The Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI) has launched a new AI-enhanced search experience designed to make it faster and easier for the Ohio State community to find accurate, up-to-date IT information. Instead of digging through multiple websites or guessing the right keywords, users can now ask questions in plain language and get clear, relevant responses drawn directly from official OTDI content.
The search experience is available on on it.osu.edu and ai.osu.edu and pulls information from all OTDI-managed websites, including:
- admin.resources.osu.edu
- ai.osu.edu
- buckeyepass.osu.edu
- das.osu.edu
- it.osu.edu
- softwaredirectory.osu.edu
- storagedirectory.osu.edu
- teaching.resources.osu.edu
- wireless.osu.edu
- osuitsm.service-now.com
The new search tool supports a more streamlined experience as we continue working toward URL consolidation.
When multiple pages are relevant, the system uses a search ranking algorithm to prioritize content based on factors such as how closely the wording matches the question, how relevant the page is to the topic and “freshness” – how recently the content was published or updated. This helps return the most useful and current information first.
To reduce the risk of outdated guidance appearing in results, most pages are re-crawled weekly to capture updates. News and event pages are refreshed more often, approximately every six hours. This ensures that the AI enhanced search reflect website updates quickly.
The tool uses a Google Vertex AI model configured to only respond using content in OTDI’s approved data sources. It does not speculate, fill in gaps, or comment on information outside those sites. This design helps prevent hallucinations or incorrect responses. If relevant information isn’t available on OTDI sites, the system will not invent an answer but instead return a response of, “I am sorry, but I don't have any information about that in the provided sources.”
The search experience is intentionally designed as a helpful, professional assistant. Responses are clear and neutral and have a friendly but authoritative tone with a focus on the next practical steps. Each follow-up question is treated as a new search, rather than a continuous conversation, ensuring that every response is independently grounded in source content.
Testing and quality assurance
Before launch the AI-enhanced search was tested internally by the OTDI team to ensure responses were accurate and appropriate. It was released earlier this month through a soft-launch approach to gather feedback and identify improvements.
In addition, accessibility was a core consideration during development. This search tool has gone through an accessibility review to help ensure it is usable with screen readers and aligns with accessibility best practices. While we did not design the tool to intentionally capture personal information, Ohio State will store information for a limited period, so the system can be reviewed and improved over time.
This AI-enhanced search experience helps OTDI deliver on a simple goal: make it easier for students, faculty, and staff to find trustworthy IT information quickly. By improving discovery—while staying grounded in official content—OTDI is reducing friction, saving time, and improving the overall user experience.
Users can explore the new search today – it is integrated with the standard search feature on OTDI's main website - it.osu.edu - so you can experience a faster path to the answers you need. We expect search usage to grow as it becomes more helpful but we also expect to uncover documentation gaps or discrepancies, so please share your feedback on search results!