Turning Content Chaos into Findable Knowledge: Enterprise Search and Taxonomy for NYPA.

About the Client

NYPA has grown substantially since this engagement, now operating 17 generating facilities and more than 1,550 circuit-miles of transmission lines, with more than 80 percent of its electricity generated from clean, renewable hydropower. Following 2023 New York legislation expanding NYPA’s authority to develop, own, and operate renewable energy projects, NYPA’s Board of Trustees approved an updated Renewables Strategic Plan in December 2025. The plan encompasses 45 individual projects and 146 distributed energy storage projects representing nearly 5.5 gigawatts of combined capacity, part of New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act mandate for 70 percent renewable electricity by 2030. That expansion has brought a substantial increase in technical, environmental, and regulatory documentation for NYPA to manage and keep findable.

Industry Context

The Smartlogic Semaphore platform Iknow implemented for NYPA in 2017 is now part of Progress Software’s product portfolio as “Progress Semaphore,” and has been extended specifically to support generative AI and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) applications. Progress’s own 2025 and 2026 materials describe Semaphore providing the semantic metadata and “context engineering” foundation that enterprise search and R&D platforms need to ground generative AI systems reliably. The well-governed taxonomy and metadata backbone Iknow built for NYPA in 2017 is exactly the kind of foundation the same platform is now marketed as providing for enterprise AI initiatives nearly a decade later. That means NYPA’s original investment leaves it well positioned, should it choose, to extend that same metadata infrastructure toward next-generation AI-powered search and knowledge tools.

Current Situation

NYPA’s content, spread across OpenText Content Server and Microsoft SharePoint, had accumulated in large volumes over time without accurate or reliable metadata and subject tagging, making search results unreliable. Complex, deep folder hierarchies in both systems made browsing for content difficult even when search failed to surface what employees needed.

• Content spread across two disconnected systems. OpenText Content Server and Microsoft SharePoint each held large, growing volumes of content with no unified way to search across both.
• Missing or inconsistent metadata. A lack of accurate, reliable metadata and subject tagging made search results poor across both platforms.
• Difficult browsing. Large numbers of file folders and complex folder hierarchies made it hard for employees to browse for content even when search fell short.
• No enterprise-wide taxonomy. NYPA had no consistent classification structure spanning both content systems and its many business functions.
• The need for genuine usability. Any solution had to be intuitive and easy to use for everyday NYPA employees, not just content management specialists.

• Develop a NYPA-specific enterprise-wide taxonomy.
• Build a unified search application and interface with advanced search and navigation features.
• Apply standardized taxonomy and metadata tags consistently across content in both systems.
• Deliver a search experience that was intuitive and easy to use for NYPA employees.
• Equip NYPA staff to maintain the platform independently going forward.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow ran two workstreams in parallel — enterprise taxonomy development and user interface development — before converging on platform selection, solution architecture, deployment, and staff training, ensuring the technology choice and interface design were both grounded in real NYPA content and real employee needs.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Taxonomy Development. Iknow worked with NYPA staff to develop an enterprise subject taxonomy using a combination of techniques, including a review of prior internal classification schemes, an assessment of relevant external taxonomies, and analysis of user search logs.
• User Interface Development. Iknow worked with NYPA staff to understand business-driven use cases and search requirements, then developed wireframe concepts for presenting various types of search results.
• Platform Selection & Implementation. Iknow recommended the purchase of Smartlogic’s Semaphore suite of metadata management software, then worked with Smartlogic to implement it, applying the new taxonomy through sophisticated autoclassification functionality for more consistent content categorization and metadata tagging. The team also leveraged Semaphore’s ontology management and search enhancement features to improve search relevancy and let users discover related content.
• Solution Architecture. Iknow worked collaboratively with NYPA staff in content management, IT, and several business functions to define the overall solution architecture, including business process workflows and the technical infrastructure requirements for metadata enhancement and autoclassification.
• Deployment & Training. Iknow implemented the new enterprise metadata management and search solution in NYPA’s development and production environments, then trained NYPA staff to maintain the platform going forward, including Semaphore installation and configuration and the development of autoclassification rules.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow worked closely with NYPA staff across content management, IT, and multiple business functions, alongside subcontractor Smartlogic as the technology implementation partner, to deliver a solution that reflected both NYPA’s technical environment and its employees’ real-world search needs.

Building One Taxonomy Across Two Different Systems

OpenText Content Server and SharePoint were structurally different systems serving many different business functions, making a single, coherent classification scheme difficult to design from scratch. Iknow addressed this by grounding taxonomy development in three complementary evidence sources — prior internal classification schemes, relevant external taxonomies, and real user search log data — rather than building from a blank slate or favoring either system’s existing structure.

Making Advanced Classification Technology Feel Simple

Sophisticated autoclassification and ontology management capabilities risked producing a system too complex for everyday employees to use comfortably. Iknow addressed this with a dedicated user interface workstream grounded directly in NYPA staff’s actual business use cases and search requirements, translating those findings into concrete wireframe concepts before any development began.

Ensuring NYPA Could Sustain the Platform Independently

A solution NYPA could not maintain on its own after the engagement ended would lose value quickly as content continued to grow. Iknow addressed this with a dedicated training program covering both platform administration — installing and configuring Semaphore — and the more specialized skill of developing and maintaining autoclassification rules.

Operational Outcomes

• Successfully implemented a unified enterprise metadata management and search solution across NYPA’s development and production environments.
• Launched improved search functionality, with users reporting significant improvement in the quality of their search results.
• Delivered a NYPA-specific enterprise taxonomy applied consistently across both OpenText Content Server and SharePoint content through Semaphore’s autoclassification capability.

Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

By training NYPA staff to independently maintain and extend the platform, Iknow positioned NYPA to sustain the improvement without ongoing dependence on outside consultants. NYPA planned to extend the content enrichment and search experience to other internal content repositories going forward — evidence that the platform was seen as durable, reusable infrastructure rather than a one-time fix.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow completed taxonomy development, interface design, platform implementation, and staff training within the 12-month engagement, with the new search solution live in production and delivering measurably better results for NYPA employees by the project’s conclusion.

Core Skills

• Enterprise Search & Taxonomy Design
• Information Architecture
• Systems Integration
• Technology Training & Enablement

Methods & Frameworks

• Taxonomy development methodology (internal scheme review, external benchmarking, search log analysis)
• Use-case-driven interface and wireframe design
• Autoclassification rule development

Technologies & Tools

• Smartlogic Semaphore (Ontology Manager, Classification and Text Mining Server, Semantic Enhancement Server)
• OpenText Content Server and Microsoft SharePoint