'Richer Suite of Functionality'
Harish Amin, Founder of Omniware Consulting, discusses his organization's role in the selection and deployment of Verity Ultraseek on the State of Wisconsin's public website at www.wisconsin.gov.
What business challenges prompted the State of Wisconsin to evaluate Verity Ultraseek?
Prior to the implementation of the Ultraseek software in 1999, the State of Wisconsin had been using a very basic, almost home grown search solution on its public websites. Someone wrote a Perl script that scanned through our documents. It wasn't reliable at all. As contractors to the State of Wisconsin, Omniware Consulting recommended that the State's Web properties standardize on a richer suite of functionality for statewide search to help citizens locate relevant information faster.
Tell us about your Ultraseek implementation experience. How fast did you roll it out?
We downloaded Ultraseek for a 30-day evaluation, and had it up and running within a day. Over the years, it's been extremely straightforward to implement the new releases of Ultraseek. Most of our configurations are fairly simple. We take two boxes, install the newer version on one box and point the search to that and it'd be running in a half a day. We normally perform our updates during a Saturday maintenance window.
How is Ultraseek used at the State of Wisconsin?
Verity Ultraseek and the Content Classification Engine module are used on the State's public website (www.wisconsin.gov). Our site averages approximately 50,000 search queries a day. We have about 750,000 documents indexed across virtually every agency, board, commission and department in the state including the Office of the Governor, the Department of Revenue and many more. Each agency customizes the user interface and result pages according to their own standards.
What Ultraseek feature could your client not do without? Why?
There are many valuable features inside Ultraseek. As an example, the Department of Public Instruction's Reference and Loan Library makes extensive use of Ultraseek topics, reporting tools and Quick Links to more effectively respond to the requests for information from their end-users.
What has fast, relevant, easy to maintain search meant for www.wisconsin.gov?
As easy as Ultraseek is to install and maintain, the citizens of our state benefit the most from an effective search experience on www.wisconsin.gov. They are able to find where to pay their taxes, get their fishing license and more effectively conduct business with the State. This has been validated by the positive comments we receive in surveys about the user experience on the State of Wisconsin's public sites.
Posted November 17, 2005 12:38 PM by editor
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