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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services2 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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services3 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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services4 Where do Taxonomies Fit?

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services5 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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services6 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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services7 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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services8 Sample Survey Questions MSWeb 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….

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services9 Sample Tag Audit

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services10 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

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services11 The Process Identify business needs _______ User needs survey Tag audit Content audit Collect/ structure terms ________ Build vocabs Define rules Create change control process Tag content ________ Embed vocab access in tools Provide guidelines for use Expose Content ________ Embed tags in interfaces Segment content by attributes Enable thru XML/XSL Define needed attributes _______ Build object model Create flat list Provide mapping schema?

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services12 How do You Use Taxonomies? Content creation- tagging Site navigation- categories Information retrieval- search Personalization- delivery

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services13 Content Creation Tagging of documents, URLs, other items is critical for improved retrieval Two 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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9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services18 Site Navigation Much of a portal’s navigation centers around organization of information through categories Categories can be considered a site- specific vocabulary, used to tag URLs MSWeb uses taxonomy management tools for this purpose

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services19 MSWeb Categories

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services20 Category subpage

9/17/ Taxonomies in Search

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services22 MSWeb Search

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services23 Results Key measureQ4 99Q1 00Q2 00 Total number of registered sites Average # Best Bets returned with 20 top search strings Modal # BB with top Median # BB with top Percentage of all top search strings that return Best Bets69%85%98% Percentage of 50 top search strings that return BBs82%84%98% Percentage of 20 top search strings that return BBs90%80%100% Number of all top search strings returning 10 or more Best Bets18125 Number of top50 search strings returning 10 or more BB6105 Number of top 20 search strings returning 10 or more BB364

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9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services25 Personalization The last step in linking content to people Requires well tagged content, and the ability to capture a user profile Current directions for MSWeb are to take advantage of Active Directory profiles, based on values pulled from common taxonomy Still in beginning stages

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services26 Conflicts in Using Taxonomies Flexibility versus stability Costs versus resource commitments Focus versus breadth of scope Localization versus globalization Speed versus thoroughness

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services27 Finding common ground across multiple taxonomies or schemas with similar terms and different meanings Overkill…building relationships where they aren’t practical given severe human resource constraints Ensuring the ongoing integrity of the taxonomy Acceptance by authors of tagging tools Application across object types, storage devices, languages, context Integration with legacy systems and external content Challenges

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services28 Key Success Factors Define in terms of business value authority, relevance, timeliness, impact Include metrics to prove success Balance between control and collaboration Meet key stakeholder criteria on costs to build, costs to maintain Take usability/user behavior seriously Manage expectations all round

9/17/2000Using Taxonomies- Microsoft Information Services29 Questions? Mike Crandall