VIDA

A virtual service and knowledge database for members of the

Engineering Society in Denmark (IDA)

Pernille Kofoed

Facts about the Society (IDA) and VIDA

• 60.000 members in IDA• VIDA has 8.000 registred users, about 200 users a week• VIDA has been developed over two years, and is based

on the Silverstream Portal platform• In danish only - so far• Top-security: SSL and PIN-code by mail

Background for the VIDA project

• Higher emphasis on internet and virtual services • 24 hours service• Better and more flexible service for members• Focusing on one line of service:

Advice on salary, contracts, legal topics• Look and feel like well-known internet tools: Yahoo

VIDA contains

• A knowledge database• On-line counselling• Advanced search facilities• Personalisation:

– individual selection of interest– rating of documents– subscriptions

• Customization• Feed-back and activity analysis tools• Tools for document, users, interface and portal

management

The knowledge database

• 500 articles, faqs and link documents• About 25 editors• Feed-back from users • 0-hit analysis• Traditional search log analysis

On line counselling

• Users has private mailboxes• Asks question on-line• The question pop-up in the call-center system• Questions are answered within 24 hours• Users are notified via e-mail, when an answer is

delivered to the mailbox• The call center system has a large number of

facilities:– integration with member files system– log with users activities in VIDA– extended information about the user collected

from member directory

Advanced search facilities• Fulcrum search engine is integrated

– boolean search– fuzzy– left and right trunkation

• All search terms are trunkated to the right and is combined with OR as default

• Search results are ranked using an algoritm based on tre values:– the interests selected by the user– document rating by the user– attributes from member directory

Personalisation:

• individual selection of interest• rating of documents• subscriptions• when browsing in categories, documents are

listed according to the ranking algoritm.

Customization

• VIDA has app. 15 user attributes– sex, age, employment status, residence etc.

• the attributes controls– menu– search algoritm– access to special services

• the attributes are syncronized with member directory and are updated every night

Other components in VIDA

• Feed-back and activity analysis tools• Tools for document, users, interface

and portal management

Conclusion

• The process has been hard, but rewarding• Well received by target users• Inspiration to other lines of service in IDA