Project. Intranet Search Implementation

Customer Background. The mission of the Office of eDiplomacy is to ensure that the State Department’s IT decisions reflect user needs and business practices. The eDiplomacy mandate includes Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives such as managing initiatives to improve the Department’s connectivity, collaboration with rest of government; reviewing leading KM practices in public and private sectors and ongoing KM activities at the Department of State; and developing enterprise-wide framework for knowledge management at the Department of State. The strategic goal of these initiatives is improve the Department’s ability to understand and lead the foreign policy community at home and governments, publics, and parliaments abroad

Business Challenge. The Department of State’s intranet consists of a vast set of sites, tools, data sources, and applications spread out in over 100 countries. Finding information often required visiting numerous sites and conducting local searches. The search technology in use was ineffective and unresponsive. Finally, key documents such as the Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) were not controlled resulting in numerous versions available on the intranet.

Solution. The Department of State selected the Autonomy IDOL server as the enterprise knowledge management application for aggregating and managing all intranet data. MicroLink is providing architecture, integration, and software development services to the Department of State to implement advanced data aggregation and search capabilities for the iNet and other Department of State intranet sites. The new search engine uses Autonomy to provide fast access to diplomats and other Department of State personnel worldwide. MicroLink personnel are responsible for search design, development, and deployment. To date MicroLink has completed four releases of the search engine including:

1. Basic and advanced search of for the State Department iNet portal
2. Enhance indexes, restructure data sources in IDOL Server, and QuickLinks to allow fast access to specific data sources on the local intranet
3. Indexing of over 500 Intranet, OpenNet, and extranet sites
4. Restructuring of search user interface
5. Updates based on user feedback sessions
6. Indexing and aggregation of the USAID site
7. Foreign Affairs Manual Search

MicroLink is responsible for full lifecycle development of the intranet search:

1. Requirements, system architecture, and software design
2. User interface and server development
3. Integration with State Department intranet sites
4. Integration, testing and incorporation of user feedback
5. User and system administrator knowledge transfer

Technologies or Products and Services Provided by MicroLink.

• Windows Server 2003
• Autonomy IDOL server
• SQL Server
• Application Server and Portal
• Apache Web Server
• Java and JSP/Servlets
• XML
• Groove

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