17 Dec
Raphaël Briner
Facet. This word seems nice but reveals itself to be a real mystery. Is it a feature or a concept? It is compulsory or not?
First, a facet is a group of tags, a category which is available through the search engine. Generally, a facet is made up of a series of popular tags in order to have a better understanding of its sense and its relative tags.
Then, it is essential to limit the number of facets as they play a major role in the navigation. If facets are too many, the search engine experience is screwed and the manual tags entry by users is much more complex.
Between 5 and 15 facets, each containing hundreds of tags. There again, offering thousands of tags in one and only category is a major concern which results in a disproportionate granularity in the taxonomy or in the effervescence of micro-projects.
At elium (formerly Knowledge Plaza), our top 12 facets are the following :
Organisation, to easily bring forward competitors
Field, to segment vertically : health, finance, estate,…
Products and services, to focus on competitors’ products or on our own products/services
Events, to collaborate around recurring events
Fonctions, to distinguish business lines (hr, sales, marketing)
Languages, to identify a linguistic environment
Places, to show active cities. We will also choose the “Country” facet if the activity has a local or a global scale.
Time, to retrieve documents with a link not only to the past but also to the future. For instance, a document about UEFA, regarding 2017 period.
Projects, to bring more visibility to key documents of projects with transverse impact.
Sources, going hand in hand with the Organisation facet. In a context of market intelligence, this facet is a sine qua non when looking for a press article without remembering its title. Moreover, a newspaper’s name can be considered as a media or a customer.
Type, a must-have facet, an essential toolbox to seize objects. In KP, our first four tags are competition, inspiration, event and press. Another tag, more discreet but equally strategic is “serious competition”… oh yes, we have that one !
Other tags, a catch-all category, waiting for Godot.
Among our customers
Product line, for example : Men, Women, Children,…
Country, key facet for large entreprise groups
Region, useful facet in various operational levels
Audit, facet which also includes quality, lean management, ISO certifications,…
Leading figures, essential for legal, disruptive, moving, unstable environments
Strategy, to put forward innovation, change management, long and short-term plans
Expertise, to promote the know-how and the corporate culture
Section, to follow the structure of the company
On Sphere
Content type, to promote trainings, guides, manual instructions, questionnaires, etc.
Themes, to group central topics for discussion together
We really look forward to knowing your own key facets and opinion on this subject.
In order to organise your own classification and make it evolve, our Customer Success team remain at your disposal to help you drafting a good information governance in accordance with your users, not all being contributors.
To get an idea of the accessibility to content thanks to facets, wait no longer and contact us.
