What Dilemmas and Challenges Does Pinpoint Solve?

Pinpoint products have been designed specifically for the smaller office where in-house IT expertise may not be availalbe or not available in a timely fashion. We will help an in-house designated search administrator or user with solutions and tools. Pinpoint products address:

• Content access dilemmas
• User and employer dilemmas
• Security issues
• Software dilemmas
• LAN installation challenges

Content Access Dilemmas

All offices today face real content access dilemmas:

• Too many files are spread across your LAN; finding pertinent content across your LAN within co-workers hard disk drives is also difficult (what happens when they are not at work or are not available?)
• Content silos are everywhere; larger offices will have email servers, data management systems, OCR paper-to-electronic text systems, etc., but how do you access all this content in a uniform manner along with your content on your hard disk drive?
• Many files found somewhere on your local hard drive; finding content is increasingly difficult over time (you have used some sort of categorization scheme to organize your files, right?)
• Content is located inside many different file types; how do you find content within a presentation, a spreadsheet, documents, and an email with attachments all through a single, consistent search mechanism interface?
• A variety of search and retrieval mechanisms exist and don't "play" together; each search mechanism has its own approach to content access.  Some searches just look at metadata - file name, date, author, etc.  Some searches perform keyword search, others contextual search, and yet others conceptual search. These retrieval mechanisms each have their own, unique search interface, and have varying degrees of success in actually finding relevant content.

Figure 1.  The Content Access Dilemma.

Pinpoint's Content Access Solution

Pinpoint has created a single search view of all data types (unstructured and structured), across all platforms (Microsoft, UNIX/LINUX, and Mac), across all locations (LAN and Internet), and across all popular file types.  See Figure 2 for an illustration of our single view.  Finding the appropriate, consistent, and relevant content is maximized with Pinpoint's single interface and search algorithms that maximize correct content access.

Figure 2.  The Content Access Solution.

User and Employer Dilemmas

Users and employers have dilemmas when searching for content:

• An employee is not available to assist in finding a document on their local hard disk drive - sometimes an employee is not at their desk, they are taking a break, sick at home, at a meeting, etc. What happens if the target document is located on their hard disk drive and you need the file now? You may not want to wait for their return to their computer. In some cases when the employee returns, the employee may not remember where the target document is located on their own hard disk drive anyway.
• An employee leaves the company is another dilemma.  Rules were put in place to share company related content in a shared drive available to all users.  Placing all company content into the shared folders may not be strictly enforced.  When the employee leaves, content access is probably lost along with potential intellectual property useful to the success of the company.  If you can't find the content, it is gone unless you want to spend some time rifling through the user's computer, backups, etc.
• All users are frustrated by too much content returned when performing searches.  Searching for all relevant documents is fine in some circumstances as long as the number of documents is limited and relevant, but 500 returned documents is not appropriate in almost all cases.
• In some cases, users simply want to find a single document, not even a limited range of documents.  Even a small number of returned document requires some quick and informal scan to see if one of the returned documents is the document.  More returned documents means more time spent manually scanning.

Pinpoint's User and Employer Solutions

Pinpoint's has the ability to find content on all shared drives as the LAN regardless of platform and file type solving the absent or leaving employee dilemma.  Once the employee files have been shared, mounted, and index enabled, all documents within those shared and enabled drives are indexed completely the first time, and always updated periodically.  Hopefully the leaving employee has not deleted their shared files; Pinpoint's SMS system only stores the pointer to the document, and not the document itself.  Backup software still needs to be put in place.

Looking for a range of searched files that are relevant is handled by Pinpoint's SMS search core.  Relevance is adjustable, and the threshold for the number of returned content documents based on relevance is adjustable too.  Finding a single document is also uniquely supported.  A customizable corpus (a library of lists focusing on a particular market segment 's unique lingo) assists in the successful searching process.

Security Dilemmas

• Most companies have a policy about common or shared files; access to company critical files will not be denied. As a result, the search admin must make sure that the appropriate subdirectories are enabled by manually activating the shared "hand" under each subdirectory icon. Now that sub-directory's files and their content are available to everyone. This sharing may not be wholy popular however.
• Once the file is indexed and everyone can see it, viewing security levels need to be put in place regardless of the individuals sharing dilemma.
• More and more companies will be collaborating across the Internet. The content needs to be secure while being transported.

Pinpoint's Security Solutions

• If management absolutely needs blocked access to critical, private files, those sub-directories can be denied access by removing the shared "hand" icon. Remember, those non-shared files are not indexed and not available for searching and future access is not guaranteed.
• Pinpoint provides a group and individual user privilege level. Groups will have limited content access, and users within those groups can have further restricted access.
• Any content sent across the Internet is SSL encrypted providing cryptographic content protection.

Software Dilemmas

Installing software can sometimes present a challenge:

• Application software sometimes require specific operating system versions and particular drivers to work correctly. In the case of LINUX, even the selection of the correct kernel selection is important.
• Connecting backend databases to an application sometimes presents problems, and correctly setting up a database can be an issue also. A database is absolutely required for indexed content and the corpus.
• Software updates are a constant issue. Update automatically, or remind the user that an update is available?

Pinpoint's Software Dilemma Solution

Pinpoint provides software already mounted inside an appliance. Operating system, application software and database issues are handled and included by Pinpoint. Both update modes are available - automatic, or manual download - providing the user with a choice as to when an update should be installed.

LAN Challenges

Pinpoint's appliance can access your local hard disk drive, hard disk drives on your LAN, intranet content, and Internet content.  However, if you really want to access other attached LAN computers and their hard disk drive content on your Intranet (LAN), additional challenges will surface and will need to be solved:

• Can you "see" all of your hard disk drives now?  If a computer is not available to LAN ID queries, that computer will not be configurable for content access.  An IT technician will probably have to fix this problem.
• Pinpoint software is mounted inside an appliance hardware box; Pinpoint's search appliance needs to be placed into the network and its network address generated once the LAN is operating correctly; an assisting wizard is available.
• Personal firewall software on each LAN computer will prevent hard disk drive access across the LAN; XP has a built in firewall and virus detection software also has firewalls; these personal firewalls need to be turned off to enable hard disk drive content access.  (You may want to look at using a router with built-in, single firewall capability to replace multiple personal firewalls located on each computer in the LAN.)
• Hard disk drive directory/sub-directory access will not happen unless the hard disk drive directory/sub-directory is shared; this means that every selected computer targeted for search and its directories/sub-directories will have to be manually modified with sharing activated to provide content access.
• The local directory somewhere in your LAN will enforce user name/password authentication before any LAN-based hard disk drive can be accessed; this function requires that each computer's authentication will have to be manually placed into an access table inside the Pinpoint appliance; Pinpoint will not automatically gather authentication information for privacy reasons.

Pinpoint's LAN Solution

Wizards are provided to assist a non-IT user in network configuration and IP address generation. Wizards are supplied to handle network configuration and IP address generation.   Feedback on successful operations is included for each wizard's process step.  Each step of the wizard helps solve a LAN configuration/generation problem. A record summary of successful shared volume operation as a result of your firewall shutdown operations is included along with a map of your LAN.  Internet and Intranet domains/sub-domains selected for access are also shown.  An access table for LAN computer authentication is also provided.