Apache Solr

Faceted Search

Generates filters from indexed metadata such as author, date, and file type. Users narrow results by selecting facets or sorting by any indexed field.

Full-Text Search

Searches all indexed content using keywords, phrases, Boolean operators, wildcards, and approximate matching with configurable tolerance for misspellings.

Data Source Connectors

Pre-built connectors to enterprise repositories and business systems that handle authentication, permission mapping, and content sync for each connected source.

Content Ingestion

Automatically discovers and indexes content from connected repositories via scheduled crawling or real-time updates, keeping the index current.

Text Analysis

Runs text through tokenisation, stopword removal, stemming, synonym expansion, and domain vocabulary to match on meaning rather than exact characters.

Results Ranking

Orders results by relevance, recency, or authority. Supports relevance tuning via boosting rules and ML-driven ranking improvement from interaction signals.

Multi-Format Support

Supports multiple common document formats including PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and HTML, with indexing and searchability across both filenames and contents.

Content Analytics

Dashboards covering query volume, top terms, zero-result queries, and click-through rates, used to identify content gaps and measure search health.

Rich Media Indexing

Extracts searchable text from non-text content using optical character recognition for scanned documents and speech-to-text transcription for audio and video.

AI/Machine Learning

Synthesises answers from indexed content using large language models. Covers intent and entity extraction and a Copilot interface for conversational follow-up.

Quality of Features

Feature quality is just as important as quantity. Use this data to determine if this product will do what you're purchasing it to do, easily, intuitively, reliably, and effectively.

Business Value Created

Software needs to create value for employees, customers, partners, and, ultimately, shareholders. This data expresses user satisfaction - or lack thereof - with the product's business value.

Ease of Implementation

Successfully implementing new software is necessary to realize its full value and promote end user adoption. This data indicates whether or not the product is easy to implement.

Product Strategy and Rate of Improvement

Vendors who don't stay on top of emerging needs and trends won't enable you to meet your business goals. Use this data to separate innovators from imposters.

Availability and Quality of Training

Effective and readily available training enables users to get the most out of the software you've chosen. Use this section to make sure your vendor's training programs and materials measure up.

Ease of Data Integration

Use this data to determine whether the product will cause headaches or make data integration easy.

Usability and Intuitiveness

End user learning curves cost the organization money. Pay attention to your end users' technical ability to determine how important UX is in your purchase.

Ease of IT Administration

This data indicates whether IT personnel will be able to resolve issues and perform configurations efficiently and effectively.

Breadth of Features

Users prefer feature rich software that enables them to perform diverse series of tasks. This data expresses user satisfaction with the product's breadth of features.

Ease of Customization

Don't get bogged down in a difficult customization; use this data to make sure you can easily achieve the functionality you need for your particular situation.

Vendor Support

The importance of vendor support will vary for each organization depending on internal capabilities, but there will always be issues that only the vendor can resolve.