We have just finished rolling out a much improved PeopleSearch/OrgChart solution for our enterprise.  This was the culmination of 4yrs of effort to move forward the way we look at user profiles and aggregate user information.

Its an exciting time as we now have a rich user profile that will enable so much across the organisation.  But let me start at the beginning with what is a User Profile

Its all about Me

A user profile is made up of lots of information about the individual.   Some comes from the user themselves typed in, some from HR systems, some is from applications they use and some is derived based on behavior.  Lets look at that in some more detail.

• Organisation information
  What division you are part of, cost center, site, role, title, level in org, who you report to, etc.
• Contact Details
  Office location (address, etc.), Phone number(s), email address, twitter handle, etc.
• Biographical & Background
  Biography, Education, licenses & memberships, languages, etc.
• Professional Data
  Skills, Ask Me About, Region Responsibility (Sales), Product Responsibility, etc.
• Application Data
  This is where applications would store data such as settings, preferences, etc.  stored in a global profile so it can be re-used in other applications.  e.g. if you are in R&D and you focus on one particular area that information should be usable by all apps and you shouldn’t have to re-enter it,
• Behavioral Information
  This is the interesting stuff.  Stores websites you visit, searches you perform, content you tag, content you view, etc.   – this tells people a lot more about who you are and what you do than anything else.  Of course it has to be time bound and old behavior has to be removed,

I don’t want the world to know

People need to have the opportunity to chose what data to share with the rest of the organisation.   This becomes especially important in certain countries where data protection and other laws play a strong part.

Of course its more useful the more data the individual shares but it has to be their choice therefore its critical to explain the benefits and alleviate any concerns.

One last point on this.  Safe Harbor rules need to be considered and addressed.  You need to ensure people know where the data is stored and provide them the ability to view all that is stored about them.

Lots of Complete Profiles – Now what

Now we have a complete profile not just for the individual themselves but for others inthe organisation we can start to do some interesting stuff that really drives productivity.

1. Search relevancy
   We can tailor the search results from a query based on who the person is, location, past search behavior, etc.  we can take the query and the user profile to try to work out the intent behind the query.  Of course if we can take into account their calendar and recent emails that can give even more context to the query !
2. Content enrichment
   This is a big one.  Nobody likes adding meta-data when they upload content into repositories but that meta-data is essential to aid searching and content findability.  The user profile can help by suggesting meta-data based on data from the profile and from past behaviour.  The user can still override and if they do that will be stored as new behaviour in the user profile
3. Recommendation engines
   Another big opportunity.  Solutions can suggest content, people and sites.  They take information from the user profile and meta-data on sites & content and other people’s user profiles to make recommendations.  Tie into that the ability for the user to rate content and sites and thumbs up/down recommendations, all of which is stored back in the user profile, over time the solutions get better and better at suggesting content.
4. ‘Personal Assistants’
   This is the whole Siri/Cortana/Google Now concept.  The assistants can provide better answers to questions by taking into account all the information from your profile including that behavioural data.

See how important a well maintained user profile is.  Oh and thats a key point, a profile is never finished, it’s like a flower it needs to be looked after, watering and feeding is the updating and revising of that profile, regularly.