Shortening time to value with integrations

Overview

As Guru expanded our product offering to AI Enterprise Search, we needed to allow customers to connect to all of their sources of information. This project involved creating a single pattern for connecting, authenticating, and permissioning that would work across hundreds of applications.

Goal

The dual product goals for this project were to increase the number of integrations per customer and to increase the usage and frequency of AI Enterprise Search within the employee user base.

Research — Interviewing the data

A key part of the research phase for this project was understanding the nuances of what kinds of data are found in different source types and how to ensure the information is mapped correctly and presented to the user in the expected way. Unexpected differences in things like how apps handle data access would have big consequences once we solidified the pattern.

Mapping user flows

Diagramming user flows was an important part of the design process for applications like Slack with a more complex use case.

Learnings

My most important learnings with this project were the importance of collaborating often and early with the developers working on the project. Technical design challenges like this one are full of constraints and gotchas.

Outcomes

We saw an increase of SMB and Mid-market companies connecting multiple sources to Guru. The success of this feature prompted an IA overhaul to make the sources more prominent in the navigation of the app — but that’s a story for another case study.