Semaphore Knowledge Model Management (KMM) Quick Start

Introduction

Semaphore 5 Knowledge Model Management (KMM) is a core component of the Semaphore 5 platform. With Knowledge Model Management users can develop, manage and maintain models (thesaurus, taxonomy, ontology or other controlled vocabulary) that reflect the unique characteristics of their organization to enhance search, drive automated categorization and improve navigation.

This quick start guide introduces the basic Knowledge Model Management functions used to build a simple model. It covers creating a new model, adding concepts, preferred labels, alternative labels and creating relationships. This guide is not intended to encompass all features and functions of Knowledge Model Management, additional information can be found on our customer portal at the links below and in the Knowledge Model Management Help menus:

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Getting started - Creating a new model

Semaphore is a web-based suite of applications. You should have been provided with the web address, a URL, to access the system. When you log into to Semaphore, you will be greeted with this page:

You will see that there are three functional areas in the default installation: Modelling, Classification, and Integration. We will look at Modelling in this Quick Start Guide.

Click on Models to access the modelling functional area, which in Semaphore is handled by the Knowledge Model Management web-based application.

After clicking on Modelling, you will be greeted with a page similar to this, which may differ from yours due to which models are being managed by your particular KMM (and the permissions of the user) and indeed how it has been set up and being used:

This page shows the models managed by KMM and viewable by the user given their permissions. It also includes quick links to recently visited models and modified tasks, as well as different routes to organizing and accessing those models, including Search-As-You-Type (SAYT), colours and filtering by tags. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see the “Create a new model” panel:

To create a new model, either click on this panel or click on the “Create a new model” text link to the right of the Search for model” box at the top of the workspace.

The new model dialog window will slide out from the right of the page. Using this dialog you can:

1. Create a “Model Name”
2. Add a description
3. Create a new or add an existing tag
4. Select a colour for the model
5. Assign users and their permissions.

Once you have created the model you are ready to begin the model building process. Open the model from the main dashboard and select “Edit Master”.

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Knowledge Model Management Navigation

Throughout this guide, information will be discussed in the Knowledge Model Management tree view as shown below. The Tree Panel on the left is used for concept navigation and management, searching and filtering. The Class, Label and Metadata section, in the centre of the display, lets you edit items for a selected concept and the Relationships section on the right of the display, shows things to which concepts can be linked.

Adding Concept Schemes and Concepts

Your first step in creating a model within Knowledge Model Management is to add a concept scheme. A concept scheme represents a set of concepts that have been organized by a common set of modeling principles. They will often correspond to existing unique vocabularies, thesauri, or classification schemes within your organization. To add a concept scheme select the “Create a concept scheme” icon, a dialog box will open. Provide a name for the “Concept Scheme” then click the Save button.

Adding Concepts

Once you’ve created a concept scheme you can begin adding concept(s). To create a concept and add it as a top concept to the concept scheme, hover over the “Concept Scheme” in the hierarchy panel until you see the green Add and red Delete icon buttons appear to the right of the tree. Click the green Add button, add the “Concept Name” and click the Save button.

A dialog will open asking for some details of the concept, such as its preferred label, the language of that label, etc.

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At this point we have a concept scheme and concepts. In our sample model shown below, the concept scheme is “Finance & Markets” and there are 3 concepts; “Companies”, “Content Types” and “Industry Sectors”.

Preferred Labels

A preferred label is the official name for a concept. Each concept can have only 1 preferred label per language. For example, the image below shows “Companies” as the “English (en)” “Preferred Label” for the concept “Companies”. You could not add another English preferred label for this concept however, you could add the “Spanish (es)” “Preferred Label” “Empresas”.

Adding Hierarchical Relationships

As new concepts are added they become visible in the main hierarchy panel on the left-hand side of the screen. A hierarchy is an structure used to organize concepts where each subsequent level is a more specific concept. Hierarchies are useful as they help us describe things in a consistent manner. For example, in the image below, “Banks” is more specific description of “Financials” which is a more specific description of “Industry Sectors”.

To start building out the hierarchies for each concept, hover over the concept name, until the green Add and red delet icon buttons appear. Add new concepts using the green Add icon button, nesting concepts as they should appear in the hierarchy. In the example below, the concept “Industry Sectors” has been built out with two new concepts; “Financials” and “Transportation”. The “Financials” concept has been further defined to include “Banks” and “Insurance”.

Broader and Narrower Concepts

By definition, “Broader Concepts” are concepts that are immediate parents of another concept within a hierarchical relationship. For example, in the previous screen shot, “Industry Sectors” is a “Broader Concept” to the concepts “Financials” and “Transportation”:

Narrower concepts are immediate children of other concepts, within a hierarchical relationship. Again using the screen shot above, the concepts “Banks” and “Insurance” are “Narrower Concepts” to “Financials”.

To add a broader concept, select the blue Up arrow next to the “Broader Concepts” label or select the “Select a broader concept” text. A selection box will appear. Begin typing the name of the broader concept you want to create a relationship to., like this:

Adding a narrower concept is a little different and more sophisticated.

To add “Narrower Concepts”, select the blue Down arrow next to the “Narrower Concepts” label or select the “Select a narrower concept” text. A selection box will appear. Begin typing the name of the narrower concept you want to create a relationship to, like this:

If no such concept exists, then nothing will appear in the list, and you will have the option to create an “on-the-fly” new narrower concept by selecting the green “Create concept…” button, like this:

The same dialog will open to create your new narrower concept.

Building Relationships into Your Model

So far, we have added some concepts to the model and arranged them hierarchically. Knowledge Model Management supports the basic distinction between preferred labels and alternative labels. A preferred label is the primary name for a concept and each concept can have only one such preferred label per language. Alternative labels, which are typically synonyms, but can be anything (e.g. near synonyms, alternate spellings, abbreviations, acronyms, etc.) can have zero, one or many alternative labels per language. Alternative labels are used to drive the classification and search experience and so can be any relevant label that helps describe the concept.

Adding Alternative Labels

To add alternative labels, select the concept to which you want to add the alternative label. You can then either create a single label “in line” for the concept by clicking on the text “Create an alternative label”, like this:

to open this in-line label-creation text box:

and entering the appropriate alternative label text in the now-open text box, and then save your entry using the Save button.

Alternatively, you can create multiple alternative labels for the concept in one go by clicking on the multi bulls-eye icon associated with “Alternative Labels”, like this:

to open this label-creation dialog:

and entering the appropriate alternative labels on new lines in the now-open dialog’s text box, and then save your entry using the Save button.

In the image below you can see that two “Alternative Labels” for the “Bank of America” concept; “BOA” and “BofA” have been added. It is important to note that alternative labels cannot exist independently in Knowledge Model Management - they must be associated with an existing concept and cannot exist by themselves.

Creating Associative Relationships

You can further enrich your model structure by creating an associative relationship between two concepts. Relating concepts is useful when two concepts could be related, but are not linked hierarchically. The default associative relationship in Knowledge Model Management is the “Related Concepts” relationship.

In the example model (shown below), we can create a relationship to link together the “Companies” and “Industry Sectors” concepts in the model.

To begin, select a concept in the hierarchical list in the left panel. Click on the Right arrow next to the “Related Concepts” title on the right side of the screen, begin typing the name of the concept you want to relate to, select it from the dropdown list and select the green tick icon button to save the selection.

As you can see in the image below, we’ve created an associative relationship between “Delta” in “Companies” to the “Airlines” in “Industry Sectors”.

Associative relationships are bidirectional meaning when you create an associative relationship for one concept (i.e. Delta to Airlines) the inverse of that relationship is also created (i.e. Airlines to Delta). To view the inverse relationship select the concept “Airlines” in the hierarchy panel and you will see that it is related to “Delta” as shown below:

Adding Concept Metadata

Once a concept has been added to the model, you can capture additional properties or information about that concept by adding it as metadata. Within Knowledge Model Management, you can model the additional properties of a concept in different ways: as textual information in a note field; as an editorial note, a history note and a scope note.

In the example that follows, an editorial note has been added to the concept “Delta”. To add the editorial note select the “Delta” concept in the hierarchy panel then select the box next to the Metadata section. A Choose metadata window will open, select the “editorial note” option and select button.

You can then select all metadata to give a create a value for, or specific metadata. In this example, we have only selected the Editorial Note metadata to create a value for, like this:

This will create the metadata property for the concept, but without a value. To create the value, we must now click on the metadata text:

An inline text box will open and allow you to enter the editorial note information. Enter the information and select the Save button, like this:

Your Delta concept should now look like this:

Next Steps

Congratulations you are on your way to creating models. Additional information about Semaphore 5 Knowledge Model Management features can be found in the Knowledge Model Management Help menus, on the Progress customer portal documentation (links below) and in our online training courses which are offered on a quarterly basis.

Additional Information

For further information, please see:

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• Install Semaphore on Linux
• Install Semaphore on Windows

Knowledge Model Management Training

Additional information regarding training can be found on our website at Progress Software. For training questions and course registration Contact Progress.