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BEA AquaLogic Pathways helps users discover information and expertise by extracting information about how information is actually used. BEA AquaLogic Pathways combines search, content tagging, bookmarking and activity analytics to deliver a better way to discover information and people.
For content and people, BEA AquaLogic Pathways creates a unique rank - called ActivityRank - that it develops over time. This rank is based on a number of adjustable factors derived from the frequency and value of individual activities - authorship, tagging, bookmarking, reading, editing, and more. BEA AquaLogic Pathways uses this rank to determine the ranking of search results, based on a unique combination of classic relevance and user-driven activities.
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For business users, BEA AquaLogic Pathways provides more accurate search results, pointing directly to the content and people that are the most valuable and relevant. BEA AquaLogic Pathways lets users “tag” content and people, describing items to the system in a way that is personally meaningful. BEA AquaLogic Pathways creates views of content collections, providing users both a personalized view based on their own tags, as well as customizeable views based on the tags contributed by others. Users can also “bookmark” items in BEA AquaLogic Pathways and maintain a running list of favorites or critical documents.
For IT, BEA AquaLogic Pathways helps deliver search that works, and provides a platform for building new and innovative search-driven applications – from a research database to an expert location system. BEA AquaLogic Pathways builds its collection by scanning existing enterprise content systems – SharePoint, Documentum, OpenText LiveLink, Lotus Notes, and more – allowing IT to get more out of what's already there.
BEA AquaLogic Ensemble: Key Capabilities
CAPABILITY |
WHAT |
HOW |
| Content assembly |
Assemble content from different enterprise repositories |
BEA AquaLogic Pathways features a pluggable system for assembling content from key enterprise systems. BEA AquaLogic Pathways is accompanied by a number of pre-built connectors for Lotus Notes, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, file systems, Web servers, Documentum and more. These components scan through underlying systems, creating a rich collection of links to distributed information and repositories. The components feature a long list of sophisticated capabilities, including asynchronous scheduling, security mirroring, text and metadata extraction, taxonomy mirroring and more. |
| Metadata normalization |
Map different metadata to a single set of global properties |
BEA AquaLogic Pathways features the ability to extract metadata from a variety of content types and normalize that metadata to a global set of properties. An HTML page, a Word document and an email message all have different ways of describing who the author is. BEA AquaLogic Pathways extracts the author property for each and allows IT to create a single property users can search on. |
| Auto-tagging |
Generate tags automatically from existing metadata or document attributes |
BEA AquaLogic Pathways adds a simple layer of tags, or labels, to content in its collection. Tags can be generated automatically from existing metadata or from additional document attributes, like its location in a native system. Tags can also be applied to people and generated from attributes applied by underlying user-management systems, like fields in an LDAP directory or job codes in a HRMS system. |
| Tagging and bookmarking |
Apply simple tags to items and keep a list of favorites |
Participants can tag items and people in the system and can also keep a list of favorite items – content or people – they can retrieve simply. BEA AquaLogic Pathways will suggest tags based on tags already applied to the item by other users, as well as auto-complete a tag based on an editable lexicon. |
| Views |
Create smart views of content and people |
BEA AquaLogic Pathways assembles views, or "tag clouds" based on the tags applied to content collections. The "Everyone" view displays the tags applied to the collection by all users. The "My View" displays tags applied by directly by a participant. Users can create custom views by selecting different users and user groups in the system, like Marketing group, or "really smart people I know." |
| Advanced search |
Simplify complex searches |
Users search the contents of a document, its metadata, and tags associated with the document, simultaneously. Users can also restrict searches to just tags or just the document index, as well as build more complex queries combining tags, document keywords and metadata attributes through an intuitive query builder. Users can save searches and search within results. |
| ActivityRank |
Improve search relevance and search results ranking |
BEA AquaLogic Pathways features a revolutionary new relevance ranking system. Within BEA AquaLogic Pathways, every item in a collection – content and people – has a rank that is developed over time. This rank is based on a series of adjustable factors derived from implicit and explicit user activities. For items, Pathways builds a rank based on the rank of the item's author; how often the item is edited and the rank of its editors; how often the item is tagged and the rank of the users who tag it; how often the item is viewed and the rank of the viewers, and more. For people, Pathways builds a rank based on how often a user authors items and the rank of those items; how often a user edits pages and the rank of those pages; how often other users tag the user or add the user as a favorite, and the rank of those users; and more. ActivityRank has the promise to fundamentally change the information discovery landscape. |
BEA AquaLogic Pathways: Key benefits
- Users find the best information quickly: BEA AquaLogic Pathways discovers the true value of content and people, based on implicit activity often lost in the day-to-day shuffle. BEA AquaLogic Pathways directs people to what they're looking for faster and with less frustration.
- Search is no longer a "dirty word": users like search, because it works.
- Create a powerful discovery application across all existing content systems: Information is scattered across lots of different places, and available in many different formats.
- Help users find domain and subject matter experts: in most organizations, people are the most important asset, and often have more information, better organized in their heads, than most software programs.
- Capture the wisdom of crowds, without trying: How often does a frustrated search end in "I'll just call Bob. He'll know the answer." BEA AquaLogic Pathways gives you search results as reliable as the information you get from Bob, and even better from the 1000 other Bobs in your company you don't know personally.
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