The second post-lunch session I attended today was called “Real-time Alerting of Time Critical Data” by Mike Fagan of Booz Allen Hamilton. It was a bit technical in nature and kind of vague. But, if I understand the concept correctly, the idea is that rapid access to certain types of information can provide unparalleled business benefits, including the ability to make an intelligent decision based on actual data, not the psychic power so often utilized by organizations today. And, by alerting users when information of interest to them is available, organizations can increase productivity and eliminate unnecessary manual tasks.
The application created by the company runs on MarkLogic Server and performs time-critical alerting (often via email), preventing government employees from wasting time looking for time-sensitive information that is not available until later. This problem (searching for information that is not available) escalates when a user cannot find the information needed. When this occurs they waste time and resources running additional searches
To avoid “alert overload” (getting too many alerts and making all alerts seem less critical) the system allows users to control ‘match definitions’ (rules) based on their current environment. The examples provided by the presenter were difficult to understand, so I’m going on a hunt to find a great example that will fully illustrate the possibilities of real-time alerting of time-critical data and will report back here at a later time.
If should be noted that the presenter did a great job of addressing what they did in their particular situation, but I was unable to fully-grasp exactly what they did and communicate it to you.
