Ontolica users.

SHAREPOINT 2010 AND ONTOLICA GO LIVE ON AANA.COM

The release of AANA’s new website and search center was a clear success! Content editors were now able to easily improve the

search user experience without dependence on IT. Site visitors can now find the content they were looking for in a fraction of the

time with optimized search and full document preview. The ability to preview content from mobile devices further delivered on

AANA’s mission to make it’s services more accessible. Across the organization demands were lessened to become information

retrieval experts and more time could be dedicated to mission critical and community focused objectives.


SharePoint Search Result Page with Ontolica Enterprise Search and Ontolica Search Preview

#1 Quick filter buttons #6 Automatic first page preview

#2 Intelligent search suggestions #7 Customizable refiners

#3 Numbered refiners #8 Magnified preview with hit‐highlighting

#4 Ability to jump to the most relevant pages in the document

#9 Full document preview on the fly (Supports over 500 file types)

#5 inDocument search #10 Hyperlink to easily share the document with others