I ntranets and Web-style working have improved access to information but in many cases have made it harder to find. New search technologies are arriving that promise to make finding relevant documents easier. KnowledgeBox from DolphinSearch, for example, attempts to index documents by analysing their content. Such tools promise a lot, but most analysts predict that for the foreseeable future a combination of search technologies will still be needed. KnowledgeBox is a network information retrieval device that can find unstructured text documents on a company's LAN, intranet or extranet.
Relevance is important in reducing the amount of time a user spends sifting through search results.
This type of technology has its place,' he said. Most knowledge management products require that documents are labelled with meta-tags identifying their content, or placed into rigid hierarchical categories, to make them accessible. Others use free-text search algorithms that are based on the frequency with which words occur in documents. Ashim Pal, research director of analyst firm Meta Group agreed that document management systems that attempt to gauge relevance can save users time. He noted that such technology is still in the early stages of development, but that it will become increasingly sophisticated.