Archive for the ‘MakeTime’ Category

How MakeTime changes the way you work and saves you time!

September 1, 2007 | MakeTime, Search

MakeTime^© was created with a vision of improving the way real people, in real life, access information.To improve on something we must first understand it. The way we search for information on our computers is MakeTime’s area of interest and expertise.

How Real People Search and The MakeTime^© vision

We believe that human search behavior can be broken down into a series of iterative predictions, evaluations and adaptations.

Let’s take a look at what we usually go though in a traditional search page:
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MakeTime on-premise security

August 20, 2007 | MakeTime

Our need and desire for fast, efficient and easy access to information is invariably in conflict with the need to secure and control access to data.

MakeTime^© is built specifically to help us get to what we need “right now” and is capable of reaching into multiple other systems to provide a unified view and access point. This can create serious information security challenges that can be prevented only with clear understanding of how access works.

Making a web application’s data secure between the user’s browser and the application server is a straightforward and well-known process that is easily accomplished using commodity SSL or VPN technologies.

When a user logs-in (1) to the MakeTime^© server they are accessing a “wrapper” over one or more applications (A, B, C). The best analogy is to think of a “picture-in-picture” TV. MakeTime^© shows the “big picture” (2) across all the systems it wraps, while simultaneously previewing the original “channels” (A, B, C). The user may “watch” the channels as a “picture-in-picture” or may choose to jump to a full screen view of any channel.

MakeTime^© acts as a de-facto single-sign-on (SSO) system, because once the user logs into the server (1) and enters their credentials for the wrapped systems, these credentials will be automatically used to search and preview the information. If the user does not have a valid login to one of the systems, MakeTime^© will not show search results containing that system’s data and will not provide a preview into that system.

There is an occasional confusion when we have systems that are open to any user to preview, but require a valid login to modify information. For example a public open source JIRA system like the Apache Foundation’s (http://issues.apache.org/jira) allows anyone to search and view information, but requires registration and a valid login in order to post or modify items. This is often the case with forums and blogs – anyone can read, but only registered and authenticated users may post.

MakeTime^© wraps a “semi-private” or “moderated” system like these, it will allow the user to see search results, but the preview screen will be unavailable – usually showing the wrapped application’s login screen. To gain full access the user must provide a valid username and password in the MyAccount screen:

The easiest way to simplify MakeTime^© security is to setup one index and one provider only – in this case, users do not have to be registered separately prior to accessing the “wrapped” system – instead MakeTime^© will automatically use the “wrapped” system to test if the user is authorized and then grant or deny access. Of course, the real power of MakeTime^© comes from the ability to consolidate information from many places and this requires that users manage their credentials.