Withers has deployed RAVN Connect for Microsoft SharePoint to extend SharePoint 2013 Search to its entire enterprise and act as the basis of its new knowledge management (KM) solution.
RAVN Connect extends the capabilities of SharePoint Search beyond the Microsoft ecosystem, providing an innovative solution to large or distributed architectures and delivering better search results, an improved user experience and a platform for building real-world search applications.
Withers is using the platform to allow their 20 million iManage Work documents and other global repositories to be discoverable through SharePoint Search. The RAVN solution indexed their KM documents and precedents, enriching each with metadata sourced from their Intapp workflow solution.
RAVN also provided a custom Search Web Application to present search results along with a People Search solution that combined data from Active Directory with a people database and Web Profiles. This allows users to locate the most relevant expert as efficiently as possible. Finally, through the inclusion of content from their Document Management System into the SharePoint ecosystem, RAVN Connect for Microsoft SharePoint facilitates improved collaboration across the firm by harnessing the inherent capabilities of the SharePoint platform, such as discussion threads.
Jeremy Rooth (pictured), director of business transformation & knowledge management, said: “The RAVN solution effortlessly made all of our operational content, valuable precedent and knowledge content discoverable within the firm’s chosen collaboration and Search platform, Microsoft SharePoint. As such, the disruption for users was negligible, yet the benefits from efficient search, preview and expertise location across a geographically distributed organisation have been significant.”