Organizational Directory Search Leveraging Local and Network Profiles
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Solution Overview
Problem
Social networking services often lack access to organization-specific information about their members, making it difficult for organization members to find relevant information about each other, as this information is typically not shared with the service.
Innovation Solution
An organizational directory access client and server system that leverages both local and network search methodologies to provide comprehensive user profile search results, combining a local database of organization-specific information with network search capabilities to find profiles that may not be registered or maintained by the organization.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If only network search is used to find user profiles, then comprehensive search coverage is achieved, but search speed and accessibility are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The search system is divided into two independent segments: a local search component that queries cached user profiles stored on the client device, and a network search component that queries remote directory services. This segmentation allows the system to leverage both fast local access and comprehensive network resources without requiring one to replace the other.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent merges local search results and network search results into a unified search interface. The system combines the speed advantage of local caching with the comprehensive coverage advantage of network searching, presenting integrated results to the user through a single search mechanism that leverages both data sources.
2Ease of operation
If organization-specific information is shared with social networking services, then member findability is improved, but information security and privacy are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by caching user profile information locally on the client device before it is needed for search operations. This pre-loading of data enables fast local search results without requiring real-time access to sensitive organization information, thereby reducing the need for continuous network communication with remote services that could expose security risks.
Solution Approach 2:
The client device acts as an intermediary between the user and the remote directory services. By maintaining a local cache of user profiles, the intermediary enables search operations to proceed using cached data, reducing direct exposure of sensitive organizational information to external services while still providing comprehensive search functionality.
Data Source
AI summary
This disclosure is directed to an organizational directory access client and an organizational directory server and, in particular, to an organizational directory access client that performs a local search and a network search for one or more member profiles of members of the organization. The organizational directory access client executes on a client device and is configured to authenticate a user of the client with the organizational directory server. Once authenticated, the client device receives a member profile database that is then made locally available. As the user enters a search query, the organizational directory access client searches the local member profile database and, when the search query is completed, the organizational directory access client communicates the search query to the organizational directory server for performing a search across one or more social networking services. The local and network search results are then displayed for review by the user.