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Smart Tags


  Veraterm information is expressed in Microsoft Office documents through Smart Tags (in Office XP/2002 and 2003:  Word, Excel and Outlook).  Smart Tags provide users with the ability to associate text and data graphically with actions.

What are Smart Tags?

Smart Tags are dotted lines under words in MS Office products
Smart Tags are small pop-up icons that quickly enable user access to content-specific features with Office Apps
A Smart Tag is data that is recognized and labeled so that it can be used to perform actions that you would normally open other applications to perform
Smart Tags are user interface icons that dynamically recognize text and present the users with options based on that text

All of these common descriptions focus on different aspects of Smart Tags - the underline, the icon, the data, the text and the actions.  For those not familiar with Microsoft Smart Tags, here is what they look like. This example shows a Microsoft Outlook Contact Smart Tag.

 

  In the Veraterm System, Smart Tags are used as windows exposing informative terms, or "InfoTerms."  Microsoft's Smart Tag technology allows the creation of customized links to other resources.  Microsoft uses dotted underlines and drop-down menus to give the user a familiar way of doing this.  Before the dotted underline (the visible Smart Tag) was created, however, the Veraterm System identified an InfoTerm and instructed the host application (ie: Word or Excel) to create the Smart Tag.

The Smart Tag interface built into Office applications provides:
Notification that text has been edited
The visible icon and drop-down menu

Microsoft has created a valuable "action-in-context" mechanism which developers can use to create custom Smart Tag recognizers and actions.  Microsoft has not provided all the tools and technology necessary to create an enterprise-level Smart Tag recognizer solution.  That is where the Veraterm System comes in!

To a Smart Tag developer, the Veraterm System is a full-featured Smart Tag technology engine that handles the underlying subsystems.  The result is that Smart Tag solutions can be created at a reasonable cost without the need for complicated system-level programming (parsing, caching, application monitoring, content analysis, data access and the like).

  The native Smart Tag recognizer interface is best suited for short lists and simple in-memory lookup's, but is not well-suited for enterprise database lookup's. The reasons include:
No preparsers to identify potential person/company names, etc.
Too many calls to the recognizer with the same text.  So many, that it would freeze a workstation to query a database each time.
No mechanism for local buffering of search results and data to minimize network traffic and to maximize speed.

Why Use Smart Tags?

Microsoft Office Smart Tags are a significant user-interface advancement that can be utilized to advance "workflow integration."  Microsoft Office productivity tools are almost ubiquitous, and Smart Tags offer a powerful means for individuals and organizations to be better informed and more responsive, based on the context of their documents.

The Veraterm System extends the functionality of the native Smart Tag interface and provides the tools necessary to create enterprise-level Smart Tag solutions.


     Intelligence and Integration