XML tags make it possible for authors to define particular content types and provide semantic information about content. To this end, the firm's 85,000 professionals worldwide have access to the corporate intranet, known as the KWeb. Before KWeb, the firm's knowledge resources were spread across a number of Lotus Notes databases, which users navigated using a Notes catalogue. First implemented in 1997, KWeb is now in its fifth version. Its searchable knowledge content consists of more than 950,000 documents in English, plus thousands more in German, French, Dutch and Swedish.
Users can search by key words or phrases.
Taxonomic searches using familiar business categories are also possible, and the two approaches can be combined for more intuitive knowledge discovery. Groups of workers can invoke searches using a graphical navigator with context-sensitive hotspots to find knowledge relevant to their needs.