Here’s an interesting article from Beyond Search which looks further into this topic:

Comperio Provides a Safety Net at SharePoint

Entering a Misspelled word during internet search can lead to a few moments of irritation, but in the business world things become even more complicated. Typing one wrong letter can often send users spiraling downward towards a promotional disaster. Fortunately, some providers are hanging up a few safety nets to prevent the fall.

Microsoft just revamped Bing to recognize common errors during internet search.  According to, ‘Bing reveals efforts to help with human search errors Bing will remember key words and phrases most frequently used. To correct issues the search feature itself was altered as:

“We used to show synonyms as part of our recourse links and this would open up some surface area for showing alterations. The query “define interesting” highlights an example where the recourse link was unnecessary.  In this case, showing the Recourse Link didn’t enhance the experience. We’ve removed the Recourse Links in cases where we are very confident that they add little value or distract users.”

Basically, Microsoft created a net to catch errors in advance and Comperio can implement similar functions within SharePoint using Fast technology. The safety net Comperio provides can help catch users before they fall into the uncomfortable realm of presentation faux pas.  They can customize the programming towards the specific needs of the business to increase efficiency.

For more information about Comperio, visit the company website at http://www.comperiosearch.com/.

via Jennifer Shockley, June 27, 2012

Beyond Search

Users find laundry lists of results a necessary but sometimes hard to use way to pinpoint needed information. Users looking for a PowerPoint presentation want a way to spot presentations without browsing, opening, scanning, and repeating the process. One feature of SharePoint is its document thumbnail and preview function. Instead of a list of text results, SharePoint can display search results with a thumbnail image of the document. Users can quickly identify a document type, which allows a research task to be accomplished more quickly.

There is, however, one challenge in some SharePoint installations. According to the document Office Web App & FAST Search Document Thumbnail and Preview scenarios, many users found document previews and thumbnails to not show up in FAST search results for SharePoint 2010. Microsoft acknowledges:

“Document Previews do not work with Claims Based Authentication and is a known limitation with the Product.”

Microsoft’s knowledge base article provides a number of ways to resolve the problem. But what does a SharePoint administrator do when a third party application is part of the mix? The SharePoint licensee needs immediate access to deep expertise with both SharePoint and FAST search to ensure that system performance and functionality are maintained at a high level.

Comperio, one of the world’s leading firms in FAST search engineering and consulting, can resolve preview issues quickly. Comperio’s engineers have in-depth experience with both SharePoint and FAST search. If you want to tap document previews using Microsoft’s native functions or employ third party software from firms such as BA Insight (www.bainsight.com), Comperio delivers. Comperio combines experience and technical expertise for leveraging FAST search within SharePoint. For more information about Comperio, visit our website at www.comperiosearch.com.

via Jennifer Shockley, June 22, 2012

Beyond Search

Comperio consultant, Marcus Johansson, co-authors ‘Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint’.

As most search techies will testify, the life of a consultant working on complex enterprise search projects with large customers, can be quite a demanding one. To commit to investing personal time, outside of all this project work is, to put pen to paper and document a series of learnings and tips in a structured and user-friendly format, is no mean feat. So on this note, we salute Comperio consultant Marcus Johansson and congratulate him on the release of his first book earlier this month - Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint.

Marcus co-authored the book with Mikael Svenson and Robert Piddocke, who are also highly regarded contributors to the search community. Here, in Marcus’ own words, is some background on the book:

The book is split into two parts: the first one explains what you’ll need to know to deploy and administrate a solution. The second one is targeting developers who want to build their own search solutions on top of FAST Search for SharePoint. Although we expect most readers to have a SharePoint background, people who’s worked with FAST technology in previous incarnations will hopefully feel at home as well.

Recognizing  FAST Search for SharePoint’s popularity, and seeing that the product is many people’s first exposure of Enterprise Search technology, the first two chapters introduce the reader to important concepts and terminology. We felt it was critical to get this backdrop right as there are vastly different data and user experience opportunities (and challenges) in Search technology, than in e.g. a database-driven solution.

The next few chapters  target the IT Pro audience and deal with such things as architecture, scale-out, deployment and security. Scaling, in particular, is covered in depth seeing how FAST Search for SharePoint is often used for top-tier solutions both in  query load and content volume. Additionally, day-to-day operations and the various methods of maintenance is covered in detail. We show you how to interact with and follow-up the system through the SharePoint GUI, but also how to work with the solutions through PowerShell and, for those adventurous people who wants to truly integrate the platform in their application environments, how you can integrate against FAST Search for SharePoint’s native APIs even for administrational and operational tasks.

The second part of the book is a good fit for application developers who want to create their own search solutions on top of FAST Search for SharePoint, whether that means extending a default FAST Search Center or completely build their own search-driven application truly taking advantage of the powerful platform. Doing so, developers will realize an Enterprise Search platform, such as FAST Search for SharePoint, relies not only on a competent and flexible index, but also on a framework for advanced content processing and the possibilities to query into the data using a rich query language.

Finally, the book is wrapped up with a tutorial-like section on how to resolve common problems and how to attack frequent development scenarios.

At Comperio, we see how more and more of our clients realize the potential in not only implementing a global search experience in their enterprise, but to deploy targeted search-driven applications across their organizations. One user group might need a mash-up of data aggregated from several internal content sources, and perhaps another group needs to trigger a certain function that he or she perceives as a single operation, but in reality hits 2-3 different source systems in the backend. A search-driven interface is the very sweet spot for building such applications, and  I’m hopeful this book will give you the tools of the trade to implement them in reality.

Happy reading!

In recognition of Marcus’ achievement, the team here in Comperio have given him temporary clearance to use lines like ‘As I say in my book, Working with Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, …’ in internal meetings and possibly even at customer presentations.

The book is now available for purchase on Amazon - or you can win one of three free copies being offered by Comperio, by being one of the first to tweet this post mentioning @comperiosearch.

Dr. Olstad speaks on how Norway is a hotbed for search technology development and this search ecosystem has it’s source at NTNU in Trondheim, which have been a feeder university to search giants like Yahoo, Google and Microsoft.

With the tidal growth of data (particularly unstructured) in the past decade, it is no surprise that enterprise search has seen impressive increases in levels of demand. Hence, says Dr. Olstad, the competition for bright young knowledge management or search graduates has intensified. He also points out that several search start-ups have risen out of Norway, benefitting from the knowledge and experience in the local search ecosystem.

One example of these Norwegian search start-ups is Comperio, which has matured to being 50 employees strong with offices in Oslo, Stockholm, London and Boston. Comperio is a Systems Integrator (SI) focused on implementing FAST Search projects for enterprise customers. These search solutions, more recently developed on the FAST Search for SharePoint platform, offer an alternative to traditional integration between IT systems. ‘Today, a lot of IT budgets devoted to integrating old and new solutions. It costs time and money. We rather use search technology’, says Comperio founder and CEO Jørn Ellefsen.

Comperio has developed search solutions in Norway for such recognisable names as, Sintef, Posten, DSS, DNV and Innovation Norway. Outside of Norway, Comperio has delivered large projects for the likes of UBS and Shell. ‘The search-based technology we are developing is largely generic, and it allows us to reuse the solutions from previous projects with new customers. This means that it is both cheaper and better for everyone. This market is starting to wake up in earnest and will grow quickly when you discover how effective the technology is. I think the market for our services will increase tenfold over the next three years’, added Ellefsen.

Comperio are currently hiring for their Oslo and London offices. See the open positions @ http://www.comperiosearch.com/about-comperio/work-for-us/.

Original article from http://www.tu.no/it/article292738.ece.