Designing Intranet Information Services IIS 1

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Designing Intranet Information Services (IIS) - 1
T.B. RajashekarNational Centre for Science
InformationIndian Institute of ScienceBangalore
560 012 (EMail raja_at_ncsi.iisc.ernet.in)
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We will be covering

• Goals of IIS
• Design elements - 1
• Information auditing
• User community and their preferences
• Infrastructure and resources
• IIS architecture
• Content storage and processing

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We will be coveringnext session

• Design elements 2
• Web style guide
• Metadata
• Subject organization
• Database driven approach for content management
• Customisation
• Relevance of XML
• Resources

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Goals of IIS

• Managed publishing and hosting of content
• What, who, where, why, how
• Integration of internal/ external, fee/ free
  content
• Integration of legacy content
• Structured and controlled access to content
• Usage monitoring
• Training and maintenance

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Designing IISSo?

• We need to have clarity on key components of IIS
• So, as intranet webmasters/ content managers, we
  ask a series of questions related to these
  components and try to answer these

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User Community
Information Assets
Infrastructure Resources
IISDesign Components
Content Storage Processing
Subject Organization
IIS Architecture
Database Approach
Web Style Guide
Metadata
Personalization
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Design Elements Information Auditing

• Information assets of the company
• Document-based, experts, partners, clients,
  competitors
• Print, analogue, digital
• Creation, ownership, availability
• Volume and growth
• Types and formats, web-compatibility
• Content rating (importance)
• Volume and frequency of use (80-20 rule!)

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Design Elements User Community Preferences

• Organizational goals, vision, business processes
• Internal users
• Divisions, their goals, business processes,
  composition
• Local, branch, mobile, home
• External users Who? Any access restrictions?
  What?

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Design Elements User Community Preferences

• Volume
• What content they access? How frequently? (80-20
  rule!)
• What technology they use for access and
  publishing?
• E-Mail and Web-based surveys (an example)
• Access log analysis of servers

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Web-based User Survey
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Web-based User Survey
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Web-based User Survey
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Design Elements Infrastructure and Resources

• Servers
• Type (web, e-mail, database), services/
  function, location, configuration
• Clients, platform, numbers
• RDBMS, web/text search engines
• Authoring and publishing tools
• Staff
• IIS manager, Information architect/ intranet
  librarian, SQL/Search engine specialist,
  application developers, webmaster, content editors

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Design Elements IIS Architecture

• What architecture is required to meet the IIS
  goals defined earlier?
• Websites Centralized? Decentralized?
• How is the search handled, if decentralized?
• Site design uniform look feel
• Linkages with the company Internet website,
  extranet

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Design Elements IIS Architecture

• Need metadata for content identification, access,
  administration and rights management
• Who is going to add metadata?
• Where it will reside? With the content or
  separately in a database, with links?

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Design Elements IIS Architecture

• Access
• Structured/ unstructured access?
• Full content search?
• Access control?
• Browsing by topics?
• How do we support customisation/ personalization?
• How do we monitor usage?

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Design Elements IIS Architecture

• Publishing
• What authoring, publishing tool?
• Content format
• Publishing style
• Need web style guide (structure, navigation,
  labels, logo, icons, font type, size, color)
• Editorial/ quality control?
• Authorization for content hosting?
• Metadata preparation
• Hosting

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Design ElementsContent Storage and Processing

• Requirements for handling content formats
• Browser-aware formats no issue
• Plug-in based content (e.g. PDF)
• Helper applications (e.g. Word) platform
  dependent
• All your users have these?
• Level of content storage
• File level A document may have several physical
  components stored at folder level (e.g. PDF
  document, software package, tutorial)
• Record level stored as database records or
  occasionally as individual files (e.g. staff
  directory, customer profile)

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Design ElementsContent Storage and Processing

• Document identification
• URL
• Any additional permanent identifier?
• Presentation/ delivery of content
• Record level content no issues
• File level content may need to be split into
  smaller units to facilitate faster delivery,
  audio/video streaming, PDF page serving,
  compression

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File level content (example 1)
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File level content (example 1) (contd.)
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File level content (example 1) (contd.)
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File level content (example 2)
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File level content (example 2) (contd.)
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File level content (example 2) (contd.)
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Record level content(Example 1)
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Record level content(Example 1) (contd.)
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Record level content(Example 1) (contd.)
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Record level content(Example 2)
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Record level content(Example 2) (contd.)
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Design ElementsContent Storage and Processing

• Resource discovery
• How the content is stored influences the indexing
  and search aspects
• Usual full-text searching of text-based content
  is not sufficient
• Full-text indexing cannot handle non-indexable
  content (PDF, images, etc.)
• Appropriate metadata is essential for meaningful
  resource discovery

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Designing IIS

• We will continue the discussions in the next
  session