We’re pleased to announce that Version 2.6 of Fluid Topics was released in June 2015.
The key focus in this new version was to improve the search experience by providing faster access to information.
Unified Search
Structured content relies on the Topics & Maps paradigm. Fluid Topics already indexes each topic separately to improve relevance and provide more targeted access. Starting in 2.6, it also indexes the books —the maps— as knowledge objects and includes them in the same search result list or in the typeahead suggestions.
Preview in Search
Users can preview topic content within the search result page. By default, each result displays an extract that is dynamically generated by selecting key phrases where the searched words are highlighted.
By just clicking the View button or on the snippet section, the text unfolds and is replaced by the content of topic. The user can read it online without leaving the search page. If he finds the right information, he can still click on the title to switch to the reader and access the entire book and read the topic in context.
Book Dynamic Filtering
Imagine you have a very large reference manual with content that does not apply to every user in every situation. Wouldn’t it be nice if the book was filtered to include only what matters in a specific context, like just the installation tasks and not the maintenance ones? This is exactly what the “book dynamic filtering” feature does. It propagates some of the filters that were selected in the search to the embedded reader, so they are used to distill the book and retain only the sections matching the context. For more details on this feature you can read the blog post “Fluid Topics boosts the search experience”.
Intelligent Spellchecker
If you mistype a query the search engine may return zero results, but the spell checker offers suggestions to fix your typo. Instead of leaving you with a blank page and starting your searching again, Fluid Topics automatically runs the right query with the most appropriate expression.
Zero result page redesign
You will never be left alone and abandoned: when a query yields no result, Fluid Topics makes its best effort to help. The reply page offers suggestions to improve search results, such as selecting different keywords, removing filters, and other helpful information.
We also bring major improvements to the Knowledge Hub capabilities.
New authentication framework
A totally redesigned authentication framework supports more authentication and single sign-on (SSO) protocols: SAML 1.x and 2.0, OpenID, and OAuth, local and LDAP, as well as client-specific and proprietary protocols. It also supports multiple authentication back-ends simultaneously. The back-office also benefits from this new SSO and multi-realm compatible framework.
New content processing and indexation reports
More comprehensive and detailed reports are now produced for every content package received. The reports point out potential data processing issues so that you can quickly fix your content accordingly.
New API to crawl the Knowledge Hub
If your company’s intranet portals have their own search engines and you want your technical content to be accessible from them, you have two options:
- Query Fluid Topics in real time using Fluid Topics search Web API and mix the results with those of the enterprise search.
- Crawl and index Fluid Topics: the Knowledge Hub offers access to processed, cleansed and enriched content. Now with v2.6, external search engines can benefit from new Web APIs designed specifically to fetch part or all content and index it on their side.
Please give this new version a spin
and let us know what you think.
If you want to know the roadmap and participate to the choices of the next features, feel free to contact us.
We develop Fluid Topics for you.
