How many times have you initiated a search looking for something specific, get a long list of results returned, and spend a lot of time scrolling through them to find what you are really looking for?  In some cases even attachments get searched and the search criteria, although technically correct, is out of context.  In some cases way out of context.

An alternative is take advantage of visual search techniques. This web 2.0 technology is being used on many sites and you may be familiar with it.  Check out www.flickr.com as an example.  We have taken this and applied it to a corporate environment in a unique way.  Rather than have the results show everything in terms of meta data, we will be allowing users to define how the search is carried out,. Specifically what meta data is searched and the order it is searched. This is will be all integrated with our powerful "Perspectives" for shaping up data in a way that is meaningful to the end user.

Here is a quick flash overview of a prototype.

http://www.docova.tv/Videos/CloudTags/cloudtags.htm

It is time.  We have looked at Sharepoint a few times.  Older releases were so basic it reminded one of the early days of Lotus Notes.  Several customers have linked our Document Mgt system, Docova, into Sharepoint.  As we help with the integration we can see that the product has changed, and It is time to look again and see what the latest release has to offer.  

The project is a DLI internal site.  Lets see how far we can take this.   We need the ability to provide a front end for our existing systems.  Some of these are Lotus Notes based.  Information includes Statement of Work documents, a window to view our web based timesheets, invoices...etc.  Pretty basic.  

This Blog thread will document the project.  You may find the Domino perspective interesting.