Tacit knowledge available

Start-up company Tacit Knowledge Systems has launched it premier products, KnowledgeMail and KnowledgeMail Plus. The products are designed to “transform e-mail into a powerful and strategic information asset,” the company said.

Beta user Texaco made it more clear. KnowledgeMail connects people to hidden experts, said John Old, Texaco director of information management.

KnowledgeMail links to existing enterprise e-mail system such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes. KnowledgeMail drills down, discovering, organizing and distributing pertinent information as defined by private and public profiles.

KnowledgeMail centers around three pieces: profiles, desktop and portal.

• Published and private profiles. The system extracts key terms and phrases from the e-mail content and builds them into a profile.

• KnowledgeMail Desktop. Visible as a button on existing e-mail system, this feature is the analysis feature. It analyzes documents, reports, Web pages or the e-mail message to determine if it matches profiles.

• KnowledgeMail Portal. This is designed to make the system available to each user, offering real-time links to people, content and subject matter communities.

KnowledgeMail Plus offers the same functionality with the addition of a “sweep” feature. This is designed to link a user in need with the experts. Users send a request to KnowledgeSweep, which in turn scans all the private profiles in the system. Rather than exposing the requester to all the private information, it sends an alert to those who should be able to handle the request. Those experts can then choose to respond to the request.

Both KnowledgeMail products are available this month