The Swiftype Blog

On the Search: NYU Libraries Implements Swiftype

New York University (NYU) Libraries is a global organization that advances learning, research, and scholarly inquiry in an environment dedicated to the open exchange of information. As the library of a prestigious university in the 21st Century, their proactive focus on technology enables them to actively reach users at their point of need, wherever that may be.

Today, the number one goal in NYU Libraries’ strategic plan is to “create a user experience that is high quality, consistent, and robust regardless of the user’s location, access method, or objective.” Obviously, their website serves as a critical component in reaching that goal.

As head of user experience for NYU’s library division, Nadaleen Tempelman-Kluit manages their online conduit between the university’s vast number of diverse users (from students and faculty to researchers and staff) and the massive amounts of information available. Here, Nadaleen explains their move to Swiftype as their primary site search and how it has improved their user experience.

What prompted you to look for a new site search?

Nyu.edu uses Google Site Search, so we were using that as our library’s site search. We didn’t have a lot of ability to customize the search, so we wanted to move away from that and get our own solution. We wanted to have more control.

What control did you need?

We didn’t have access to the analytics, so we didn’t know what was possible. We didn’t know all of the things we could do until we deployed Swiftype, but before we weren’t customizing anything. We wanted to gather data to improve both the search experience and how we were presenting our content to the users.

Did users notice your lack of customization?

Yes, for sure. We also had the old search kind of buried, so users had a tough time even finding it. But now our [Swiftype] search is front and center across all of our pages because now we understand our users better and recognize what they’re looking for.

How long did it take to implement Swiftype?

It was just a day. We worked with our CMS vendor, Siteleaf, and they recommended Swiftype. So we took their recommendation and it was ready to go almost immediately.

What types of analytics are helping you improve the user experience?

I tend to look at search queries, and that’s been really helpful. Swiftype’s synonym insights are also great. I can look at queries, see what people are searching for and what words they’re using, then add those keywords to our site. That’s been pretty huge.

We have a service called The Avery Fisher Center for Music and Media, where students get DVDs and watch videos, but most people spell it ‘Fischer.’ So there were a ton of people searching for Avery Fischer and not finding anything. That’s a perfect example. Another is a service called E-ZBorrow, which is spelled e-hyphen-z, but people obviously search for “e-a-s-y.” So we put in ‘E-Z’ and the synonyms ‘easy’ and ‘Easy-Borrow’ and so on. That’s been helpful, and it’s a great way to learn your audience.

Where have you seen improvements since deploying Swiftype?

Just looking at the number of searches, it’s much higher than I expected. It’s become very clear that site search is a big deal for our users.

What’s the Swiftype feature you just can’t live without?

The search queries. That sounds basic, but I’m looking for the percentage of people who succeed in finding something. As the head of user experience, that’s incredibly valuable to me. When I see queries where people didn’t find something, I want to jump in and resolve that.

Want to learn more? We have other great stories about how Swiftype has helped other organizations accomplish great things with Site Search. Check it out now!

Top 5 Enterprise Search Pain Points

We often hear from people looking to solve problems with their internal search processes. And it makes sense: Your employees are the very heart of what makes your organization successful (or not), so if they struggle with search, efficiency issues begin to add up—and fast.

A poorly functioning or out-of-date enterprise search system creates issues: mishandled, duplicated, or impossible to find content; roadblocks when it comes to users’ security access; problems picking up the pieces when an employee goes on vacation or leaves suddenly; and a myriad of others.

So we thought we’d take a few minutes today to go over the pain points we hear about the most when it comes to enterprise search—and show you how a robust SaaS platform—like Swiftype—can help since these big five can hit where it hurts.

“I don’t know where the content I need is stored.”

Whether you’re prepping for a last-minute meeting or being asked on a conference call to pull up a relevant data point, it’s usually when the pressure’s on that you can’t find what you’re looking for. According to Forrester research, knowledge workers can spend 30% of their time looking for nonexistent information, failing to find existing information, and/or recreating information that can’t be found. Enter a robust, new generation of enterprise search solutions that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and other intuitive technologies to help understand and organize data across your entire organization and all of your applications. Search once and you’re done.

“It takes forever to find the right info.”

One of our developers wrote recently about how Swiftype Enterprise Search helps him in his day-to-day work. He flies through customer service issues, closing tickets, quickly cross-referencing other clients’ information requests; sources digital assets spread over a number of apps to fulfill requests from marketing; and even has relevant documents automatically pushed to his phone before a meeting so he doesn’t have to think about what info to gather. With all the extra time he saves, we’re sure he’s able to get so much extra work done, (right, Brian?)

“Didn’t someone else already create this?”

What happens when an employee suddenly gets sick or takes an extended vacation, and they’re holding documents crucial to a project or client deadline? At best, using clunky, legacy enterprise search software, team members waste time digging for the appropriate data. At worst, they have to pull an all-nighter and start again from scratch. Time and money go the drain. Employee morale takes a hit. Swiftype has a handy feature called Person View, which allows you to search for content by employee name across all of your cloud data sources to find all of a specific user’s documents. So even when someone is out, you can still access the files you need.   

“Is my info secure?”

Cloud-based data sharing is not immune to security problems, especially in the BYOD (bring your own device) era. Studies estimate that corporations spend roughly $50,000 per lost laptop—and the more senior the employee, the higher that number jumps. That’s why your enterprise search platform should adhere to strict security guidelines, provide data protection and application security, and have systems in place to guard against physical and environmental issues.

“I don’t want everyone to be able to see everything.”

Not all of your employees have access to the same data, nor should they, even if they use the same applications. You may want to limit some people to only searching marketing materials, while keeping others out of the company’s legal documents. Here at Swiftype, our Administrative Dashboard helps you manage your team’s access. You can integrate with your existing authentication provider, invite users individually, as well as easily grant access, revoke access, and set permissions.

Which of these pain points have you had to deal with?

Since we know this space so well, it’s really tough to write about issues without a nod to how we can help! If you’re curious about solving any of those pain points—or others you may have—talk to the Swiftype team now to take a closer look at how your team can use Enterprise Search to help them access all the information they need, when and where they need it.

How Swiftype Uses Swiftype:
Part 2 – Sales

Hi! I’m Art, an Account Executive at Swiftype.

We know that time kills all deals, so the faster we can get back to our customers, the better. But when you have back-to-back calls all day and 100 emails to reply to, it can be tough to answer your customer’s questions in a timely manner.

Swiftype helps me quickly find the answers. Instead of having to jump from app to app to find something I know already exists, I can find it easily using Enterprise Search. Quick access to content is especially important when you’re talking with customers and prospects who have questions (which they always do) because it allows me to keep the conversation going while I’m searching for the right answers. Sometimes the answers are dispersed across different sources, so a single search experience gives me relevant results from all of those sources instantly.

Search Clients
When I have upcoming meetings with a customer, one of the main things I want to know is if they’ve interacted with our support team recently. I can easily see in the Swiftype browser extension, without leaving a customer record in Salesforce, if they have open support tickets. Swiftype gives me a full picture of an account while saving me the time and effort of tracking down customer success managers, support, and software developers to get answers.

I wanted to mention our Slack integration too, because it’s the primary way our team connects and communicates. I personally don’t spend the majority of my time searching in it, but I have colleagues who do, and it’s a very convenient way for me to meet them where they work. Everyone has their favorite way of using Swiftype and because there are so many ways to integrate it into your workflow, no one has to sacrifice their preference for anyone else to be able to work well together.

There are times when prospects have questions that are more technical than I feel comfortable answering off the top of my head. Just last week, I was on a call with a prospect who stumped me with a technical question. I remembered we had a white paper addressing her exact concern, so I hit shift+command+space to pull up the OS X app and was able to find the answer on the spot.

Person View
Every so often, I need to consult one of our software engineers, but I also don’t want to bombard him with questions that he’s answered for me before. When that happens, I’m able to go to his his profile page in Person View to pull up any conversations he’s had with me. It saves us both quite a bit of time – I don’t have to spend time tracking him down to ask him the question again, and he doesn’t have to spend time answering a question he’s answered before. I can go to his page and get to the content from there.

In summary, I wish I had known earlier in my sales career that a tool like Swiftype existed.  I consider myself lucky to be selling a product that I use every day—a product that makes my daily work a lot easier and much more efficient. If you want to see how it can work for you, I’d be happy to show you a demo!

Choosing A New Enterprise Search Solution In The Era Of AI with Forrester Research

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you already know a thing or two about Enterprise Search. To review: an enterprise search solution can deliver many benefits to your organization—including increase employee productivity, boost cross-team collaboration, eliminate duplication of data, and allow instant access to relevant content. Whether you’re in the process of evaluating your first cloud-based enterprise search software, or are currently migrating from an old legacy solution, have you considered the right criteria to ensure you’re making the best choice?:

  1. Architecture: What architectural qualities you should look for?
  2. Data Acquisition: How should cognitive search support data sources and types?
  3. Core Technology: What core search technologies do cognitive search solutions need?

We’ve partnered with Forrester Research on June 22 for a live webinar to discuss this specific topic. Join Mike Gualtieri, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester, and Matt Riley, CEO & Co-Founder at Swiftype, to learn more about the key criteria your team can use to create an RFP to evaluate AI-powered search engines.

Event Details:

Date: This Thursday, June 22, 2017
Time: 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET
Duration: 30 Min

Implement Enterprise Search in Minutes NOT Months

It happens to your team (and let’s face it, YOU) every day.
You get to work, you settle in, you kick off your to-dos.
You dig into your Google Drive, login to Salesforce, root around in your Dropbox.
You find yourself scrolling through endless messages in Slack.
You know that one specific file you need exists somewhere.
Eventually you give up (and so do they).

Your employees are simply trying to find the info and details they need to get their work done, but searching through all of these different apps has become an inefficient, time-consuming mess.

Forrester Research estimates that workers can spend 30% of their time looking for information, insights, and answers. Do the math. That’s a lot of unnecessary time wasted. But it’s also a great opportunity to finally increase your team’s productivity with Enterprise Search.

That’s it! An AI-Powered Search Application that helps your employees instantly search, discover, and organize the incredible amounts of data they need to get their job done. But, wait. What about implementation? Your bandwidth is limited and with all of these cloud-based apps your team has adopted, it could take months to get a solution up and running, right?

WRONG. You shouldn’t have to wait months to start making huge gains in employee productivity. With Swiftype Enterprise Search your org can be up and running in 6 minutes. Forget 6 months! With this suite of AI-powered applications at your service, not only can your employees find exactly what they need in seconds, but they can set it up extremely easily with intuitive management dashboards: quickly connect and configure team data sources, manage teams and roles, and immediately start enhancing the way your users find information.

After all, we get it. It’s frustrating to search for content only to learn that you’ve been looking in all the wrong places. You and your employees should be able to search for documents, files, conversations and data regardless of where the information lives. Swiftype connects to all your cloud data sources and finds the right results every time. Learn more and get started today.

Too Many Cloud Apps?

With so many cloud apps in the marketplace and new ones poised to leap on the scene everyday, it’s easier than ever to collect tech. But between all of your organization’s departments, that pile of apps can quickly become unmanageable and finding information amongst them impossible.

Too Many Cloud Apps? Stop Wasting Time Hunting for Information

There’s no arguing the right cloud technologies (Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, JIRA, etc) get your department running faster. Each has a purpose and each adds value to your business. The challenge is in quickly finding information (documents, files, conversations, or data) scattered across these cloud-based systems. It turns a simple search for a document into a time-consuming, productivity-killing endeavor.

Did you know that the average organization is using 23 cloud-based apps? A few, 13%, even admitted to having more than 50! Are you a member of one of these teams?  While it takes a collection of solutions to meet all of your needs this collection should solve problems, not create them.

Stop wasting time hunting for information! Download this NEW eBook and learn how a single search experience platform can help your organization increase productivity, gain visibility, and eliminate content duplication.

The Future of Site Search

Last week, we took a look at the future of enterprise search. And we would be remiss if we didn’t set aside the same amount of blog space for a sister post on the future of site search.

Since it popped onto the scene in 1998, Google has pretty much dominated the world of search, including site search. But, as we all know, as of April 2018, Google Site Search will be going the way of the Dodo bird. (Don’t worry—we’re here to help!) And where website owners at one time could access only default site search options with limited capabilities, today, site search has matured lock-step with the rise of high user expectations.

Because searchers today want accurate, rapid-fire results, here at Swiftype our focus has been on building a search platform that is cloud-based, highly customizable (both visually and in terms of the overall results), scalable, engaging, and, of course, mobile. Advanced search algorithms, bigram matching, and features like autocomplete, faceted search, and spelling correction all work together to facilitate those aforementioned speedy search results. But what’s next for site search?

Welcome to the Future of Site Search

The boiled down “why” of site search has always been to have functionality in place that would help searchers tell companies and brands exactly what they were looking for, and/or what their pain points were. And the future of site search is looking very bright indeed.

Mobile Just Keeps Growing: Yes, we know, we know, mobile is the way to go. But seriously…MOBILE IS THE WAY TO GO! Mobile search has grown year over year across most verticals, including the big boys like finance, travel, auto, and media—and that growth is predicted to continue in 2017. The future of mobile search goes beyond simply having a mobile-responsive site. Think fast and efficient user experience, keyword research, content creation, and complex natural language queries. Wearable tech is a hot commodity, with estimates predicting 185 million wearables sold by 2021, resulting in a healthy $16.9 billion industry. And where you have wearables, you have voice search. Voice search continues to grow, especially for all those mobile users who want hands-free, on-the-go convenience. In fact, it’s predicted that by 2020, fully half of all web searches will be conducted by voice.

Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing: Speaking of natural language queries, just as we discussed in our previous piece on the future of enterprise search, AI and NLP are having the same impact on site search, “…creating systems that can identify relationships between search terms and words that pre-defined word/grammar rules-based tools miss. Basically, ‘teaching’ the system how to be human.” And artificial intelligence is becoming so ubiquitous and mainstream, it’s predicted that by the year 2020, 85 percent of a client’s relationship with a business will occur without the need for pesky human beings!  

Visual Search: Another way artificial intelligence is shaping the future of site search is through images. Visual search and Ecommerce are natural best friends, with major brands like Wayfair, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Urban Outfitters, and Home Depot (among others) offering visual search on their mobile sites. But visual search technology does more than just source the latest styles. It helps improves diagnosis accuracy in the healthcare industry and is used in some airports to keep track of how often people change their appearance—frequent changes raise red flags. Pointing your phone at something and hitting search is easy, and site searchers today will always choose easy first. Expect huge future growth for the visual search industry.

Back in 2015, it was said that online search “will be able to see and hear like humans.” Fast forward two short years and it’s safe to say we’re well on our way to hitting those goals. Keep an eye on this space, as the future of site search looks very bright indeed.

Have questions or just want to learn more? The Swiftype Team is more than happy to chat with you about how your organization can ensure site search is a part of your future success. Connect with us today!

10 Ways Publishers Can Optimize Their Websites

We know it happens. Digital Publishing is hectic. You get into the office and are immediately bombarded with an inbox filled to the brim with email, back-to-back morning meetings, coffee with a client, and before you know it – you’ve missed that awesome, educational webinar you had been looking forward to attending all week!

Don’t worry. We’ve got you. 

Well, we’re here to make your day a bit brighter by letting you know that you have a second chance! You still have the opportunity to learn the latest on how you can best optimize your website from Publishing Executive. Joined by speakers Matt Riley, CEO, Swiftype and Sal Fuentes, CEO, Decision Counsel, you’ll get a deep dive on how to leverage different types of data to increase engagement and conversion.  

Once you get readers to your site, holding their attention is the name of the game. Greater engagement leads to devoted audiences, more ad impressions, and readers more likely to sign up for a newsletter, attend an event, or pay for a subscription. From speed and ease of navigation, to site search and content strategy, publishers must stay vigilant in their quest to create sticky, on-site experiences as they vie with platforms like Facebook and Snapchat for consumer attention.

Put your data to work

To refresh your memory, in this webinar we’ll hear how publishers can optimize their sites to meet key business objectives. Some of the tactics to be covered will include:

  • Increasing content engagement & decreasing bounce rate
  • Improving site search & using search metrics
  • Balancing revenue and UX objectives
  • Keeping up to speed on mobile design
  • Using analytics to drive web and content strategy

If you had previously registered, just follow the link below and click “Already Registered?” in the top right-hand corner. If you’re joining for the first time, fill out the standard form and you’ll be taken to the recording as well. Happy learning!

 

Swiftype Enterprise Search Expands Connector Platform to Include Atlassian’s JIRA and Confluence

With emphasis on worker efficiency at an all-time high, more businesses are turning to Atlassian, a leading provider of software development and collaboration tools. Two popular Atlassian products, JIRA and Confluence, help teams work together, build software, and better serve customers. With the continuous expansion of Swiftype’s Connector Framework, we are thrilled to announce our new native connectors to JIRA and Confluence.

Expansion is the Key to Success for Enterprise Search
JIRA and Confluence are products that are widely used and trusted by millions, so, given the incredible amount of content that is created and stored in these applications, they were obvious choices. The formal and supported connections between JIRA, Confluence and the Enterprise Search Platform will make it all the more seamless to find content across multiple applications at once. By bringing Atlassian-supported work into the Swiftype platform, users can quickly discover helpful content to build into projects, tasks, documents and more. Swiftype’s commitment to meeting people where they work continues with these additions, allowing users to search across more data sources without having to leave the application they’re already working in.

Swiftype for JIRA Screenshot

What You Can Expect from Swiftype for JIRA and Confluence:

  • Streamlined project management. Most teams use JIRA for project management and Confluence for documentation, but they also use a plethora of complementary apps to get their work done, like Github for code collaboration and management, Dropbox to access UI files from design teams, and Help Scout or another customer support management system, to name a few. Swiftype’s integrated Enterprise Search solution helps teams stay agile by enabling effortless incorporation of design thinking, agile development, and release management into their process.
  • Instant, relevant content for all your projects. Imagine you are assigned a pull request in Github, but you don’t have much context for why those changes need to be made. Instead of having to hunt around for similar pull requests in Github, related tasks in JIRA or more relevant information in Confluence, you can use the Enterprise Search Chrome extension to immediately see related JIRA tickets, documentation in Confluence, sprint planning documents in Google Drive, account records of impacted customers in Salesforce, and any other related content from your different sources.
  • Global collaboration.  Atlassian takes into account the global nature of project development and encourages flexible cross-organization planning. Collaboration can take place across time zones, but also across tools, like Slack. Swiftype Enterprise Search also offers a federated integration with Slack, which allows users to easily pull up any file from any connected content repository, complete with smart filters and AI-based natural language processing, and share it directly with channels or individuals.

Get Started!
We’re excited to welcome Atlassian tools ‘to the family’ of our Enterprise Search connectors. It’s simple to set up. With just a few clicks, your entire library of cloud content is accessible right alongside your JIRA and Confluence workflows. Visit us in the Atlassian Marketplace to learn more and sign up for a free trial.

The Future of Enterprise Search

Here’s the thing when it comes to search: Searchers are human beings. They’re not looking for “data” or irrelevant search results. They’re looking for the right information in the fastest time possible. And they usually want it yesterday.

This applies just as much (if not more) to enterprise search as it does to general search. If you’re over the age of 30—heck, I remember the Dewey Decimal System—you’ll recall manual, hard copy searching. While Intranets have been around since the 70’s, for decades there wasn’t much of anything you could call innovation.

Having onsite hardware was expensive and something only the largest companies tended to invest in. And it didn’t function all that well, which wasted a ton of time that could have been spent on more productive (and financially beneficial) work.

Thankfully those days, for the most part, are over—Google, cloud computing, and big data have been three key drivers in the evolution of enterprise search. The humble Intranet of yore feels positively archaic compared to enterprise search systems of today: cloud based, instant, individualized, and predictive.

But as technology catches up to consumers’ habits, those habits evolve, and the technology needs to follow—or better yet, lead the way.  

Welcome to the Future of Enterprise Search

There are exciting days ahead for the future of enterprise search. Let’s take a look.

Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing: While machines haven’t taken over just yet, machine learning is creating systems that can identify relationships between search terms and words that pre-defined word/grammar rules-based tools miss. Basically, “teaching” the system how to be human. In the case of collaborative (or conversational) search, the computer effectively learns enough about the searcher to create a feedback loop of search results, allowing the system to “assume” the searcher is looking for X or Y based on the context of previous searches. The result? More accurate search results and less time wasted wading through “not quite right” content.

Visual Search: What with the Internet and the social web, videos, pictures, graphs, and memes, our world has become exponentially more visual. And whether you’re searching for diagrams, tables, images, data plots, people, or—in the case of medicine—a diagnosis, image recognition technology is going to see some real growth.

Voice Search: “Siri, what time is it?” You’ve done it, and so have 50 percent of American teenagers, and more than 40 percent of U.S. adults. Digital assistants are fairly commonplace these days, and tech companies are tripping over each other to be first out of the gate when it comes to making voice search smarter, more functional, and more responsive. Artificial Intelligence technology is also “learning” to understand intent and context in voice search and to take into consideration variables such as location and search history.

So what’s next for enterprise IT?

Zorawar Biri Singh is kind of a big deal when it comes to the future of search related tech, having worked as head of cloud for IBM, HP, and CTO of Cisco. He sees “people-centric digitization,” or being able to “look across enterprises and uncover deeply embedded human workflows, both implicit and explicit—the ‘contracts’ that determine how organizations and culture transform” as a natural next step.

Enterprise search software should be considered a critical part of your organization’s functionality. The overall efficiency of your corporate policies and procedures—not to mention your employees’ productivity levels—depend on having a robust enterprise search platform in place.

Want to learn more about how enterprise search can make your team more productive than ever before? Request a demo with the Swiftype team today and they can walk you through it!

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