Locating buried documents

[Beth Agnew]

In an online system that is essentially a huge repository or database, the
schema of how things are named and associated is important. Is there some
close-to-intuitive formula you can give people for identifying documents? Is
the folder or page link structure easily discernible? If the documents are
indeed organized according to some methodology, then just telling users what
it is should be sufficient, along with some examples of how to use that
schema to find particular items.

If there is no logic or common sense about the document naming conventions,
then the problem goes deeper. Knowledge management depends on being able to
find the knowledge assets. We've been talking about taxonomy and metadata in
another thread. These are vital attributes that allow users to find what
they are looking for. Without them, the documents might as well just not
exist at all. If you can't find it, it's not there.
--Beth

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+beth.agnew=senecac.on.ca at lists.techwr-l.com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+beth.agnew=senecac.on.ca at lists.techwr-l.com]On
Behalf Of Parrott, Kathleen E.
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 7:04 AM
To: techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com
Subject: Locating buried documents

Can any of you kind folks tell me how you have resolved the problem of
users being unable to locate documents?  Our online system is huge and
the options are endless, but it seems no one can find what they're
looking for - pardon my grammar.  My Six Sigma/Green Belt project is to
resolve this issue.  My only thoughts are to design a class for users
but I'd rather keep it simple, perhaps just a one page work instruction
showing bulleted steps. (Now where is that list buried?)