Information Bridge

Next week I'm giving a demo on IBF (Information Bridge Framework).  The IBF allows users to leverage some existing Office technologies - namely, the Research Task Pane and SmartTags - to perform interactions with line-of-business data.

A SmartTag scenario…

I've written a SmartTag using the easy to create and deploy MOSTL language; that is, I wrote an xml file which defines a recognizer pattern and an action.  In my case, the MOSTL file will recognize the terms "ProjectDistributor", "Project Distributor" and "PD" and offer 2 smart tag options: 1) Go to live website, and 2) Go to localhost website. 

So now, whenever I receive an Office document or Access database which has those terms in it, I am presented with a SmartTag so that I can quickly get to a version of the web application.  This is useful for when people send me e-mail's advising me that there is a misspelt word or some such thing and I need to quickly check it for myself.

The SmartTag approach only saves me a bit of time...

Popping up the website is fine for trivial actions such as checking the state of the home page but normally people are e-mailing me with a greater request.  For example, nearly all of the ProjectDistributor e-mail that I receive is asking me to create a new Group for someone.

Given my current SmartTag implementation I still need to login, click several links to get to the Administration section, create a group, click a few links to the user page, assign the user access to the new group.

There are other scenario's too: resetting passwords, viewing current statistics, managing user information, etc.

The IBF scenario…

With IBF I am able to leverage the Task Pane in Office product and offer more sophisticated operations based on the current context of the user's environment.  Here's an extended example to show how IBF can offer a wider range of operations than the SmartTag approach:

When the word "ProjectDistributor" is recognized as a SmartTag, on opening the tag I can choose to "Show More Details" to see more information about this operation.

Clicking Show Details gives me a task pane in outlook which gives me:

• some recent activity information about ProjectDistributor
• a list of groups
• a menu option to add Groups
• potentially other information

Going to the menu for the region allows me to "Add a Group".  I click on the "Add Group" menu item and I'm presented with a screen which allows me to enter in some group information and to assign users to it.  I add a group name and press "Add" and the Group is displayed in the list of Groups.

So, as you can see, I've been able to do everything from within Outlook without having to pop out to other applications to add a Group.  This scenario is frequent in business where you have several line of business applications that are required to perform common tasks such as scheduling employee annual leave or viewing fixed asset data from an accounting system.

The IBF enabled, information-rich, knowledge-worker…

So, we've arrived eh?  Everybody will be using this technology now?  Will Betty the receptionist will be using IBF to get real time accounting information from JDE Edwards when she opens that spreadsheet which came from the accountant?

No.  IBF isn't a technology which will fully arrive overnight to the point where every piece of business data is exposed as an operation and an action from within Office.  IBF is an empowering technology which will be exploited by early-adopting, knowledge-savvy folks to cut the time to make key decisions and execute regular tasks.

Also, IBF, like SmartTags themselves, will prove to be a technology which is best implemented in an iterative manner.  The people who, after seeing their first SmartTag demo, rushed back to the Office and wrote SmartTags for every piece of data they could think of, lived to regret their actions; whereas, the astute user who implemented tags on an "as needed", or opportunistic basis, has more than likely reaped rewards from their decisions.

My advice when planning an IBF solution is to look for opportunities where users are already using Office technology and regularly need to go off to another application to perform an action based on information in their Office document.  Examples here would likely include:

• HR staff that have to use a LOB application to process an annual leave request which arrives in a form derived from a Word Template.
• A help-desk operator who has to view customer detail records based on an e-mail.
• An IT support-staff member who needs to reset a password based on an e-mailed request.
• A manager who needs to view project scheduling information before approving an annual leave request from a project team member or who needs to view budget information before approving a capital expenditure request in a form derived from a Word Template.