Getting ready for 'New Outlook' - part 7
Technology has changed significantly in recent years as have customer expectations and needs.
In this series of articles we will look at how ‘New Outlook’ impacts businesses.
From partial search to full search
If you plan to use an email management system with 'New Outlook' you need to make sure it's up to the job, and one area where most systems struggle is with the search capability as they rely on a locally installed search engine. Whilst this mostly works well, it's prone to becoming out-of-date resulting in unreliable search results, in addition it places a high burden on network resources. Typically the search will only work on a Windows PC too, denying you the ability to search via a phone, tablet, Mac or browser.
Search gets slower over time
These PC-based systems also struggle to scale. As you add more data, they get slower and consume more of your available RAM. Consequently, some systems limit the search to only look for emails from the last three months unless you ask it to dig deeper, which then takes longer.
The impact of re-indexing
Another issue with the local search approach is that if you update your storage and re-path your filing locations, all user devices have to re-index everything, which places a huge burden on servers and the network. In large businesses this can bring the network to its knees for several days.
Centralised search provides performance, reliability and mobility
A centralised search resolves these issues because:
- You can search via any device and not just Windows PCs
- It’s always up-to-date
- There is no strain on internal network resources when indexing or when searching
- It automatically scales to meet demand
- There's no technical support burden from user's local indexes
