Case Study: United Airlines

and SharePoint Server 2013

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Case Study: United Airlines and SharePoint Server 2013

This case study gives an overview of new SharePoint 2013 Web Content Management and
search features, and also how United Airlines used these features to improve their Service
Catalog.

2014 MICROSOFT CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

CONFIDENTIAL. DISTRIBUTION ONLY TO PARTNERS UNDER NONDISCLOSURE. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.

1 ABOUT UNITED AIRLINES ............................................................................................................ 1

2 ABOUT THE SERVICE CATALOG................................................................................................. 1
3 PLANNING TO IMPROVE THE SERVICE CATALOG............................................................. 1
4 FEATURES IN SHAREPOINT SERVER 2013 ............................................................................. 2
4.1 Web Content Management features

4.2 Search features

5 HOW UNITED AIRLINES USES SHAREPOINT SERVER 2013 WCM FEATURES......... 4

6 HOW UNITED AIRLINES USES SHAREPOINT SERVER 2013 SEARCH FEATURES . 12
7 HOW UNITED AIRLINES HAS INTEGRATED BACK END SYSTEMS ............................. 13
8 PRODUCTIVITY GAINS FROM THE IMPROVED SERVICE CATALOG ......................... 14

1 ABOUT UNITED AIRLINES

United Airlines is one of the world's leading airlines, with more than 85,000 employees, serving 385 airports across the
globe. In 2012, United Airlines was the busiest airline on the planet, operating over two million flights, and carrying 140
million passengers. United Airlines has been using SharePoint since 2001 for both internal and external Enterprise Content
Management solutions. For example, 20% of their customer-facing content on www.united.com comes from SharePoint.

2 ABOUT THE SERVICE CATALOG

United Airlines uses an internal Service Catalog that contains all of the IT-related products and services that their
employees need. Using the Service Catalog, employees can do just about anything from ordering printers, laptops, or
software, to issuing service desk tickets. In short; if an employee needs an IT-related item, they order it via the Service
Catalog.
The Service Catalog logs approximately 400 to 500 requests per month.

3 PLANNING TO IMPROVE THE SERVICE CATALOG

United Airlines was keen to improve the maintenance and daily operations of their Service Catalog. The complexity of the
Service Catalog system meant that only employees with developer skills were able to publish catalog items. Then there
was the amount of time that it took to add an item to the Service Catalog, which could take up to two months.
The first step in the Service Catalog improvement process was to outline the goals they had to achieve to move forward,
and to define which features the Service Catalog should have.
Goals for an improved Service Catalog
With a new and improved Service Catalog, United Airlines set the following five goals:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Reduce operations and maintenance costs of the Service Catalog.

Simplify the tasks of keeping the Service Catalog updated.
Utilize existing companywide resources by integrating the Service Catalog with existing back-end systems.
Improve the visitors experience of the Service Catalog.
Reduce the delivery time of items ordered through the Service Catalog.

Defining features for an improved Service Catalog

After researching how people interact with online stores, United Airlines decided to use an online store as a model for
their new Service Catalog. Some of the key behavior that they discovered about online shoppers was that:

38% of visitors browse to see what the site has to offer.

35% of visitors look for a particular type of product but not for a specific product.
27% of visitors look for a specific product.

By combining their goals with the research theyd done, United Airlines decided to implement the following:

Display engaging content, such as popular items.

Display user-specific content, such as popular items based on a visitors user group.
Implement a user-friendly search experience that will make items easy to find by:
o Integrating an easy to find search box.
o Returning only highly relevant search results.
o Enabling users to easily narrow down their search results by using relevant refiners.
o Displaying query terms that a visitor has already searched for in a list below the search box as the visitor
types a query.
o Displaying query spelling corrections, "Did you mean?" if a user mistypes a query.
Display user-friendly URLs.

4 FEATURES IN SHAREPOINT SERVER 2013

Many of the features that United Airlines had outlined as part of their Service Catalog improvement goals, are available by
default in SharePoint Server 2013. The following section contains an overview of these features.

4.1 Web Content Management features

Catalogs: A SharePoint library or list that you enabled as a catalog. Catalog content can be reused across other
site collections.
See also: Overview of cross-site publishing in SharePoint Server 2013.
Tagging term sets: A term set that you use to categorize (tag) the items in your catalog. By doing so, the
hierarchy of the content that you want to display is no longer bound to the physical location of the content.
Instead, the hierarchy is determined by the tagging term set.
See also: Plan term sets for tagging content on SharePoint authoring sites .
Managed navigation: A navigation method that supplements the existing SharePoint navigation that is based on
site structure. Managed navigation enables you to use term sets to define and maintain the navigation of your site.
See also: Overview of managed metadata in SharePoint Server 2013 .
Friendly URLs: By using managed navigation, the URL to a page is no longer defined by the physical location of
the page. Instead, it is defined by terms in your managed navigation term set. For example, instead of having an
undecipherable URL, such as
http://www.contoso.com/Pages/Computers.aspx#/ID=453&Source=http%3A%2F1010101, you can create a userfriendly one, such as http://www.contoso.com/Computers/model101.
Category pages and catalog item pages: Page layouts that enable you to consistently show dynamically created
catalog content across a site. These pages are assigned to terms in a term set, and are often used with managed

navigation and Search Web Parts.

See also: Plan category pages and catalog item pages.
Refiners for faceted navigation: Used in scenarios where you have structured content, such as catalog content.
They help users browse to content more easily, by filtering on refiners that are tied to terms in a term set. By using
faceted navigation, you can configure different refiners for different terms in a term set without having to create
additional pages.
See also: Plan refiners and faceted navigation.
Content Search Web Part (CSWP): Displays content that has been crawled and added to the search index. To
display content in a CSWP, you specify a query in the Web Part. When users browse to a page that contains a
CSWP, the query is automatically issued, and query results are displayed in the Web Part.
See also: Plan to add Search Web Parts to pages.
Analytics processing: Automatically tracks how visitors interact with a site. For example, it can track which pages
or documents visitors have viewed, and count the number of times this has happened. This information is used to
generate information that can be displayed in the Popular Items Web Part.
See also: Plan usage analytics, usage events and recommendations.
Popular Items Web Part: Shows the most popular items for a particular set of criteria. For example, it can show
content such as "Most popular items in category".
See also: Plan to add Search Web Parts to pages.
Display templates: Used in Search Web Parts to specify how search results should be displayed. By editing a
display template, you can customize how you want your search results to be displayed.
See also: How to: Create a display template in SharePoint Server 2013 .
User segmentation: Enables you to present different content to different user groups.
See also: User Segmentation in SharePoint 2013.

4.2 Search features

Ranking: There are several ranking models that are optimized for specific use cases, which provide an effective
ranking of search results. In most cases, you probably wont have to customize any of the ranking models.
Refiners: Properties that enable users to quickly narrow search results, and browse to specific content.
See also: Plan refiners and faceted navigation.
Result types: Specifies one or more conditions that are compared against a search result. If the conditions are
met, a specific display template will be used to display the search results.
See also: About configuring result types.
Query suggestions: Also referred to as search suggestions. Theyre suggested phrases that users have already
searched for. They appear in a list below the Search Box as a user types a query.
See also: Manage query suggestions in SharePoint Server 2013.
Query spelling correction: Also known as "Did you mean?" For example, if someone enters a query containing
the word "ampitheater", the query spelling correction will suggest "amphitheater".
See also: Manage query spelling corrections in SharePoint Server 2013 .
Query rules: A set of conditions that cause the query to be changed in a specific way. An easy way to understand
a query rule is as follows: "if X happens, then do Y." Theyre used to limit the type of content that appears in
search results, and to influence the order in which you want search results to appear.
See also: Transforming queries with query rules.

5 HOW UNITED AIRLINES USES SHAREPOINT SERVER 2013 WCM FEATURES

Catalogs
The existing Service Catalog contained approximately 600 items, and was available in Excel format. By using a standard list
feature, United Airlines extracted information from Excel, and imported it into a single list in SharePoint Server 2013. This
list was then enabled as a SharePoint catalog.

Tagging term sets

Based on the structure used in the existing Service Catalog, United Airlines created one tagging term set. They manually
associated, or tagged, each item in their catalog with the correct term from the tagging term set.
The following screenshot shows the tagging term set United Airlines created.

Managed navigation
United Airlines uses the tagging term set to drive managed navigation on the Service Catalog.
The following screenshot shows the navigation on the Service Catalog after a user has clicked "Hardware". Notice that the
sub categories "Accessories", "Desktops", "Laptops" etc., match the hierarchical structure defined in the tagging term set.

Friendly URLs
When visitors are browsing the Service Catalog, category pages and catalog item pages are used to display content. The
URL to the actual category page or catalog item detail page, for example, <site>/pages/Category-Product-Hierarchy.aspx
does not make much sense to visitors. However, because managed navigation is used to drive site navigation, visitors
wont see this URL when they browse the Service Catalog. What they will see, is a friendly URL thats composed of terms
from the tagging term set.
The following screenshot shows the URL when navigating to the "Laptops" page. Notice that the friendly URL,
<site>/hardware/laptops, matches the terms and hierarchical structure of the tagging term set, which has been set to drive
managed navigation.

Category pages, catalog item pages and Web Parts

As explained above, the category pages and catalog item pages can be assigned to multiple terms within the managed
navigation term set. You can configure Web Parts on these pages so that the content is displayed differently depending
on where in the site navigation the visitor is browsing.

For the Service Catalog, United Airlines created a main category page layout, and a sub-category page layout. Based on
these page layouts, they then created three category pages and one item category page:
1.
2.
3.
4.

A category page for all main categories except "Data Services".

A category page for the main category "Data Services".
A category page for individual items in the sub categories.
An item category page.

Below is an overview of the different pages and the Web Parts used on these category pages.
Category page 1 - Displays content for all main categories except "Data Services"
This category page displays content for all top level categories, for example "Employee Services", "Hardware" or
"Knowledge Management".
This category page contains only one Web Part; a custom Web Part developed by United Airlines. The Web Part is used to
show all subcategories below a top level category. For example, when visitors click the main category, "Hardware", all
subcategories such as "Accessories", "Desktops", "Laptops" etc., display. When visitors click the top level category,
"Employee Services", all subcategories such as "Employee-Account-Services" and "Facilities" display.
The following screenshot shows how this category page is used to display all subcategories below the top level category,
"Employee Services".

Category page 2 - Displays content for the main category "Data Services"
This category page displays content for the top-level category, "Data Services." It has three Web Parts:
1) Search Box Web Part: a default Web Part that displays query suggestions as the user is typing a query.
2) Content Editor Web Part: a default Web Part with hyperlinks to different services.
3) Popular Items Web Part: a default Web Part that displays popular items, such as popular laptops.
The following screenshot shows how this category page is used to display content for the top level category, "Data
Services".

Category page 3 - Displays individual items in the sub categories

This category page displays the individual items within a sub category; for example, all items within the "Laptops" sub
category. This category page contains only one Content Search Web Part (CSWP).
The CSWP contains a query that is automatically issued when visitors browse to a page containing a CSWP. By using a
value from the URL as a query variable, the query issued by the CSWP changes depending on where in the navigation
hierarchy the visitor is browsing. For example, when a visitor clicks the category "Laptops", the CSWP queries for all items
tagged with the term "Laptops". When a visitor clicks the category "Printers", the CSWP issues a query for all items tagged
with the term "Printers".
The following screenshot shows how the category page is used to display individual items within the "Laptops"
subcategory.

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Item category page

This page is used to display the individual items in the Service Catalog. It has three Web Parts:
1) ContentSearch Web Part: a default Web Part that displays individual catalog items.
2) Shopping Cart Web Part: a custom Web Part that facilitates the ordering of individual catalog items.
3) Questioner Form Web Part: a custom Web Part where users can fill in additional information when ordering
certain items.

The following screenshot shows how the catalog item detail page is used to display content for the category item
"Elitebook 2560p".

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All of the Web Parts on this page use search technology to display content.
Display templates
United Airlines created 5 display templates for the Service Catalog:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

One for the custom Web Part on Category page 1.

One for the Search Box Web Part on Category page 2.
One for the Popular Items Web Part on Category page 3.
One for the Content Search Web Part on the Item category page.
One for the Search Results Web Part used on the search results page.

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6 HOW UNITED AIRLINES USES SHAREPOINT SERVER 2013 SEARCH

FEATURES

Refiners
United Airlines implemented 10 refiners. The following screenshot shows how the refiners are displayed on the "Monitors"
page.

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Query suggestions
The query suggestions are turned on by default in the Search Box Web Part, so United Airlines didn't have to do any
additional configuration to implement this.
The following screenshot shows how two query suggestions are displayed as a visitor is typing a query.

Query spelling correction

The query spelling correction is turned on by default in the Search Results Web Part, so United Airlines didnt have to do
any additional configuration to implement this.
The following screenshot shows how a query spelling correction is displayed when a visitor has mistyped a query.

7 HOW UNITED AIRLINES HAS INTEGRATED BACK END SYSTEMS

Once visitors have found what theyre looking for in the Service Catalog, they can begin the ordering process by going to
the checkout page.
The following screenshot shows the checkout page.

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The shopping cart is a SharePoint list, which is based on the context of the visitor. If a visitor logs out before completing
the checkout, the items are stored in the visitors shopping cart. United Airlines has implemented a system that empties
the visitors shopping cart, if they havent checked out the items within 30 days.
The Service Catalog is also integrated with Active Directory. From Active Directory, information about the visitor, for
example: "Approving manager", "Cost center", "Division Controller" and "office location" are prefilled and always up to
date.

8 PRODUCTIVITY GAINS FROM THE IMPROVED SERVICE CATALOG

United Airlines has experienced vast productivity gains since improving the Service Catalog; the most significant of all
being the time it takes to add a new item to the catalog. This has gone down from several months to a few days, or in
certain cases, to a couple of hours.

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Maintenance time has also significantly dropped now that the system has been transformed into a standard SharePoint
site.
Ordering an item from the Service Catalog is now a familiar experience that resembles any other online shopping
experience for employees. The intuitive navigation makes browsing for items easy, as do the search features, when
searching for a specific item of interest. The integration of Active Directory and the ERP system has also cut down on the
approval and delivery time of the ordered item.
As employees increasingly start to use the improved Service Catalog, United Airlines will gather user data, and will
continuously improve their visitors experience.

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