Friday, October 28, 2011

Tips to Reduce Your Abandoned Search Count in Oracle WebCenter Interaction

If you use Oracle's WebCenter Interaction portal software there is a good chance you also use their Analytics package to track how your users interact with your site(s).  One of the most useful reports that can be generated from the out of the box tool is the search results report which displays a list of the most popular search terms and how frequently they are abandoned.  For those unfamiliar with the product you would be right if you are guessing that abandoned means that a user has done a search and then not clicked on any of the results.
Below are the steps I've taken to reduce my abandoned search rate from a high of 62% down to a low of 26%:


Step 1: Workflow
When we launched our portal in 2007 (Plumtree G6) our monthly abandoned search rate average (for the top 100 searches) seemed stuck in the 60% area.  Horrified that our users were struggling to find content we identified that the titles and descriptions of documents going into our KD could be improved so we implemented the out of the box workflow for all documents added to the system as well as announcements posted to the home page.
This might have shaved about 5% off our abandoned search.

Step 2: Disable Full Text Search
Unsatisfied with a 55% abandoned search rate we began digging more into the features of the search tool to try to uncover what else might be causing such a high rate of failure.  Our second step (which made sense at the time, although now I question) was to disable full-text search.  The thought process here was that the search results were cluttered and that instead we should be focusing on appropriate titles and descriptions.
Since the out of the box portal interface is lacking the ability to dynamically utilize custom meta-data fields during the file upload process, we never adopted a policy of using other meta-data fields.  Our search results are based upon a 96.77% weighting for "Name" (document title) and a 3.23% weighting for "Description".
I can't say that we saw a measurable change from removing the full-text search and now there are days when I think we would benefit from turning it back on, or at least begin using meta-data fields.

Step 3: Thesaurus
At this point we were still hovering around 50% abandoned which is still an F in my book so our next step was to make modifications to the thesaurus to account for acronyms, synonyms, and stemming - which the search tool was never able to handle natively.
Again this had a largely unnoticeable impact on search results:(

Step 4: Best Bets
At this point we were grabbing at straws and began to investigate the best bet feature which allows admins to cherry-pick the order of content in search results for identified terms.   For those that have been on G6 you should recall a huge problem with best bets during this version in which a best bet which shared the first 2 letters as another best bet would be ignored.  Mind boggling how something like this made it through QA and into a release, but that is another issue.  Sadly the gaping flaw in the best bets prevented us from seeing much benefit here, and made it seem like we were chasing out tail trying to figure out why they weren't having the dramatic impact that we had expected.

Fortunately, in the 10.3 release the issue with best bets was resolved and you can now have nearly identical keywords that each work!  This fix had a huge impact on our abandoned metrics and we were able to triple the number of best bets we had and knock our abandoned rate down from the mid-50's to the mid-40's overnight.

Step 5: Adaptive Layouts
The 6.5 upgrade was a pretty big step for the evolution of the portal in terms of search because it introduced the concept of adaptive layouts whereby a beginner coder could make a few simple modifications to an HTML file and dramatically alter the UI for the search results tool.  Unfortunately the adaptive layouts were only half-baked in this release and we determined that upgrading wouldn't give us much benefit, so we held off until the 10.3 release which resolved our issues.  Modifying the search results interface was a giant leap for us in terms of usability.  It gave us the ability to take the ugly out of the box interface and turn it into something better which we designed based upon a combination of goggle, bing and Facebook.  I made a blog post about the changes we did to the search results already, so I won't bother wasting your time again on the details.  Suffice it to say, we got a lot of positive feedback on this.  But from an abandoned search result standpoint it had little impact.

Step 6: Work with Support
I felt like progress was being made but felt like I was reaching the limits of what I could do with the tool out of the box.  Search refinement sounded awesome but would probably require implementing an alternate search tool and didn't seem to be in the cards for our organization, especially after the announcement that WebCenter Interaction was being end-of-lifed by Oracle.

At some point I broke down and created a support ticket with Oracle to try to get to the bottom of our abandoned rate problem.  Digging through our issue I was informed that Analytics ONLY looks at items stored in the Knowledge Directory (aka document repository) to determine the abandoned rate.  So even though search indexes about two dozen object types, the only way to NOT count as an abandoned search is if you click on a "Documents in the Directory". Rather than throwing my hands up at this point I inquired about modifying the PEI or whatever tool it is that triggers the abandoned rate.  Unfortunately I learned that it would be more involved than necessary and would have to find another solution.

Step 7: Revisit Best Bets
Armed with a better understanding of how the product works I went back into the trenches and yanked every non-document out of our best bets. Aware that there was a need for folks to access communities, videos and  other objects that the KD doesn't natively support I created vanity URLs at the web server level and populating them into the KD and added them to the best bets also.  This has been another of the biggest impacts on our abandoned rate and has probably accounted for a 10-15% drop for us.

Step 8: Look at Your Reports and Do Something
This past month our abandoned rate has dropped to 26.1% and I feel a great deal of weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  I'm well aware that this number doesn't mean that folks are necessarily finding what they need, or that our system is good (I know that it has huge flaws) but at the same time you can't just sit idly by with an abandoned rate over 50%.
The overarching tool that helped identify our gaps was the top 100 search results report.
Each month I copy and paste the report into a larger spreadsheet that I keep and I run some simple formulas to identify problematic search terms.  Armed with that I then revisit our best bets and thesaurus, as well as dig into the KD and examine titles and descriptions of files to see if they can be improved.  When I find gaps or excess of search results for particular terms I reach out to our content managers and remind them to either add some content, or to remove outdated content.

Today we have 380 best bets and 4,670 documents in our Knowledge Directory.
My goal is to continue working with our content managers and improving our site with the tools provide to get to a <20% abandoned rate.

Step 9: Run Extra Queries
Analytics was a noble idea that languished in the BEA/Oracle days.  Fortunately all the data you need is stored in the database and with a few extra queries you can get some meaningful data.

Query 1: Show me all documents that have been viewed less than 50x
SELECT     CARDID, POPULARITY, HITCOUNT, LASTHIT, LASTMODIFIED_T
FROM         plumdbuser.PTCARDSTATISTICS
WHERE     (HITCOUNT < 50)

Query 2: Show me all documents that were created before 2010
SELECT     NAME, CREATED
FROM         plumdbuser.PTCARDS
WHERE     (CREATED < '1/1/2010')

Monday, October 24, 2011

My Oracle OpenWorld 2011 experience: Notes on WebCenter

I'm just settling in after attending Oracle OpenWorld 2011 earlier this month, followed by a fantastic week exploring the west coast (Yosemite, Bodie, Reno, Klamath Falls/Crater Lake, Seattle and Vancouver).  Now that I'm back I have a few days before heading down to Washington DC to attend the KM World: Microsoft SharePoint Symposium 2011, so I thought it was about time that I posted all of my notes!

Forgive the sentence fragments and partial thoughts...my laptop was acting up at the conference and I write significantly slower than I can type.  All in all it was a good conference and I'm extremely grateful to Oracle for my free passes for being an ACE and a blogger.

WebCenter Customer Advisory Board
Kumar Vora, SVP Product Development Oracle WebCenter
There are 6 high level trends which will influence Oracle's WebCenter strategy and products over the next few years. They are essentially "motherhood & apple pie" meaning they are common across the industry, however the uniqueness is in Oracle's approach/reaction to them.

1) Personalization
-not about preferences in the traditional sense, but more about system activity
-things you do more frequently should be surfaced
-things your friends do, should associate more

2) Mobility
-mobile devices are far more functional than PCs in the short term (camera, gps, etc)
-design for a mobile device gives you flexibility to design for more functionality than you would get if you designed for a PC
-the approach to think first about mobile devices and special characteristics is a more modern strategy than starting on a pc and thinking of how to reduce functionlity to a mobile device.
-This is a complex area for everybody given the rapid evolution and various mobile operating systems

3) Social
Lightweight, connecting people, connectivity
Bringing consumer into the workplace

4) Multi-channel
-device form factors, physical presence, etc

5) Consumerization of IT
Consumerization of IT
IT reacting to the consumer space (email, cell phones, laptops, consumer web)

6) Self service
-making it easier to do what you need to do


Additional notes:
Sites doesn't use UCM today but will be able to in the future.
WCM capabilities will be integrated into Sites
The WebCenter space is growing, there will be some aquisitions in the future.
_______________


Yogesh Gupta, FatWire
There are more developers, project managers and resources today than there were 60 days ago.
Every employee is still there.
6x as many sales people than there were 60 days ago.
Your sales person will probably change!
Fatwire is not a social product although it does have comments, ratings and the such.
Fatwire was an enterprise software company, focus on enabling enterprises to create really engaging experiences online. Primarily used for external sites.
Customers: Hartford, 3m, Ford (myford.com), Apple, Walmart, Banco Santander, Epsom
Features include: site design, targeting, analytics, managing user experience, multi-device, engagement, localization, a rich dynamic experience.
The product was used in ways they hadn't envisioned such as for intranets.
Often married with a commerce engine such as ATG to take over the shopping cart (note: how ironic that Oracle recently purchased ATG as well!).
Presence jumped from 12 to 150 countries.
200+ employees before aquisition

_______________


Ken Moore
VP of Product Development, Oracle WebCenter

Oracle is known for bottom up development - which is to say that they build/acquire great technology and usability is an afterthought, something usually of last concern.
They are actively trying to change that for WebCenter.
He admitted that Oracle "Has a ways to go for a great out of the box experience."

Oracle.com: Today the site is fully based upon UCM (aka Oracle WebCenter Content).  They plan in the next release to roll out some WebCenter Sites (aka Fatwire) feature into it.

_______________

The 11g product set focused on performance, scalability, and the integration of various components.
RC12 - next calendar year.
Oracle is looking to make deeper integration with ATG & Siebel
The plan for 12g is to offer new user experience features inside the browser and on tablets, as well as the syncing of things - technology like Dropbox (they mentioned this concept of "sync" and "dropbox like features" several times.

_______________

Brian Dirking - WebCenter Marketing
Join the Oracle Social Enterprise Group on LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/ORCL_Social
also signup for the Oracle WebCenter Newsletter: http://bit.ly/News711

Collaborate 2012
April 22-26 Las Vegas
Developer and user focused
3+ days of dedicated content
Separate tracks for each pillar

They are looking for folks to join/assist with the WebCenter special interest group http://bitly.com/UCMSIG
The content management SIG is changing to a WebCenter SIG
Looking for folks to joing the advisory board
Not a big committment, phone call every month or two.  Contact Brian if you are interested.

_______________

Portal Breakout Session: WebCenter Portal Product Strategy
The strategy is persona focused around the following users:
  1. Java Developer: data controls, wrapper APIs
  2. Technical Power User: OOTB data sources, extended runtime tooling to build UIs at runtime
  3. Web Developer: Expose REST endpoints to build UIs with UI technology of choice
  4. Business User: business components, pre-packaged and business-user friendly
This announcement caused some concern among CAB members who asked where was the end user in all of this and why aren't they #1 on the list.  The answer was that the end user is implicitly #1 on the list and that this list of personas was more for how to maximize the platform.  All the same, I wish they had been more explicit, especially given the UI concerns they brought up earlier in the meeting.

Roadmap
1) Portal Server & Tooling
Template Driven Portal, more tools/features and pre-built templates to serve as a foundation for gadget integration.
Enhanced in-context social tools
Migration and upgrade tools
Directory: enable power and business users to publish, share, discover, and consume portal artifacts
Security & Extended Profiles: enable portal to deliver personalized user experience based on rich user profiles and dynamic authorization
Runtime tooling: enable power users to build & manage portals. Enable business users to personalize using intuitive tooling (enhancements to admin console)

2) UX Platform for Applications
Composite Applications & Mashups: make the integration of enterprise applications into WebCenter portal easy for Java Developers, web developers, technical power users, and business users
12g Roadmap:
-application packs: library of portal solutions
-foundation for gadget integration
-enhanced in-context social and mobile delivery capabilities
-data controls for Oracle Applications - Siebel, EBS, PeopleSoft, etc
-Migration and upgrade tools for legacy portal customers

3) Portal as Platform for Collaboration
-provide in-context, seamless integration of social tools

4) Delivering Portal Content to Mobile
Provide framework for creating and engaging experience for users accessing the portal through mobile channels

_______________
Afterthoughts:

After the CAB I was left with the following questions running around in my head:
1) Under what, if any circumstances, would Sites (Fatwire) be used for an intranet over WebCenter Portal? and what would the benefits or limitations of Fatwire be when used as an Intranet.
2) If Jive is used as for some aspects of the Social pillar, is an aquisition of Jive on the horizon?
3) Why isn't there a pillar for metrics/analytics? Where does a customer get that type of information for the products in the pillars?
4) what is the deal with WebCenter Interaction and the other portal products? Over the last two years "Continue and converge" has seemed more like "ignore and forget"
5) From a tool/feature perspective what is the roadmap?


Quotes and notes from OOW Sessions
WebCenter Content Integration: Deep Dive
Yannick Onega "the integration between UCM and Webcenter (currently) is very bad"


Strategy & Vision - Content, Sites
Content:
  • Focus on UI and sync (dropbox) features
  • Develop a next generation end user & admin interface
  • Content synchronization and mobile access
  • Enterprise imaging w/ deeper BPM integration & updated capture capabilities

Sites:
  • New site building and authoring interface
  • Enhance mobile, gadget, social, user generated content
  • integrate portal, content, connect (social)
  • marketing centric experience management
    • w/ embedded actionable analytics
Panel Discussion: Why We've Gone Social: Was it Worth it
There were 4 people on the panel from very large companies.  When asked how many of them were using the tool out of the box (uncustomized) 3 of the 4 said they were using it directly out of the box.  The 4th company explained how they had particular security issues specific to their organization and they had to make some tweaks to the security of the tools but from a UI perspective it was out of the box.

When the panel was asked what changes they would like to see in the WebCenter Social tools they responded with:
  • Improved usability
  • Tighter integration of WebCenter products (Content, Portal, Social) to ease the installation, administration and development burden
  • Seamless migration capabilities
  • A Dropbox/sync feature