Using Taxonomies Effectively in the Organization KMWorld 2000 Mike Crandall Microsoft Information...

Using Taxonomies Effectively in the Organization

KMWorld 2000Mike CrandallMicrosoft Information [email protected]

9/17/2000 Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services

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Roadmap

What are taxonomies?Where do taxonomies fit?What are taxonomies good for?How do you build them?How do you use them?Issues and challenges


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What are Taxonomies?

Taxonomy: a classification of elements within a domain Domain: a sphere of knowledge, influence, or

activity Classification: the operation of grouping

elements and establishing relationships between them (or the product of that operation)

Relationships: a defined linkage between two elements

Element: an object or concept


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Resources

User Interface

Feedback Custom er Satisfaction

En

terp

rise

Po

rtal

Ser

vice

sR

eso

urc

es

S

ecu

rity

M

etri

cs

Integration

Navigation M ethods

BrowseSearch

Communication Process

Publishing Distribution

BusinessRules

Personalization Customization

Information Architecturemetadata - organization services

PSS KBArchive

Docum entStores

Public FoldersPersonnel HR Data Collaboration Tahoe Store

LOBPortals

Where do Taxonomies Fit?


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What are Taxonomies Good For?

Taxonomies are applied to: Items: (aka resources) individual pieces of

information (documents, people, etc…)

By the use of: Metadata: (aka properties, attributes) information

describing types of data.

Which may or may not use values from a: Vocabulary: selection of terms, classified or sorted

To create: Content: an item and its associated metadata


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How Do You Build Taxonomies?

Determine scope of project Boundaries will determine resources

needed Breadth and depth are both important

dimensions

Obtain resource commitments Project will require both high and low

level support If cross-organizational, even more

critical


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First Steps

User needs survey to understand: The content your users need to do

their work The ways your users access that

content

Information audit to determine: Where your existing content is How that content is structured Who is responsible for the content


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Sample Survey QuestionsMSWeb Redesign Information Goals/User Assessment Sheet:

1. List the top five most important information services/or products under your area that you think most employees need to know about? What is the business impact of employees not being aware of this information?

2. Are there additional services and/or information/products within your area that would benefit from increased exposure? Describe the potential business value from employees having a better awareness or understanding of this information.

3. What types of content/information do you think is missing from MSWeb? Why is it important that this….


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Sample Tag Audit


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Next Steps

Involve your users Include key stakeholders in process Validate direction with content

owners and users

Decide on architectural approach Dependent on purpose of project Complexity will depend on needs


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The Process

Identifybusinessneeds_______•User needssurvey•Tagaudit•Contentaudit

Collect/structureterms________•Buildvocabs•Definerules•Createchangecontrolprocess

Tagcontent

________•Embedvocabaccessin tools•Provideguidelinesfor use

Expose Content

________•Embedtags ininterfaces•Segment content by attributes•EnablethruXML/XSL

Defineneeded attributes _______•Buildobjectmodel•Createflat list•Providemappingschema?


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How do You Use Taxonomies?

Content creation- taggingSite navigation- categoriesInformation retrieval- searchPersonalization- delivery


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Content Creation

Tagging of documents, URLs, other items is critical for improved retrievalTwo examples: MSWeb Best Bets database- catalog of

URLs used in search and categories News publishing tool- used for tagging

external and internal news for portal display


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Site Navigation

Much of a portal’s navigation centers around organization of information through categoriesCategories can be considered a site-specific vocabulary, used to tag URLsMSWeb uses taxonomy management tools for this purpose


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MSWeb Categories


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Category subpage

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Taxonomies in Search

Indexing

User

Other Users

Query Preprocessing

Result Set Manipulation

Searching Index(es)User

Interface

Indexer

Independent Metadata

Data Stores

Data Analysis

Index Metadata

database schemasthesauri

file systemhttpmessaging storesDocument storeDatabasesDirectory stores

string manipulationsynonym sets &thesauristemmingwordbreaking

adaptive crawlingword breakingword stemmingNLP

dedupingconcatenationranking

Result Refining

User Metadata


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MSWeb Search


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ResultsKey measure Q4 99 Q1 00 Q2 00

Total number of registered sites 834 858 808

Average # Best Bets returned with 20 top search strings 3.6 2.75 4.35

Modal # BB with top 20 1 5 1

Median # BB with top 20 2.5 3 3

Percentage of all top search strings that return Best Bets 69% 85% 98%

Percentage of 50 top search strings that return BBs 82% 84% 98%

Percentage of 20 top search strings that return BBs 90% 80% 100%

Number of all top search strings returning 10 or more Best Bets

18 12 5

Number of top50 search strings returning 10 or more BB 6 10 5

Number of top 20 search strings returning 10 or more BB 3 6 4


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Personalization

The last step in linking content to peopleRequires well tagged content, and the ability to capture a user profileCurrent directions for MSWeb are to take advantage of Active Directory profiles, based on values pulled from common taxonomyStill in beginning stages


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Conflicts in Using Taxonomies

Flexibility versus stabilityCosts versus resource commitmentsFocus versus breadth of scopeLocalization versus globalizationSpeed versus thoroughness


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Finding common ground across multiple taxonomies or schemas with similar terms and different meaningsOverkill…building relationships where they aren’t practical given severe human resource constraintsEnsuring the ongoing integrity of the taxonomyAcceptance by authors of tagging toolsApplication across object types, storage devices, languages, contextIntegration with legacy systems and external content

Challenges


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Key Success Factors

Define in terms of business value authority, relevance, timeliness, impact

Include metrics to prove successBalance between control and collaborationMeet key stakeholder criteria on costs to build, costs to maintainTake usability/user behavior seriously Manage expectations all round


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Questions?

Mike [email protected]

Using Taxonomies Effectively in the Organization KMWorld 2000 Mike Crandall Microsoft Information...

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