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UPCOMING EVENTS:

19-JUL-2010
IBM Portal Excellence Conference 2010, Chicago
Gold Sponsorship
Booth #207

19-JULY-2010
3:15 PM - 4:15 PM Presentation
Room: Stevens 1
TECHD04: Getting the Most out of Data Page and Rich Data Definitions using WebSphere Portlet Factory

19-JULY-2010
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM Demonstration
Booth #207
Top Gun/Portal Development on Demand

20-JULY-2010
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM & 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM Demonstration
Booth #207
Fusion Charts on Demand

20-JULY-2010
12:15 PM - 1:45 PM Demonstration
Booth #207
AJAX/DOJO on Demand


LIVE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM:

02-AUG-2010
D8900: IBM Lotus Domino 8 System Administration Bootcamp

16-AUG-2010
TG916/WPC42 IBM Websphere Portlet Factory 6.1.5 - Application Development I - Updated


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Welcome to the June 2010 edition of the Davalen eNewsletter.

In this monthly publication, Davalen's Search & Discovery, WebSphere, Lotus, and National Staffing Consulting Practices, come together to share relevant news and information on the technology that powers your projects.

It's time for the IBM Portal Excellence Conference and from July 19 - 22 the Davalen team will be in the Windy City presenting technical classes, product demonstrations, and providing key information to solve your critical business needs. We will be at Booth #207 during all showcase hours and have provided some important dates and times in the Quick Links section to add to your schedule for the event. We hope to see you there!

For more information, visit our conference page, follow Twitter account @PortletFactory, or Twitter hashtag #PortalExConf for more information.

From technical tips to consulting and mentoring services, Davalen provides comprehensive resources for your business needs. So take a quick break, and gain some valuable insight from the professionals who know it best.

To view technical articles from past eNewsletters, simply visit our blog.

Cheers,
Ruth Jarvis

From Peter Wilkerson, Search & Discovery Practice Area Manager

In May, IBM announced the next version of OmniFind Enterprise Edition. When you read through the announcement you will see a number of enhancements and new features. The feature that is of particular interest is "Facets" and how they can be created. This article considers the new combination of functionality and exactly what that means for Enterprise search. If you get complaints that your enterprise search "just doesn't work," this article will help you understand how you can help and give you some new solutions to the problem.

Facets can be used in many ways. A common use is to let users filter large result sets based on the attributes of documents in the result set. In the Enterprise, some common facets are document type, department, project code and the like. These are all very useful when searching but, it doesn't always help people find what they are looking for.

Let's think outside the box for a moment. How else might we guide our users to documents that they want and need?

What if...
What if we looked beyond attributes commonalty such as a document's digital attributes and the business context in which it was created or used (document type, department, author, project code, etc.) and add a different set of facets based on a different kind of characteristic - a customer-interest facet? (Sidebar: I describe all individuals using search as customers whether they are searching as members of the Enterprise or B2B/Retail customers).

Here is how I get people to think about customer-interest facets:
If you knew someone from HR was searching your content, what kind of documents would they most likely want to see? How about people from your Marketing Department? Customer Service? People in each of these departments are likely to have a very different idea of the "ideal search result set" - even if they all entered the same search keywords (which is why it seems that you "just can't win" when you are tuning search).

What can you do?
You need to identify characteristics in these documents that you can use to identify and differentiate how the "ideal document result set" for any given customer group is different than the less useful documents returned. You also need to consider how these differentiators might help you identify the ideal result set for your other user groups. Once you've identified these differentiating characteristics, we need a way to "automatically" assign a facet that identifies a document as relevant to a given group. For our HR scenario, let's say that we assigned a facet value of "HR-relevant" to documents in the ideal result set for HR.

How can you implement this?
There are two pieces of this puzzle. First, you need the ability to influence the sequence of documents in a result set based on facet values and second, you need a way to assign these values to individual documents in a cost-effective way.

In OmniFind EE v9.1, you are able to influence how important any given document is for a given search. Any document can be made to appear higher in a result set than it would have otherwise ummappeared based on the value contained in fields (sometimes called features). In our HR example, if a person is signed in and is identified as an HR worker, then we can "boost" any documents that have a facet (or feature) value of "HR-relevant."

 Next, there is the problem of how to identify which documents out of hundreds of thousands of documents should be marked as "HR-relevant." It is not cost-effective to have an individual go through all the documents and make that determination. You could assign codes when a document is created but that approach has it's drawbacks as well. What we need is a way to also assign facet values (and other document metadata) based on patterns.

A pattern can be defined in terms of the intersection of words found in the content, author, document type and other attributes. (There are software packages that can help you identify these patterns.) Once a pattern has been identified and defined, you need the ability to assign a new facet value whenever that pattern occurs. This is where one of my favorite tools comes into play - UIMA.

UIMA stands for "Unstructured Information Management Architecture." It is a way to extract information based on patterns, presence of keywords/synonyms, proximity of words, parts of speech - all based on unstructured data found in documents being indexed. With Omnifind v9.1, it is possible to assign a new value to a facet field based on the UIMA pattern.

As a result we have a tremendous amount of flexibility when we need to update or refine what documents should be assigned a facet value (say "HR-relevant" for our earlier HR scenario) - all without having to change the content sources themselves.

Bottom Line
Companies who use this approach will find they are able to customize/personalize results sets based on who is searching (probably based on user login and profile information). This capability will lead to higher satisfaction with search in general. An added benefit is that you will also be able to update your search "schema" of how to weight documents and respond to changing needs and new challenges more easily.
From Dave Jacob, Managing Partner, WebSphere

With the release of IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory v7 beta, I am in the process of updating the Top Gun Portlet Factory mentoring system to match the new release. Davalen will be including the basic functionality already in the course with new sections on utilizing the new Davalen Fusion chart builder and sections on AJAX, DOJO and the new charting engine, which replaces Web Charts in Version 7.

Working closely with the IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory team, Davalen plans to release the course when version 7 ships.

Look for the upcoming release announcement from IBM.

I'm sure the IBM team will have lots to say about the version 7 release at the upcoming Portal Excellence Conference in Chicago next month.

Stop by and chat in the exhibit hall at Booth #207 and I'll show a pre-release of the Top Gun course.
From Len Barker, Managing Partner, Lotus

Most of you have seen the standard plug-ins for Lotus Notes for Sametime and Quickr and you may have even experimented with a Google gadget plug-in or two. And in a previous article I talked about custom plug-ins that we have written for Business Cards and Lotus Connections. This month I thought I would share a plug-in for Notes administrators.

Since plug-ins for Lotus Notes use the extension points available in Eclipse/Lotus Expeditor, it is possible to install a plug-in that intercepts the Notes Client start up process immediately after the user authenticates. This concept should make the wheels start spinning in the heads of Notes Administrators everywhere. One of our clients used this feature to migrate the Notes data directories of thousands of users from a file server to local client directories. Because the users were already authenticated when this code ran, the code was able to manipulate encrypted files and check Domino directory settings for the user (like roaming status) before moving files. Of course a nice little dialog box informed the users to standby while Lotus Notes was being upgraded.

IBM's Hunter Medney was kind enough to post a blog entry on how to get started with a plugin like this.

To get started, I simply created a new plug-in project in Eclipse and placed Hunter's code in my Activator class.
From Deborah Corcoran, National Practice Manager for Resource Deployment Services to IBM

This month's Staffing Section is focusing on what our customers are in most need of regarding "just in time" recruiting requirements.

I am encouraging you to send me an email with some of the questions you may have regarding Davalen's Staffing Practice. See for yourself just how easy it is to engage with us - whether it is for a short term or long term project, our technical experts are here to help

Customers are always amazed to see how easy it is to request any one of our technical folks to come onsite and offer their expertise to help solve infrastructure issues or challenges. Whether it is creating a smoother business work flow process or offering recommendations on how to make your current environment run more efficiently. Davalen's skilled technologists, parachute "in and out" with ease - whether it is offering assistance in managing the administration of the day to day environment, developing a customer facing, friendly and easy to use web application processes, or just about any challenge that faces your ever changing technical environment.

About Davalen: We Speak Business. We Understand Technology. TM

Davalen, LLC, has been a trusted partner in collaborative software consulting solutions for the enterprise since 1993. An IBM Premier Business Partner, Davalen provides RapidValue Services for Lotus Domino, WebSphere Portal, Retail & Enterprise Search, and Web Content Management. The RapidValue Services are designed to ensure clients receive the most value from their investment in IBM software. With master class training in IBM software brands, Davalen provides an elegant blend of system architecture, mentoring and agile implementation assistance.

With offices across the U.S and Brazil and classes operating in the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and Europe, Davalen instructors and consultants have won numerous training awards from IBM for their deep understanding of advanced IBM technologies.

Contact Davalen today to learn how we can help your business understand its technology.


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