We live in a world of silos - separate systems each with data essential to our daily work. No organization has all its important information in one place - 61% of knowledge workers regularly access 4 or more systems to get the information they need to do their jobs, and 15% need 11 or more systems. Integration to provide a unified view across these systems is very valuable, but it has been difficult to accomplish - even between different Microsoft products. This seminar will show you how to bridge across these silos using a search-based approach that is both quick and powerful.

1. Using search to integrate O365, Dynamics 365,
SharePoint, and LOB systems
Connecting Across Silos

2. Agenda
• Introduction
• Knowledge Accessibility
• Modern Enterprise Ecosystems
• Enterprise Search & Knowledge Apps
• Solutions & Demos
– Sales Assistant
– Customer Support Portal
• Knowledge Apps in Office 365 and the Microsoft Cloud
• Next Steps

3. About the Company and Speaker
Netwoven
• Founded in 2001
• All founders are ex-Microsoft
• Served over 200 clients in the Bay Area
• Ranked in Inc. 5000 list twice
• Delivery Centers in US & India
Speaker
Joined Netwoven Team in 2007
Andrew “Drew” Sutton
Practice Director, Content
& Collaboration

4. Netwoven Offerings
Consulting Products Staffing
What
Lines of Business
TeamConnect
Business Productivity
InsightConnect
Big Data & Analytics
CustomerConnect
Business Automation
InfrastructureConnec
t Infrastructure Services
Operating Principles
Global, Cost-effective
Delivery
Flexible Engagements
to Match Needs
Agile Methodologies
Value to Clients
Expertise
On Demand
Availability
Collaboration
Open & Direct
Communication
Cost Effective
How
Why

5. A Few of our Past & Current Clients

6. Knowledge Accessibility
Situation: Vast quantities and variety of information is constantly created
and stored
Challenge: How to aggregate, normalize and present this info so that
users can efficiently answer their questions and fulfill their roles?
Goal: Provide users a combination of broad generic search capabilities
and a cohesive set of purpose-built Knowledge Applications with clear
direction on how to use

7. Modern Enterprise Ecosystems are Heterogenous

8. Solution Required for Knowledge Accessibility

9. Knowledge Applications
• Knowledge Applications are
becoming very popular
• One location for consolidated view
of information about a specific topic
• Leverage Search, Analytics, Machine
Learning, Natural Language, Content
Access APIs
• The challenge is to aggregate,
normalize and present information
from many places into one powerful
tool
• Think of Knowledge Apps as next
gen Search Applications

10. Enterprise Search vs. Knowledge Apps
Enterprise Search
• Broad scope to index and serve queries
across MANY systems
• Does well converting user interaction
into ranking feedback OOTB
• Works best with non-hierarchical
results
• Typically significantly less effort to
implement than a Knowledge App
Knowledge Apps
• Provides multi-faceted views of
information, from many systems,
about a specific topic
• Typically the best place to search for
answers to questions about that topic
• Many times will make use of search,
Machine Learning and other
technologies to provide more insightful
information than generic search
• Typically more involved
implementation

11. Example Current State: Information Retrieval

12. Sales Assistant: Knowledge App Demo

13. Sales Assistant: Logical Data Flow
Sales
Assistant
App
CRIS
Voice to Text
LUIS
Semantics
Extraction
Data Sources
2
3
4
5
9
7
8
Voice Data
Text
Text
Semantics
Data Access Query
Data Response
Text ResponseUser
Human Voice
AI Voice Response
1
10
Intelligence
Service
Voice Data
1
Query
Generation

14. Sales Assistant: Logical Architecture
Client
App/Device
CRIS
Voice to Text
LUIS
Semantics
Extraction
Web Service
App/API
Data Sources
Text to Speech
ML Studio Service
EndPoints
Power BI
Bot FX
SQL Server
or DW
Document
Db
Key/ValueGraph Db
Table Store BLOB
Microsoft Azure
Voice Data
Text + Tabular Data
& Power BI Visuals
Human
User
Voice Capture
Polyglot

15. Example: Customer Portal Knowledge App

16. Customer Portal: Knowledge App Demo

17. SharePoint 2016: Hybrid Search Architecture

18. Knowledge Apps: Summary
• Combining traditional enterprise search with other data sources and UX
components can result in really powerful solutions!
• With Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Graph Data and other
feeder systems, the sky is the limit!
• These solutions, once built, can run in highly managed environments
with low overhead.

19. Why Build Knowledge Apps with SharePoint and in the
Microsoft Cloud?
• Highly managed services
• Data center affinity = performance!
• Natural fit with Office 365 / SharePoint implementation
• Strong ecosystem of connectors to pull data from various repositories
• Rich content processing capabilities for data transformation,
normalization and analytical processing
• Single Index in SharePoint Online with rich ranking model for serving
most appropriate information right up
• Usage information feedback loop
• Azure’s industry leading intelligence & machine learning tools & services

20. Next Steps
• GSA or FAST ESP End of Life coming up soon?
• Need help re-envisioning your search strategy and roadmap?
• Have some Knowledge Apps you want to build?
• Need better support in the field with the right information?
• Re-indexing taking too long after schema change?
• Need to incorporate more systems & data into your index?
• Would you like to modernize your search UX?