May 6th, 2009
Gartner has released a report detailing how you can save $250,000 by selecting tactical measures in your federation strategy.
Our suggestion would be to to look at the Google Search Appliance or try our Search Best Practices health check.
May 5th, 2009
Continuing from our previous troubleshooting post.
Step 2: Check the appliance’s configuration
If the links are functioning properly in your Google Sitemap, but there is still no SharePoint content being crawled, then you should check to which URLs are being crawled.
Often time’s people make the mistake of entering the URL of their SharePoint site and not the URL of their GSS. Ensure that this is not the case by opening the administrative console of your appliance and going to Crawl and Index > Crawl URLs. You should find the URL of your GSS in the top two fields. If it is not there enter it.
Now, select Freshness Tuning from the options on the left. Enter the URL of your GSS and then select Recrawl These URL Patterns. Allow 20-25 minutes for the changes to take effect.
Then, go to Status and Reports > Crawl Diagnostics and check to see if your GSS’s URL is listed. If you see the sitemap’s URL listed proceed to the next step. Otherwise contact MC+A support.
Now, run a search for content that would be found in your SharePoint site. If the appropriate search results are not returned contact MC+A support for further assistance.
May 4th, 2009
Thanks to all who attended the Chicago CIO Synergy Event. It was great to see so many people brave venture out during the Bulls play off season and the recent health scares.
The discussion was very invigorating. It was good to see our friend Michael Lock, from Google Enterprise, as well as the other panel speakers: Willian Farrow, Surinder Kumar and Hardik Bhatt give there insights on how companies can innovate.
Stay tuned! We will be following up with a series of executive topics in the coming months. If you have any thoughts you would like to share, drop us a line via the contact us form on website.
April 23rd, 2009
It has come to our support team’s attention that, although we have tried to make the setup and configuration of our Google SharePoint Sitemap (GSS) as straightforward as possible we do field support cases from users dealing with similar configuration issues. This blog series hopes to serve as a FAQ and tutorial covering some common configuration and setup issues.
This is one of the most frequently submitted support requests. This can be caused by a number of issues. We’ll try to break the troubleshooting process into simple steps to help you solve the issue in a snap!
Often, customers immediately assume that there is an issue with their appliance when they do not have the Google Sitemap properly configured.
Check to see if the links in the site are working.
Click on the GSS link.
Now click on various links to ensure that there are no HTML errors. Exclude the Site Link entries drom this test as their results will not be relevant. thos links are simply the actual URLs the sitemap will be charged with directing the appliance to.
If links return HTML errors, the appliance will not successfully crawl the content. If this is what you encounter you know that the issue resides either within your GSS configuration or your SharePoint site.
The next step would be to make sure that all of the proper information has been entered into the Settings section of the GSS.
Make sure that you verify that the account and account password have access to you SharePoint site. To do this, simply navigate to your SharePoint site using the same credentials that your GSS is using. If the credentials are not the issue, you should contact MC+A support for more help.
Next Up…..Step 2: Checking the appliance’s Configuration
April 9th, 2009
Websites are a great deal like phone numbers – they both can be tedious to monitor and memorize. If I could not store all my phone numbers in my phone, I would have to resort to the process of keeping a little black book. Why dial all the digits of a friend’s phone number when I can simply say “call Bob?” Social Bookmarking has evolve to aid in the very similar task of trying to remember and enter all of your frequented websites. The user is able to surf the web, find content they like, and mark it so they, or someone with a similar interest, can come back later. They are also able to organize these sites into separate folders by how they are relevant to your life. While working on such issues may seem somewhat trivial we need to take into consideration the larger impact that these solutions have made. Social Bookmarking has become a part of the Social Networking game (enter Twitter, Facebook, etc) that this world has come to know and love. Millions of people are sharing bookmarked content with various online communities. Others are then able to comment on information that they may have (and often not) found interesting. The added element of sharing your bookmarked content with everyone on the web has giving the concept of Social Bookmarking some staying power.
The concept of online bookmarking has been around since 1996 but has long since evolved. Many organizations that were paving the way for this new concept collapsed as they had no real plan to earn any money. “I don’t think it was that we were ‘too early’ or that we got killed when the bubble burst. I believe it all came down to product design, and to some very slight differences in approach,” said the founder of Blink back in 2005. As a result of these failures many newcomers to the Social Bookmarking had to reinvent the business model of their predecessors.
Then corporate Social Bookmarking arrived on the scene, focusing their attention on commercializing an already successful concept. Observing the short comings of those that came before, companies like Connectbeam have made Social Bookmarking a powerful business tool. The main difference between traditional and corporate bookmarking is the end result that is sought after. Originally, sharing with a community was just to receive feedback and share opinions. However, corporate bookmarking helped solidify a company’s scattered intellectual assets.
For example, Company X has been working on a task or project has been exceedingly difficult (for any number of reasons), but Company X utilized a Social Bookmarking system and the knowledge workers on the project were able to find the colleague with the necessary experience and expertise. Looking at the web content that they have tagged, the knowledge workers may find the answers they were seeking. Nonetheless, at the very least, they have located a co-worker that may be best suited to assist with the critical mission.
From my personal experience, I can say that the Connectbeam Spotlight appliance is the best product available to provide the bookmarking service for any size business. Overall, it is not a difficult appliance to administer. Spotlight integrates seamlessly with many systems our company already had in place (Active Directory, SharePoint, Outlook, Google Search Appliance, etc.). Today, our company is more efficient when it comes to collaborating on projects and teammates can guide one another without searching long and hard. Adding the Connectbeam appliance to our GSA’s crawl allows us to add additional content that has already seen some quality control. For some great return results, combine SharePoint content and Connectbeam bookmarks together. You will definitely see a serious ROI with this business solution.<
References
April 8th, 2009
Another Google client solution video featuring Circle-E. Circle-E, a plumbing, electrical and HVAC maintenance contractor in Dallas Fort Worth, TX deeply integrated the GSA into their business. MC+A was the Partner that implemented this highy effective solutions for Circle-E. Enjoy
April 8th, 2009
Google client solution video featuring Tivo. MC+A was the Partner that implemented this highy effective solutions for Tivo. Enjoy
April 7th, 2009
If you can believe it, it is April already. Time seems to be flying in 2009. This becomes a great lead into the topic for this month. This month’s topic is the time saving search appliance for business. The Google Search Appliance provides a great wealth of information in sub-second speeds.
An analysis of knowledge-workers’ time illustrates the importance of a fully-functioning search appliance for organizations. Without effective and efficient search, half of employees’ time is spent non-productively. This means that for every hour of work, thirty minutes is utilized on: gathering information for documents, converting information from other formats, unsuccessful search for documents, and recreating previously created content. From a management standpoint, knowledge workers should have the information in front of them instantly and be able to use the information productively.
In addition to the wasted time recreating content and changing formats, employees also spend 25% of their time searching. Successful enterprise search should give the users information and they should be spending, on average, 5-10% of their time locating essential information. Ultimately, this means that only about 25% of workers’ time is spent on the core task. Obviously, this is discouraging to any manager or executive.
The problem only gets worse though. With each passing day, month, and year of an organization, the amount of information is exponentially rising. Another study performed by IDC, says that most users do not attribute speed as a factor for their searches. However, with an increased content count and proprietary search slowing down as a consequence, users will drop the search after a few seconds. Users have become used to the Google.com sub-second response time, and assume something is wrong when these results are not produced.
This is not even to mention customer frustrations. When a customer goes to a site, they are expecting to find the product, service, or information quickly. But when a proper search is not in place, studies have shown that individuals will leave the site if search is timely or non-existent. Users will also abandon their searches if it takes too long to produce results. Thus, by decreasing the response time by 30%, an organization can effectively increase customer satisfaction and increase site traffic by 25%. These are impressive numbers.
Time is extremely valuable to organizations of all industries, verticals, and sizes. The more time wasted on searching for content, the less time using that content to create essential information for product launches, documentation of projects, and even customer sales. It is well understood in the global business market and with the speed of business, that both workers and customers know that sub-second results are possible.
If searching and recreating content takes time, and time is money…you can do the math. Happy Searching!
April 7th, 2009
Why is finding what you need so difficult? I have been thinking about why always seem to be the case. Large enterprise rarely just pop up overnight, actually often growing organically, adding functionality and hardware as demands increase. This layered approach while great for scalability and practicality often creates problems around finding, accessing and using the information that is contain within those layered systems. Because information can difficult to find, time is wasted by all members of the team from employees to managers attempting to make decisions. Wasted time is money wasted. Good enterprise search save both.
Our partnership with Google stems from the fact that the Google Search Appliance (GSA) is simply the most successful solution for bringing simplicity to enterprise search. The GSA is an integrated hardware and software appliance that is packed full of the necessary search algorithms built into it. Think Google in a box. All our customers have needed to do is plug and play. Well actually they typically go a little more like: install appliance behind the firewall, insert an ethernet cable, power up and then specify which repositories the appliance should search. The appliance does the rest, completing a one-time crawl, creating a master index, and performing periodic incremental crawls on a managed schedule to refresh its listings.
That is all out of the box. Good enterprise search is simple, fast and robust.
From an end-user perspective, the Google Search Appliance provides a comprehensive search experience often described as “Universal Search.” This concept promotes a one stop shop for you search information. Specifically, all information inside the enterprise will be accessed through a single search entry point. The appliance can integrate into many different data sources making for a search boxes that is the destination for connecting to your enterprise data. The universal search concept also allows for less training. Most of your users are familiar with how to use Google’s keyword search paradigm. Again, think Google.com in a box.
Google Search Appliance is designed to ease IT configuration issues. It is pretty simple to deploy and pack full of goodies.
A plug-and-play appliance: On an average deployment you simply rack it, and point it you your documents and the appliance automatic starts indexing
Software does the heavy lifting: You have Google.com in a box. You be able to provide quality results without meta-tags, customization or any need for algorithm re-writing
High level of security: The GSA will filter search results on access permissions. Users only view what they are entitled to view.
Simple to install. Universal search experience for everyone. That should make the ROI focused people happy!
April 2nd, 2009
In a recent Tech Target article, Google Android OS on Notebooks, MC+A’s president, Michael Cizmar, who was interviewed for the article expressed his thoughts about the future of Android Operating System.
Michael’s Comments:
“I would say there’s room for another OS,” said Michael Cizmar, president of MC+A, a Chicago custom application development house that works with Google appliances and APIs as well as the iPhone and Windows Mobile. “There will be two platforms. One will be Microsoft, and one will be Android.”
“Android is very attractive to developers because they can use their skills,” Cizmar continued. “The iPhone
is still very closed and requires a special set of skills to develop for. The only reason you go there is because of consumer popularity.”
Read the whole article:
http://searchitchannel.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid96_gci1352617,00.html
