WorkflowOne

Print and Promotional Provider Adopts Search Capabilities to Ease Information Access

Given its strategy to make information available through portals, WorkflowOne needed a way for employees and customers to easily find the right people and information. The company chose the Enterprise Search capability in Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007, which it deployed with help from Composable Systems Inc. (CSI), to put all types of information at people’s fingertips, including content published by various departments, documents and other files, information on where to find people with required expertise, and data in multiple line-of-business systems. By choosing Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Enterprise Search over stand-alone search technologies, WorkflowOne is getting the search capability that it needs without the additional cost, complexity, development effort, and time-to-market that a third-party system would entail.

 

Situation

WorkflowOne is a leading provider of print and promotional solutions. The company’s experience, technology, manufacturing capa-bilities, and global sourcing and distribution network enable WorkflowOne to deliver comprehensive supply chain solutions in the areas of commercial, digital, and on-demand printing; document management; promotional products and specialty cards; marketing and direct mail services; statement processing and billing; warehousing, kitting, fulfillment, and distribution; and related technology solutions.

With Enterprise Search, someone in Dayton can easily find people who have the needed skills or customer relationships, even if that other person is in Atlanta and his or her name is unknown. Jeff Noffsinger Director of Solutions Development, WorkflowOne

Today’s WorkflowOne is the result of a November 2005 acquisition of Relizon by Workflow Solutions, upon which it became apparent that the two business units would need to consolidate their disparate Internet and intranet solutions. Workflow Solutions had been using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, while Relizon had been using Java and Oracle and was looking into a new solution from Comergent. After the merger was completed, WorkflowOne chose to standardize on SharePoint Portal Server 2003 because it offered lower costs and the ability to help the company more rapidly meet its needs.

The newly merged organization continued to grow rapidly, eventually finding itself with complex technology needs that SharePoint Server 2003 alone couldn’t solve. With more and more information being stored on or accessed through its intranet and extranet sites, the company needed a way for employees and customers to easily find the right people and information within the organization. To meet that goal, the company needed a comprehensive search solution that could put all types of data stored on and exposed through the sites at people’s fingertips, including content published by various departments, documents and other files, information about which employees have what knowledge and expertise, and the data in various line-of-business systems.

In the past, search capabilities were limited primarily to Web site content. Employees had to know where to look for other information such as shared files. If information was stored in line-of-business systems, employees often needed to find someone who had permissions to access those systems. Or they had to resort to paper records, as was the case when they needed to reconcile vendor invoices for products and services that WorkflowOne purchased on behalf of clients.

Solution

WorkflowOne met its needs by upgrading to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and taking advantage of its Enterprise Search capability, which extends search beyond Web site content to include directories of people and expertise; line-of-business systems and other structured data sources; and shared files, document repositories, and other unstructured information. The decision to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 gives WorkflowOne comprehensive search capabilities as a preintegrated part of a broader information management infrastructure, enabling the company to focus on delivering new solutions with the required search functionality already built in—instead of having to be added on at additional time and expense.

“We were content with SharePoint Portal Server 2003 until we saw what SharePoint Server 2007 had to offer, one of the greatest improvements being in the area of enterprise search,” says Jeff Noffsinger, Director of Solutions Development at WorkflowOne.

WorkflowOne is using—or plans to use—Enterprise Search in several ways:

• Empowering employees to find the information and expertise that they need on the company’s intranet.
• As a programmable component of several Office Business Applications, which bring together the front office and back office by making the data in line-of-business systems more accessible and usable.
• As a way to empower both intranet and extranet users to find the information that they need about products, inventory levels, and more—data that is stored in multiple line-of-business systems.

To assist with solution design and architecture, including use of Enterprise Search, WorkflowOne enlisted the aid of Tim Landgrave of Composable Systems, a Microsoft Certified Partner that already had experience with Office SharePoint Server 2007 through its ongoing relationship with Microsoft. “Bringing Tim in helped both further accelerate solution delivery and mitigate risk,” says Ian O’Brien, Chief Information Officer at WorkflowOne. “He’s tied in enough with Microsoft to get us answers when we need them, yet at the same time he’s independent enough to give us his own perspective on any issues.”

Intranet Search

WorkflowOne used Enterprise Search for its new intranet portal, which is scheduled to roll out to the entire company—all 3,000 employees—in August 2007. It includes internal Web sites and collaboration workspaces for every department, with each departmental site having both a private view that is visible only to employees of that department and a public area that is visible to all company employees.

Being able to automatically trim the search results based on security rights is a … key improvement over our previous search solution, in which people could see results that they didn’t have permission to access. Jeff Noffsinger Director of Solutions Development, WorkflowOne

The intranet also includes automated workflow for process management, where documents that used to be printed and manually routed were converted to electronic forms using the Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 information-gathering program. With Enterprise Search, formerly paper-based information can easily be searched electronically, with results in a matter of seconds rather than days of combing through physical files, folders, and cabinets.

On the intranet, WorkflowOne is using Enterprise Search to deliver integrated search capabilities across tens of thousands of Web pages as well as documents, of which the company expects to have between 10,000 and 15,000 stored on the intranet within the first few months. In the future, WorkflowOne will expand the reach of Enterprise Search to also index the InfoPath 2007 forms hosted on the intranet.

WorkflowOne employees also can use Enterprise Search to easily find others within their organization, replacing the employee locator function on the old intranet, in which the user had to know someone’s name to find that person. In contrast, Enterprise Search will help WorkflowOne employees find others within the organization by searching across user profile data in the Active Directory® service of the Windows Server® 2003 operating system, as well as data pulled from the company’s human resources system. It will also search user-entered content on employees’ MySite pages, a built-in feature of Office SharePoint Server 2007, which WorkflowOne customized to let users publish information about their areas of expertise, their colleagues, and the companies with which they have relationships.

To make people search more readily available than it was in SharePoint Server 2003, the default Search Center site provided by SharePoint Server 2007 has a new People tab, in addition to tabs for standard and advanced searches.

“With Enterprise Search, someone in Dayton can easily find people who have the needed skills or customer relationships, even if that other person is in Atlanta and his or her name is unknown,” says Noffsinger. “For example, if you type ‘system architect’ in the people search dialog box, you’ll get back my name and those of a few other people.”

In applying Enterprise Search to its new intranet, WorkflowOne used the security trimming feature—that is, the ability to automatically trim search results based on user permissions—to ensure that employees see only the search results that they are allowed to access. Permissions can be tied to SharePoint-based groups or information in the company’s existing Active Directory service. Furthermore, administrators can easily define search scopes based on file properties such as file location, content type, and data source.

For example, someone in the finance department will not see content from the internal area of the human resources department’s site, but will see and be able to access all Web content and documents stored on the public area of that department’s site. This way, confidential human resources information such as promotions and salary history remains secure and viewable only to authorized users with appropriate credentials.

“The security trimming feature has been invaluable in limiting access to only those people with the appropriate permissions, working just as well across both structured and unstructured data sources,” says Noffsinger. “Being able to automatically trim the search results based on security rights is a huge thing—and a key improvement over our previous search system, in which people could see results that they didn’t have permission to access.”

Search as a Programmatic Component of Office Business Applications

On top of its new intranet, WorkflowOne used software from KnowledgeLake to build a comprehensive document scanning solution for vendor invoices. Incoming invoices are scanned and receive a unique bar code ID. The scanned documents are stored on a SharePoint site, while the bar code identifier and metadata about the documents are stored in the company’s Oracle Financials system, out of which such invoices are paid.

On the WorkflowOne intranet, employees can easily find other people who have needed information or expertise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The solution also includes an Office Business Application that links vendor invoices for work done on a client’s behalf with the billing of that work to WorkflowOne clients, which is done on an IBM iSeries midrange server computer. For any invoices that are “out of tolerance” (the invoiced amount varies from the amount billed to the client), line items that do not match are forwarded to Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 business process management software, which kicks off a workflow running on Office SharePoint Server 2007 that looks up the account manager for the client and sends that person an e-mail notification of the discrepancy with a link to the scanned vendor invoice.

Our success with Enterprise Search is yet another validation of Office SharePoint Server 2007 as the foundation of our enterprise portal strategy. Ian O’Brien Chief Information Officer, WorkflowOne

In building the solution, WorkflowOne needed a way to make scanned images of invoices that are stored on a SharePoint site accessible from a Web-based interface running on Oracle Financials. So WorkflowOne developers used Enterprise Search to configure a custom search scope that limits a search to a particular subset of content—in this case, to the locations where scanned invoices are stored—and exposed that search scope for programmatic access as an HTTP module that is called by Oracle Financials.

“Scanned documents such as vendor invoices can be stored anywhere on the intranet and found easily because of the Enterprise Search functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007,” says Landgrave. “The solution allows any internal system—not just Oracle—to create a dynamic link to any scanned document on the intranet just by passing in the unique bar code ID for the document as a parameter. If users have appropriate permissions, they can view the document.”

Previously, when an account manager had a question about a particular vendor invoice, he or she couldn’t find the answer without assistance. There were three or four line-of business applications that had to be searched separately, and the account manager might have to escalate the search to accounting department personnel, who would manually search paper files for an answer. Most of the time, answers to simple questions would take hours—if not days or even weeks—to attain. Now, as a result of the capabilities provided by Enterprise Search, the account manager has immediate online access to that same information and can resolve the issue faster and without help.

WorkflowOne is developing a second Office Business Application for contract administration, which will use Enterprise Search in a similar way. Contracts will be stored on the portal as Portable Document Format files (PDFs) with keyed-in metadata. An IFilter that is called by the Office SharePoint Server 2007 indexing service and knows how to “look inside” PDFs will be used to index the full text of the contracts, and Enterprise Search will provide the mechanism for searching across them.

“With Enterprise Search, a contract administrator or attorney can easily, for example, examine all contracts for the word ‘Montana,’ as may be required to find all contracts that are bound by the laws of that state,” says Noffsinger.

Future Plans

In the future, WorkflowOne plans to take advantage of the Business Data Catalog feature of Office SharePoint Server 2007 to extend the reach of Enterprise Search into other line-of-business systems—and to make search capabilities available to customers using the company’s extranet sites. Once Enterprise Search is connected to the line-of-business systems through the Business Data Catalog, SharePoint Server 2007 will index structured data in those systems, making it searchable.

WorkflowOne plans to integrate Enterprise Search with other Office Business Applications, such as a campaign management solution delivered through its customer extranet. The company also plans to use Enterprise Search to enable people to search across third-party content displayed on the intranet portal, such as news feeds from various providers. “Our Chief Information Officer wants that capability, and Enterprise Search is the means to deliver it,” says Noffsinger. “In fact, whenever it comes to helping people find information, Enterprise Search is the solution that we’ll turn to first.”

Benefits

WorkflowOne is using the Enterprise Search capability in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to make information and expertise more accessible throughout the organization—and for external customers. Furthermore, the company is doing so in a relevant and more secure way, ensuring that people can easily find what they need in the form that they need it, while at the same time limiting access to

Whatever people need, Enterprise Search will help them find it quickly and efficiently, regardless of where the information resides or the form that it’s stored in. Jeff Noffsinger Director of Solutions Development, WorkflowOne

those employees who have the right permissions. And with Enterprise Search as an integral, ready-to-use part of a broader information management infrastructure, the company is able to deliver those benefits faster and with less expense than if it had been required to integrate a stand-alone, third-party search product with its multiple portal solution.

“Our success with Enterprise Search is yet another validation of Office SharePoint Server 2007 as the foundation of our enterprise portal strategy,” says O’Brien. “We’ve been able to very quickly set up new intranet and extranet portals, and just as rapidly start plugging in functionality to meet various business needs—with Enterprise Search built into all those solutions as an integral, ready-to-use feature.”

Improved Access to Information and Expertise

WorkflowOne is able to provide access to all types of information and expertise through a single, preintegrated component of its existing Office SharePoint Server 2007 infrastructure. With Enterprise Search, the company is empowering people to find what they need, when they need it, and in the form that they need it through a single, intuitive interface that includes user-friendly features such as simple search boxes, sorting options, content summaries, highlighting of keywords in search results, automatic query correction, and collapsing of duplicate search results.

“Enterprise Search gives us a single means to search across both structured and unstructured data stores, and to present the results in a highly relevant way that helps people quickly find what they need,” says Noffsinger. “For example, if they’re looking for someone with expertise in a certain area, they don’t need to pore through search results from Web content and documents but instead can focus on only results pertaining to people. At the same time, if they’re trying to learn about a customer, a single search will return all the potential sources of information on that customer, including Web content, documents, data from line-of-business systems, and people who have a relationship with the customer.

“Whatever people need, Enterprise Search will help them find it quickly and efficiently, regardless of where the information resides or the form that it’s stored in.”

Strong Search Security and Manageability

WorkflowOne intranet developers and IT administrators can easily deliver the search capabilities that employees need by using Enterprise Search to crawl a variety of enterprise data sources and make them searchable through a single user interface. “Enterprise Search gives us a powerful, easy-to-use management console that enables us to deliver exactly what the organization requires, in most cases without any custom development,” says Noffsinger. “With the Enterprise Search management console, we can easily manage content sources, relevance, search scopes, and other settings—all in a single place.”

Minimal Complexity and Costs

Use of Enterprise Search has enabled WorkflowOne to deliver the search capabilities that employees need with minimal cost and complexity. “We had no need to look at stand-alone search products, such as a Google search appliance, which would have meant additional cost, complexity, development effort, and time-to-market,” says Noffsinger. “With Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Search, we get all the search capabilities that we need—built into our intranet and extranet portals in a way that can be immediately put to use. Enterprise Search was an immediate, out-of-the-box solution to all our needs, which, for an environment as diverse and complex as ours, is a pretty strong testimonial to its strength and flexibility.”
 
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