InQuira Intelligent Search delivers highly accurate, complete answers to user's questions while minimizing the time and cost required for maintenance. The core of InQuira's Intelligent Search is its patented Semantic Processing Engine, which provides out-of-the-box understanding and analysis of language, both to determine the meaning and usage of content and to derive user intent.

When content or user input is processed through the Semantic Processing Engine, a series of sophisticated linguistic and statistical techniques are applied, each of which builds on previous steps to add to the complete understanding of the content or question currently being evaluated. Once the user input is fully processed, the Semantic Processing Engine produces a set of expert queries which are concurrently evaluated against the content sources present to retrieve an exact answer to the input.

If an exact answer doesn't exist (or, in the case of general questions, a non-specific answer is more appropriate), the Semantic Processing Engine automatically backs off of the strict requirements of the initial expert queries in a process of "graceful degradation." This allows the Semantic Processing Engine to automatically retrieve the best answer available in the content sources present, as well as alert content owners to exact cases where more detail might be necessary.

The Semantic Processing Engine consists of two main sources of knowledge that inform the internal evaluation process:

• Language and Domain-specific Ontologies. Shipping with over 100,000 pre-defined concepts and relationships out of the box, InQuira's Semantic Processing Engine Ontologies represent a detailed understanding of both generally applicable and domain-specific ideas. This understanding is represented not only by conceptually specific synonymous phrases, but also by a set of relationships that describe each concept with relation to all other concepts. Domain-specific ontologies allow InQuira to evaluate language with respect to the current application, thus reducing ambiguity and allowing for a deep understanding of user intent.
• Intent-discovery Rules. Powerful and flexible Intent-discovery rules allow the Semantic Processing Engine to combine contextual and conceptual understanding on the fly. The rules recognize important features of user input and generate "search components" comprising the set of expert queries which represent a complete response to the input, including how to gracefully degrade in the case that an exact answer is not found. Intent-discovery rules seamlessly use ontology concept definitions and relationships in both the understanding of linguistic features of user input and the generation of the expert queries. To further respond to User Intent, the rules dynamically accept input from third-party repositories such as CRM systems (such as Siebel or SAP) which allows for personalization of the responses selected by the expert queries.

In addition to complete, out-of-the-box domain-specific concept and intent understanding, InQuira Intelligent Search provides a simple mechanism to add enterprise-specific knowledge to the Semantic Processing Engine, through an easy-to-use GUI environment. This multi-user environment allows InQuira owners to quickly and easily create ontology concepts and Intent-discovery rules, customize both to achieve specific business processes and goals, analyze user input and site performance, and fully test any modifications made in response to ongoing analysis.