1. Taking the taxing out of Taxonomy Lessons from a CMS Implementation

2. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 A brief history of CMS at CHC CMS provides consistency, centralization and a robust audit trail – all necessary components for a safety oriented company CHC had large, sudden growth by acquisition and amalgamation CHC had traditional silos issues

3. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 Whats in this for your organization? Better understand the various levels of change that a CMS forces on an organization Learn about the process by which CHC arrived at needing and defining a taxonomy Glean some lessons learned without having to blunder through them yourself

4. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 What triggered a CHC taxonomy? Frustration with Help files that only explained how and never why or when Began day-dreaming about being able to find information in CHC documentation faster and more accurately Asked myself rhetorical questions about what Joe Pilot wants to know

5. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 What thwarts a taxonomy project? CHC is an action-oriented culture without a lot of patience for technology that doesnt deliver Relationship is king, procedures are not Planning takes courage Burning bridges with IT Keep the motto extensible, portable, usable in mind at all times

6. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 How does the motto help? Extensible Dont get into plans that cant grow with you Portable Avoid getting into proprietary solutions as much as possible (W3C approved is best) Usable Make the solution fit todays needs, not just tomorrows dreams

7. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 How does this relate to taxonomy? Three versions of the CHC solution, first two vetoed because they couldnt meet the motto: 1. The FAQ version (not usable) 2. The taxonomy markup and 3 rd party search engine solution (not portable) 3. The symmetrical markup and search phase (the best to date)

8. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 CHCs approach explained Devise a two-level taxonomy for coarse searching and get buy in early from all stakeholders Leave the fine searching for each departments back of the book index tags Put all the content into one cross-divisional intranet page and support it with search logic that mirrors the markup logic

9. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 Finally, the search logic Six main search criteria came to light: 1. Wondering about generic topics 2. Filtering by audience profiles 3. Putting concepts in a CHC context 4. Providing CHC guidelines and best practices 5. Referring to or explaining compliance issues 6. Defining and prescribing compliance-related procedures

10. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 Three layers, two sides each LevelConceptUsers are looking for: 1Topical searchA keyword, further constrained by audience profile 2Putting things into a CHC context History, best practices, troubleshooting, warnings, tips, tricks, guidelines 3Compliance issuesAuditable procedures and processes to comply with policies, standards and regulations

11. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 The challenges before us Getting buy in for the taxonomy and the categorizations Agreeing on terms – their use, their scope and even their spelling Building the tagging tool for authors Building the search tool for the single intranet page that houses all CHC content

12. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 Future goals Linking the knowledge-base output to their corresponding PDFs Provides autonomy for each division and department on how to file their manuals on the intranet Retains the sense of 1:1 ratio between the knowledge base and the manuals that crews can order from the technical library

13. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 Future goals continued The first layer of searchability will only have drop downs from the taxonomy and predefined categorizations Future searches will have natural language capability: this will require a large see also, see instead project

14. October 6, 2006SLA Conference 2006 The bottom line Taxonomies can be basic, leveraged with procedures that are actually followed due to well managed relationships Extensible, portable, usable is a helpful motto for CMS planning CMS facilitates: 1. Consistency (terms, output styles) 2. Integrity(re-use, linking, writing style) 3. Transparency(searchability, accessibility)