Initial Situation - How it all started

To search for documents within the intranet, Deutsche Telekom AG deployed its own solution. This application was driven by an editorial system. To include new URLs, employees had to analyse and catalogue each document by hand. That’s why it took several weeks, new documents were accessible and searchable.

Objectives

By introducing a new solution, multiple improvements had to be realized:

• Minimizing of editorial efforts
• Offering a tool to research within the complete (accessible) data and documents
• Realizing a short time for deployment
• Provision of a free scalable solution in terms of volume of queries and index

contraco Solution

In a joint task force, contraco and the DTAG management decided to introduce a multi client solution. Based on this, separate search interfaces for two departments were developed, both based on a single platform. Since December 2004 an intranet search tool is available for:

• Telekom Intranet (available for all employees of corporate group)
• my-TeamNet search (available for all employees of Deutsche Telekom)

In addition, a special “WM 2006 Search” is life since April 2005. This is a special interest search for contents around the upcoming soccer world championship in Germany in 2006. This solution can be used by each employee of the corporate group on work stations in the intranet as well as on external PCs.

All three search solutions are based on the same technical platform. Search results vary in look and feel according to different style guides. Due to the multi-client approach, further search applications can be set up for other divisions or subsidiaries shortly and with less effort. The DT division T-Com is running the intranet search solution for special searches within own process documentations, templates and guidelines since April 2005.

Results

With the new contraco solution, several improvements could be realized:

• New documents are now searchable within few hours and not within several weeks.
• All documents for all applied URL spaces are searchable now. It is comfortable for all users just to use one entry point.
• The response time could be decreased dramatically down to less than one second.
• Security holes could have been detected and eliminated. Documents, marked as “confidential” can now be found with authorisations, even if the documents are stored in public folders.