Sustaining Search Quality at Scale: A Second Taxonomy Enhancement for NYPA.

About the Client

NYPA is the state entity responsible for electric power generation, transmission, and distribution across New York State, and one of the largest such organizations in the country. Iknow had previously supported NYPA in 2017 and 2018 with the initial development of its enterprise taxonomy and search capability, built on SharePoint 2013 and Smartlogic Semaphore.

Industry Context

Enterprise taxonomies are never a one-time build. NYPA’s own history across three successive Iknow engagements — an initial 2017 taxonomy and search build, a 2018 governance installation and first semiannual update cycle, and this 2019 significant enhancement — illustrates a reality common across large, technical organizations. Taxonomies must evolve continuously alongside organizational change and shifting technical vocabulary needs, not simply be built once and left alone. Strong taxonomy and content tagging make enterprise search meaningfully more effective by focusing results on content that is genuinely relevant to a user’s topic and by incorporating synonyms, acronyms, and related terms so content can be found regardless of how it is referred to.

Current Situation

This project continued NYPA’s prior taxonomy work with a focus on further improving the taxonomy and classification engine, together with taxonomy governance procedures, reflecting changes in the business, new organizational structures, and the need for more detailed classification in some technical areas.

• Organizational and business change had outpaced the existing taxonomy. New organizational structures and shifts in the business meant NYPA’s taxonomy model no longer fully reflected how the company was actually organized.
• Certain technical areas needed materially deeper classification detail. Engineering terminology, report types, and other Utility Operations content needed a level of granularity the earlier taxonomy had not been built for.
• Search and browse paths within Utility Operations didn’t match how users actually searched. The existing structure, particularly within Utility Operations, wasn’t well aligned with how users actually searched and browsed for engineering and technical content.
• Valuable enterprise vocabulary sources remained unintegrated. NYPA’s corporate Glossary, expertise terms, and standard document prefix lists existed but had not yet been incorporated into the taxonomy’s synonym and acronym coverage, leaving known gaps in what the search engine could match.
• Any changes had to be validated at real operational scale. Given NYPA’s huge document volume spread across many SharePoint sites and libraries, taxonomy changes had to be proven effective in practice, not just correct in the taxonomy editor.

• Update NYPA’s taxonomy to reflect business changes and new organizational structures.
• Deliver more detailed classification in specific technical areas.
• Improve alignment between taxonomy structure and actual user search and browse behavior.
• Enrich synonym and acronym coverage using existing enterprise vocabulary sources.
• Extend and improve Semaphore classification rules for better performance.
• Formalize taxonomy governance as an official NYPA Procedure and train NYPA’s KM team.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow moved from departmental review, through taxonomy restructuring and vocabulary enrichment, to document-driven term discovery, classification rules extension, large-scale testing, and finally governance documentation and training.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Departmental Reviews. Iknow conducted structured reviews with Environmental Operations, Health and Safety, ESS, Technical Compliance, and other Utility Operations areas, with particular focus on Tribal Enterprise Lessons and Learning (TELL) document subjects, grounding the taxonomy update in each department’s actual content and terminology.
• Taxonomy Restructuring. Iknow restructured the taxonomy, especially within Utility Operations, to more closely match potential searching and browsing paths, particularly for engineering terminology and report types.
• Vocabulary Integration. Iknow integrated NYPA’s corporate Glossary, expertise terms, and standard document prefix lists to further enrich the taxonomy’s synonym and acronym terms.
• Document-Driven Term Discovery. Iknow conducted detailed reviews of 40 technical “lessons learned” documents, using draft classification against them to identify potential new terms and relationships for the taxonomy.
• Classification Rules Extension. Iknow reviewed and extended the Semaphore classification rules for better performance, including the use of additional site and file path metadata as classification evidence.
• Testing and Refinement. Iknow performed classification testing and review directly in SharePoint, in addition to unit testing using Semaphore’s Classification Analysis Tool, then made corresponding adjustments to the taxonomy model and rules, primarily around synonyms and acronyms, weighting, and stemming.
• Governance and Training. Iknow drafted and edited comprehensive Taxonomy Governance documentation, which was formally adopted as an official NYPA Procedure, and delivered on-site and remote training for NYPA’s KM team on Semaphore’s taxonomy and classification tools.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow worked closely with NYPA’s Environmental Operations, Health and Safety, ESS, Technical Compliance, and other Utility Operations departments during the review phase, and with NYPA’s KM team throughout the engagement and its subsequent training.

Restructuring a Live Taxonomy Without Disrupting Daily Users

NYPA’s taxonomy was already in active daily use, creating real risk that structural changes and added technical depth could disrupt users who depended on it. Iknow addressed this by grounding every structural change in direct departmental review rather than top-down redesign, and by validating changes through both SharePoint-based testing and Semaphore’s dedicated Classification Analysis Tool before finalizing, keeping restructuring evidence-driven rather than speculative.

Proving Improvement at Real Operational Scale

Adding more than 200 new terms and over 1,200 other changes risked looking correct in isolation while failing to improve results across NYPA’s actual document base. Iknow addressed this by evaluating classification results against roughly 4,300 sample documents spanning 27 separate SharePoint sites and libraries, then making targeted taxonomy and rules adjustments directly informed by that large-scale testing.

Operational Outcomes

• Added more than 200 new taxonomy terms and made over 1,200 other changes for greater classification accuracy, especially within Utility Operations/EHS, equipment and location detail, external organizations, and document types.
• Evaluated classification results on approximately 4,300 sample documents across 27 sites and libraries in SharePoint.
• Reviewed 40 technical “lessons learned” documents in detail to surface new taxonomy terms and relationships, and conducted departmental reviews across five distinct NYPA functional areas.

Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

Based on its large-scale testing, Iknow implemented taxonomy and rules changes that directly improved classification results across NYPA’s content base. The engagement also delivered formal Taxonomy Governance documentation, adopted as an official NYPA Procedure, giving NYPA a durable, institutionalized process rather than an informal practice, alongside on-site and remote training that built lasting internal capability within NYPA’s KM team.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow completed the enhancement within the 12-month engagement, marking the third consecutive year of Iknow support for NYPA’s taxonomy program and reflecting a sustained multi-year partnership rather than a single point-in-time project.

Core Skills

• Taxonomy Enhancement & Restructuring
• Autoclassification Rules Engineering
• Taxonomy Governance Documentation
• KM Team Training & Enablement

Methods & Frameworks

• Department-grounded taxonomy review methodology
• Document-driven term discovery
• Large-scale classification testing and validation
• Site and file-path metadata as classification evidence

Technologies & Tools

• Smartlogic Semaphore (taxonomy model, classification rules, Classification Analysis Tool)
• SharePoint (content platform and in-context testing)
• Corporate Glossary and standard document prefix integration