The Sound of Found (Bing!) with SharePoint 2010 ?

Honestly, we all are guilty of wasting a little time. But what about when you’re actually trying to get something done?! According to IDC, the information worker spends an average of 3.5 hours looking for information and not finding it. Further, an average of 2.2 hours is spent on versioning issues and an additional 3 hours is spent on recreating content. If you add it up, more than nine hours a week are spent on low value tasks. For business owners and managers, this could amount to over $13K for an employee who makes $60K.

Microsoft is aiming to solve part of this issue with its improved search and tighter integration with Office in SharePoint 2010. First, an easy to use visual Bing-like interface of the FAST Search feature provides centralized and contextual results that includes documents, people, and other unstructured information. Further, a number of external sources can now be easily added and indexed. Additionally, the phonetic search engine seems to do a pretty good job of returning relevant results even if you make spelling mistakes.

With easy to use filters on the left navigation, search results can be short-listed quickly by document type, author, job titles, project, tags, etc. Each filter also displays a count of results for better information. Microsoft appears to have made improvements in the way meta data is generated, handled and managed thereby increasing relevance of search results. Importantly, the social behavior of the users has an impact on the relevance of the results returned. (See search demo)

What's cool is a preview feature that allows you to slide through documents in place. Once you’ve determined it’s the right one, depending on the format, you could edit the file right in the browser; the version issues are taken care of by SharePoint. Besides Enterprises, SharePoint could start to make economic sense pretty quickly even for SMBs .

However, a search engine is fueled by data. And data is fueled by people and processes. How your data is captured, processed, and managed play a crucial role in this equation. You might know what you're craving for and the ingredients might be available but hitting the spot largely depends on the recipe.