Enterprise search through automatic synthesis of tag clouds

In a large organization, finding the right expert who can provide knowledge needed in a particular work context is critical to achieving higher levels of quality and productivity especially in the present scenario of a rapidly evolving technology and business environment where knowledge plays a vital role in value creation. Previous approaches to the problem of reliably finding experts in an area of knowledge focus on mapping employees to their knowledge based primarily on voluntary data inputs by users and minimally supplemented by data derived from enterprise systems. However, the generation of employee profiles through inputs is usually not based on a controlled vocabulary and therefore results in poor precision and recall in expertise search in addition to posing difficulties in integration with content search. In this paper, a novel approach that addresses some of these limitations is described wherein tag clouds for members are automatically generated from enterprise data. The paper also outlines the use of such tag clouds in an integrated search system that aims to provide an optimal set of experts as well as relevant content corresponding to a knowledge need.