Sharing information through the Lotus Knowledge Discovery System

Knowledge management, or sharing information within a company, is becoming increasingly important in today's highly competitive marketplace. While many companies have some form of internal communication—be it a corporate portal or simply e-mail—not much attention has been paid to putting more formal, comprehensive systems in place.

Now, with the technology to connect people across the room or across the ocean, collaboration between employees in different locations is much easier. When employees share their own knowledge and experience with each other in this manner, productivity goes up. Knowing exactly how to get the information they need from people, documents, or web sites, and being able to access it all on a centralized interface, helps employees learn about their company and get their tasks done faster.

As the benefits of knowledge management become evident, more companies want to get in on it. What they generally want is a system that will do it all. This demand has lead to the development of the Lotus? Knowledge Discovery System.

The system is comprised of two components, the Discovery Server and the K-station portal, which enable employees to search categorized information and collaborate with coworkers and others through a web interface.

Discovery Server

The Discovery Server side of the system extracts information from various sources using "spider" programs, automated bots that search for data. The data is then analyzed and categorized to show the links between the content, people, and topics in an organization. The categories are displayed in a knowledge map (K-map), which is automatically generated by the server and can be customized by an administrator through the K-map Editor. This K-map can be browsed or searched by an employee for specific information.

Using the K-map
The K-map is accessed from within an organization via a web browser. Categories containing documents, expert sources, and virtual information storage areas are mapped on the screen. The search functionality allows employees to find the most relevant information and see how different pieces of information interrelate.

Documents are ranked according to how often they are accessed and expert sources are given an "affinity" ranking for a particular topic, making it easier to find the best resource. The rankings are computed through Discovery Server's Metric Analysis feature.

When all that's needed is a quick answer, employees can go directly to an expert source. These experts are displayed with an "awareness icon" that lets users know who's online and available to be contacted (via phone, e-mail addresses, or instant message). More information about experts can be found in their user profiles. These profiles are automatically created and maintained by the Discovery Server. Users have full control over what information in their profile is displayed to others.

Employees can access virtual information storage areas in the K-map through the K-station Community Places feature. Clicking a "place" name in the list displayed in the K-map launches K-station. Places can contain everything from discussion forums to document libraries and bookmarked web pages related to a particular topic. A "Place Manager" authenticates users and determines which places they can access.

K-station

K-station is the browser-based portal side of the Knowledge Discovery System. With this product, employees can collaborate with others in virtual communities, store and manage the information they've gathered, and quickly access desktop applications and web sites.

Features
K-station is made up of three components—places, pages, and portlets.
• Places—employees can personalize the tools and information they need on a daily basis (Personal Places) and collaborate with others on a team project (Community Places)

• Pages—a virtual file folder system in which employees can organize and categorize the information they've gathered

• Portlets—customizable access points to other applications, such as desktop applications, Domino databases, back-end systems, and web sites

Complementing products

While the two components of the Knowledge Discovery System can be used alone, there are advantages to using them together. Basically, Discovery Server collects and displays the information and K-station allows employees to personalize the data and enhance it through collaboration with others inside and outside the company.

While each of the two products has its own benefits, the system was designed so the features of one component complement the other. Used together, the Discovery Server and K-station provide an employee or teams of employees with a single access point from which they can find, organize, and act on information.

For more information on the Knowledge Discovery System, go to the Lotus Knowledge Management page at: http://www.lotus.com/km.