Permissions-Aware Search with User Suggested Results

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing search systems face challenges in providing relevant results due to broad search queries, misspelled terms, outdated content, and frequent data updates, leading to low-quality search results, especially in organizational settings where access control and content verification are critical.

Innovation Solution

A permissions-aware search and knowledge management system that incorporates user-suggested results, document verification, and intelligent user activity tracking across group hierarchies to enhance the relevance and quality of search results by using access control lists, user pinning, verification, and natural language processing to rank documents based on relevance, verification status, and user activity.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If traditional search engines index and display all relevant documents, then search coverage is comprehensive, but access control and security are compromised

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccess controlVSAvoidsearch result completeness

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of information

Solution Approach 1:

The search system applies different quality characteristics to different search results based on user permissions. Each search result is evaluated against the user's access control list to determine if it should be displayed, creating a personalized search result set that varies by user authorization status while maintaining comprehensive indexing of all documents.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

2Reliability

If search results are ranked solely by relevance, then top results are most relevant, but outdated or unverified content may be prominently displayed

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontent verificationVSAvoidsearch result relevance

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSMeasurement precision

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary verification of document content before ranking and displaying results. Document verification requests are sent to content owners prior to final result generation, allowing outdated or inaccurate content to be identified and downgraded in ranking before it reaches the user, thus improving both verification reliability and relevance precision.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system incorporates feedback loops where users can verify or update document content, and this feedback is used to adjust document rankings. Verified documents receive ranking boosts while unverified or outdated documents are demoted, creating a dynamic ranking system that continuously improves based on user input and content accuracy.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

3Adaptability or versatility

If the search system processes all user queries and documents, then search functionality is comprehensive, but system complexity and processing overhead increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesearch functionalityVSAvoidsystem complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The search system segments the document processing pipeline into distinct phases: indexing phase (where all documents are processed), verification phase (where content accuracy is validated), and ranking phase (where results are ordered based on relevance and verification status). This segmentation allows the system to handle complex verification requirements without increasing the complexity of the core search indexing mechanism.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

4Stability of the object's composition

If documents are frequently updated, then content freshness is maintained, but search index accuracy and consistency deteriorate

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveindex consistencyVSAvoidcontent update frequency

Core Design Contradiction:

Stability of the object's compositionVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by capturing documents at specific points in time and creating snapshots of their state. When documents are updated, the system compares changes against the captured state and only re-ranks affected results, rather than completely re-indexing. This maintains index consistency while allowing frequent updates.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS20240296190A1Permissions-Aware Search with User Suggested Results and Document Verification

Publication Date: 2024.09.05 GLEAN TECHNOLOGIES INC

AI summary

Methods and apparatuses for providing a permissions-aware search and knowledge management system that incorporates user suggested results, document verification, and intelligent user activity tracking across group hierarchies to improve the quality and relevance of search results are described. The permissions-aware search and knowledge management system may enable content stored across a variety of local and cloud-based data stores to be indexed, searched, and displayed to authorized users. The identification and ranking of relevant documents corresponding with a user's search query may take into account user suggested results from the user and others assigned to the same group as the user, whether the underlying content of a search result was verified by a content owner as being up-to-date, the amount of time that has passed since the underlying content was verified by the content owner, and the recent activity of the user and related group members.