Search your organization's resources using Fetch & Retrieve

From Cerberus Helpdesk Wiki

“Fetch & Retrieve” — one of Cerb4’s more original names, not only has a nice ring to it, but is the perfect label for a very unique feature. Fetch & Retrieve is a tool for searching your organization’s existing pool of resources for answers, answers your workers can use when responding to customers. If you are a long time Cerberus Helpdesk user you are probably familiar with the basic concept already, but there is an important change.

One of the key differences to this edition of Cerb, is the expanded list of available resources that can be searched. Fetch & Retrieve has been improved to support many different types of web applications built outside the scope of the Helpdesk. Things like blogs, forums, wikis or any website where “documentation” important to your organization has been scattered about, can be effectively tapped into. The only criteria is the web software returns its search results in an RSS (XML) feed. While it may take a little bit of extra setup to add support for these external applications, the biggest advantage is you no longer need to copy all your important materials into Cerb4’s internal Knowledgebase.

[edit] Configuration

Since Fetch & Retrieve is a plugin and not part of the "standard" Helpdesk, you need to enable it before anything else in the 'helpdesk setup', 'Features & Plugins' tab.

This will not be enabled by default, so make sure you do so now.

[edit] Adding Topics and Resources

Now to make Fetch & Retrieve work, the only piece of information you need out of our existing web resources is a "Search URL". These URLs usually take the form of your typical search query, fitted into an RSS feed. So here is a legitimate feed constructed, first, by doing a search on Google News for the term ‘Microsoft’, and then clicking the RSS button .

http://news.google.com/news?output=rss&q=Microsoft

The only modifications you need to make this ready for Cerb4, is to replace the search term ‘Microsoft’ with the generic term, '#find#'. The final usable URL would look like this:

http://news.google.com/news?output=rss&q=#find#

To complete the setup phase, go ahead and start adding your search URLs as resources in the ‘helpdesk setup’, ‘Fetch & Retrieve’ tab. Start by creating a topic to house similar feeds, then turn those feeds into individual resources.

All configuration is done from this screen.

In the Fetch & Retrieve Cookbook you can find a number of similar URLs to hook into some of the more common applications such as WordPress, vBulletin and MediaWiki.

[edit] Using Fetch & Retrieve

Fetch & Retrieve can be used internally and externally if you choose to do so.

[edit] As part of your internal Research

Once everything is configured, you can start using this searching capability as part of your daily routine. The next time you need to look up information for a customer, click the ‘Fetch & Retrieve’ tab in the 'research' top-level menu. Run a search against the relevant resources and any relevant text snippets or web links will appear. If any of it is useful in its current form, you can just copy & paste it into your replies.

Search all your resources and then click to your articles.

[edit] And allowing your clients to see it through the Support Center

Much like the Knowledgebase you can expose certain resources to your customer base by opening up the appropriate topics.

If you haven't done so already, first, create a new Support Center in the 'helpdesk setup', 'Community Portals' tab. (The Knowledgebase manual also includes general information on configuring and deploying a public Support Center, so please seek more information there.) Then make sure you enable the 'Fetch & Retrieve' module (either Everyone or Logged in) and checkmark which topics will be open to the public. Don't forget to save changes when you're done!

Expose the topics you want your customers to see.

The next time a client visits your Support Center they should see a link in the Main Menu called 'Search Resources'. Inside they can run a search just like you and have access to the same resources and information.

The format of the search results looks strikingly similar to the internal search.

[edit] The Google Custom Search alternative

When used correctly, Fetch & Retrieve is powerful and may be just the right tool for your organization. With the proper search adapters in place, your workers (and clients) can easily find important information that’s been piling up over the years, wherever it is. Don’t forget that this can help train your new workers as well -- by giving them access to a wealth of knowledge documented throughout your organization’s history, they will be just as capable of responding to inquiring e-mails as your veterans.

However it's worth nothing that the feature, while still available, has been spiritually "demoted" by WebGroup Media in favor of the Google Custom Search Engine (GSE). Both tools cater to the search hub idea, so you can find answers in your company's documentation and resources quickly. The difference between the two is in the approach and the bottom line is that we feel the Google alternative is more effective, and more importantly, easier to configure for a majority of users. However, if the resources to be searched must be kept private within a company, then Google Custom Search would not be an option since it only deals with publicly available data and exposes it through normal Google search.

An example of the setup process using Cerb4's own internal documentation is available.

Adapted from a Cerb4 blog post and updated to reflect new plugin status.