SharePoint Thoughts

From Microsoft’s Enterprise Search Blog:

“conceptClassifier for SharePoint adds automatic document classification and taxonomy management to Microsoft SharePoint and works without the need to build another search index. It is installed as a set of Features that, when activated, cause new columns to be displayed in the document library listings and new menu options appear that allow authorised users to edit the automatically generated metadata, if required.”

Concept Classifier is touted as an engine that automatically adds concept metadata and taxonomy data from documents being loaded to a document library. This sounds like Microsoft’s answer to some features more commonly available with other enterprise search engines such as Autonomy. What remains to be seen is how much configuration or training is necessary to produce accurate results. Competing search engines require some major tuning to produce the desired effects, lets hope Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST paves the way for friendlier enterprise search.

While this concept Classifier does not come directly from  Microsoft, it puts them a little bit closer to competing in Enterprise Search.