"GSA Blunt-Instrument" Tour begins

We are still most definitely in “blunt-instrument” mode, which is to say we have our enterprise search platform built out, the local and centralized content servers are all talking nicely to each other and, most importantly, to the Google Search Appliance (GSA). But we have no refinements in place. Hence, it is at this stage just a blunt instrument for searching throughout our organization.

Even so, we want to actively draw folks into this grand adventure. Tomorrow, we are doing an on-site orientation and training for our Sacramento Office, a k a “The Mothership.” In almost all things tech here at LSNC, the Sacramento Office is almost always the guinea pig, the office where we first test things out. At that training, we are for the first time formally introducing folks to what is essentially an alpha version of a shared portal page that is pretty self-explanatory (hopefully). But even before the training, we have circulated to everyone in that office the URI to the portal and have encouraged them to play with its search functions and examples. And bring their sense of search wonder and befuddlement. Our motto for the training: “There are no wrong searches, only better ones.”

This test portal page includes some modest jQuery scripting so that if users click on “Show|Hide sample searches,” they will see a reveal with active links to all the examples used during the training (illustrated, at right), so they can easily reconstruct what was shown. Assuming all goes well, we will then promote the test portal to the rest of our core offices, concurrent with a rapid-fire series of LegalMeetings sessions to introduce-orient-train users on how basic organization-wide search works.

Wish us luck.