TheDevTeam

We are bespoke software developers with over 22 years experience of making things work, we have a wide range of Web Development tools that we can rapidly bring to bear on any problem and are confident of delivering on our promises In many cases we have worked with our clients for over 10 years covering East Sussex and surrounding areas
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    Web

    Web Development

    Web Development from The Dev Team The websites and web applications that we build are more akin to bespoke software applications than traditional websites. They incorporate complex business logic and processes from stock control and fulfilment to CRM functionality and data manipulation tools.

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    Software

    Software Development

    Software Development from The Dev Team Whether it's websites, web applications, PC based software, services or server based software we've got tonnes of development experience going back more than 20 years.

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    PM

    Project Management

    Project Management from The Dev Team Project Management is all about having good tools to collaborate and a team able to deliver

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    Mapping

    Dynamic Mapping

    Dynamic Mapping from The Dev Team It's quick, easy and inexpensive (if you know how). One of the biggest advances over the last few years has been the ability for anybody to gather longitude and latitude information and then plot it onto maps. If you're not already doing it then contact us to find out how you can.

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    SEO

    Search Engine Optimization

    Search Engine Optimization from The Dev Team For most websites, being accessible to Google is probably the most important requirement. The only way that this can be done is to make it carefully thought out and integrated part of your website. If anybody phones up offering to get you to the top of the search engine rankings for a few hundred pounds, don't believe them.

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    Data Visualisation

    Big Data & Data Visualisation

    Big Data & Data Visualisation from The Dev Team The amount of data that we, as humankind, are collecting is increasing exponentially. If you know what to do with the data, as we do, it can also be turned into a vital competitive advantage and business critical information that makes a real difference....

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    E-Commerce

    E-Commerce

    E-Commerce from The Dev Team Shopping carts, online shops and taking payments online is one of the more standard implementations in a website but the choice available to you is huge. We can help you implement your online shop whether it's a 3rd party plugin or built from scratch. We've done it all!

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    Collaboration

    Collaboration Tools

    Collaboration Tools from The Dev Team The ability to work on the same documents, build specifications together, build projects together, share ideas and collaborate are essential for modern business. Effective collaboration is at the core of every project that we work on and we use a variety to tools and skill-sets to facilitate this.

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    Construction

    Construction

    Construction from The Dev Team Denaploy has been deeply involved in may aspects of the construction industry since its inception and has worked with Main Contractors, Sub-contractors, Architects, Surveyors and CDMCs. We understand the pressures of the industry and its sometime arcane vocabulary.

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    Property

    Property

    Property from The Dev Team There are over 22 million homes in the UK and we move once every six years on average throughout our lifetime. That's a lot of data and we deal with a good proportion of it.

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    NFP

    Not for Profit & Charities

    Not for Profit & Charities from The Dev Team We do a number of different projects for Charities and Not for Profit organisations. Most of the problems needing to be solved are still the same and it suits our skillset to have a more hands-on approach to the project management.

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    Publishing

    Publishing

    Publishing from The Dev Team We have been working with magazine distributors since the earliest days of the Internet to sell British magazines both locally in the UK and around the world. If you're after a fully integrated stock control and automatic ordering system or something as simple as data feed integration then look no further.

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    Blue Chip

    Blue Chip

    Blue Chip from The Dev Team We've worked with many blue chip companies over the last 20 years and continue to receive work on a regular basis underlying the fact that we are competitively priced and possess a skills that are hard to come by even for companies with thousands of employees.

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    International

    International

    International from The Dev Team The World is getting smaller by the day and the ability to work at a desk thousands of miles away is something we've been doing for years. Why let the logistics of getting from A to B get in the way of getting the software solutions you need when everything from meetings to deployment can be done remotely?

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    Mininingware

    Eclipse Mininingware

    Eclipse Mininingware from The Dev Team Our Eclipse Miningware Solution is a cost effective solution for any startup mining company.

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    Small Business

    Small Businesses

    Small Businesses from The Dev Team Even if you've got a small business then you can afford a big IT department because you'll be hiring our skills and services for a fraction of the time and therefore cost compared to hiring permanent staff.

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    Joint Ventures

    Joint Ventures

    Joint Ventures from The Dev Team One of the downfalls of working in IT is that everybody and his dog has an idea of how they're going to make a fortune with the Internet. They usually have no money to invest but they do know somebody in the industry who might listen. Sometimes they do listen....

The continuing evolution of the internet creates many business opportunities needing specialist IT skills.

That's where we fit in. We are a highly skilled collective who are more than a match for most blue chip companies internal IT departments.

We're here to make IT and the Internet work for you.

Written on 07 December 2018

Structured Search of large data archives

There are many instances where large archives of documents need to be made accessible, perhaps for 

  • compliance purposes in the financial sectors
  • for trawling through document discovery files for solicitors or barristers on cases
  • for rapid retrieval of construction details in Operations and Maintenance files for Facilities managers

Our experience has come from this latter example.  Typically, a £5m construction development will generate over 1GB of data ranging from As Built drawings to detailed product literature on how to clean the carpets in the executive board room. For large companies with multiple site and large numbers of refurbishment projects, a centralised mechanism for managing the retrieval of all that data is a major headache.

To make the search fast and versatile this data needs to be pre-indexed and organised into sections that allow detailed and specific responses. That index can be designed to cover either multiple projects for a single main contractor or multiple projects for a single client.

Search

Let’s assume that a client has just rung up to say that their fire detector – an ‘2251EM photo-electronic sensor’- is showing a fault. You need to have a look at the product literature so you type in 2251EM and hit return. Instantly you get a couple of hits - note: it is instant because the files have been pre-indexed.  One is the word document from your asset list which will include the information on who installed it, and the other is a pdf of the product literature. Click on the later and that document will be downloaded into your browser.

That solves the immediate problem, but maybe you would like to check on some other issues, so you go to Advanced Search.

Now you can narrow your search:

  • The list in the first column is all the projects that have been included in this index.  By default the search is for all projects, but you can narrow the search to one or two projects simply by clicking on them.
  • The second list enables you to select which type of files you wish to include. Eg if it is product literature you are looking for, you only need pdf files.
  • The third column enables you to select by folder types.  When we set up the manuals, we make sure that all the certificates are contained within a sub folder called ‘certs’, so if you are specifically looking for the certs for a particular project you can click on the other types of docs to exclude them and your search will look like this

Note that ‘red’ means exclude and green means include in the search.

 

Results

By default all the results will be sorted by project.

Please Note: In the first pass only selected results will be shown. If you click on the …more link at the bottom of each of the project lists, it will return more results for you to review. Only the files that are most close to the search criteria will be listed initially Eg if you search for ‘certs’ from all projects it might not show all those available for a particular project so you will need to select a single project and run the search again.

If you are getting too many results you can narrow the search criteria using such as ‘fire’ but NOT ‘stopping’. This service indexes every word in every digital document in all the manual listed and uses fall Boolean logic to enable complex searches. Best to play with it to see what can be done.

 

Get Files

The files returned from the search are all downloadable by clicking on them.

  • If they are pdf files (extension .pdf) – they will load into your browser
  • If they are Word documents (extension .doc) they will download onto your PC and then you have to open them.
  • If they are DWG As Built drawings , you will need to have a DWG viewer installed on your PC.

Note that some of these files are pretty large and might take some time to download depending on your internet connection.

  • The main volumes of the  O&M manual are built as Word docs and are designed to be used with the Navigation Pane to enable easy navigation.  Unfortunately the Navigation Pane will not be automatically open when downloaded via the search results, so you should go to the Menu >  View – tick the Navigation Pane box.
  • All the hyperlinks within the O&M manuals will continue to work – which means that if you are reading the Main Volumes and wish to follow a link, it will download it from the Search database. For security reasons these links are designed to remain active for a short period of time. Some anti virus software may trigger a false positive when seeing these links.

 

This is a real world example that can be applied to all sorts of circumstances.  If you need to be able to get a handle on all the data you are accumulating and make it readily available to specific groups of people within your team - this is a solution worth considering.

 


Related to Structured Search of large data archives

Construction in 2020

TheDevTeam have been providing IT services to the Construction industry for over 15 years. Not the hardware or Networks, but the software and databases that are at the heart of improving efficiency.

A strategic opportunity to gain a competitive advantage

It is only 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet, but its influence has been profound, not only in our personal lives, but also in the way we do business.

Denaploy Manuals

Construction is the ultimate collaborate endeavour from client inception to architectural design, to principle contractor and all their sub-contractors and then back to the client and their facilities management provider. We developed a service that enable all these participants to deliver documentation that meets or exceeds CDM2007/2015 requirements in an efficient and timely manner that has been used by all the major companies in the sector. Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Overbury, Skansen, Chubb, and many more. We estimate that we have documented nearly £2bn of construction projects

Test your Admin efficiency

Can you see anybody in your offices who • Is manually re-inputting data that originated in one computer into another computer? • Is anybody using spreadsheets to record and report on regular activities? • Spending a lot of time updating the data in a standard report on a periodic basis? See why they shouldn't be doing that…..

Using APIs to enhance your supply chain

Get the most value from your software by integrating their API (Application Programming Interface) into your in house applications.


Knowledge Base

Advantages of Sub-contracting your Software development

Software development has become increasingly specialised, so only the largest companies can have all the skills necessary to be leading edge in all areas.

EMail marketing done properly

We've worked hard over the last few months to create a tool which can be used for creating and managing your email marketing campaigns. This feature packed set of tools will help us help you make the most of your existing customers and maximise your revenue.

Newsstand

Newsstand has been a 23 year collaboration building an on-line magazine subscription business from a skunkworks project in the corner of the factory, into a multi-million pound business. It's nice to wake up on a Saturday morning and read the latest issue of your favourite English magazine, even if you live far away. And that is precisely the service that Newsstand Magazines has set up for you. They will regularly post to you any of the 1,000s of magazines on their list, where-ever you are.

INEA

A website and bespoke database system for the Independent Network of Estate Agents, enabling Agents to work together in an MLS (Multi Listing Service)

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TheDevTeam
8 The Lawn,
St Leonards-On-Sea,
East Sussex, TN38 0HH