The Future of the Campus Portal Jens Haeusser – University of British Columbia Jim Helwig – University of Wisconsin-Madison Jonathan Markow – Jasig Tuesday, March 9, 2010 Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vermininc/2337307518 The Future of the Campus Portal Jens Haeusser – University of British Columbia Jim Helwig – University of Wisconsin-Madison Jonathan Markow – Jasig Tuesday, March 9, 2010 Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vermininc/2337307518 2 Introductions A brief history of the enterprise portal A portal visioning case study Evolving the vision- new directions for the campus portal Questions Jonathan Markow 4 Reason #1: It’s time! (A decade of portal history) 6 "In the early days of the Internet, companies sought to give users the benefit of a consistent experience by building portals that integrated multiple activities. Portals are now mostly a thing of the past; a few large examples such as Yahoo! and MSN still exist, but by and large they have fallen victim to what must be the most important law of the Web: a different site is only a click away. As users sought out the best sites for any given purpose, the browsing experience fractured and became ad hoc. As a result, disaggregation of Web sites and services is now the norm. " - Phillip J. Windley, CTO, Kynetx “Higher education institutions are now sometimes turning to products like Sharepoint and Drupal for their enterprise portals.” -Gartner (loosely quoted) 9 This raises a basic question: What is an enterprise portal?! 10 Drupal – Content Management System 11 12 13 Sharepoint – Strong collaborative tools, MS Office integration Typically departmental, small enterprise; trend is scaling upwards Viewed as an alternative to large, complex portals Deep integration with Microsoft products But may require significant development depending on scope of the project and integration requirements Runs exclusively on Microsoft software 14 Vertical Portals Narrow content or usage Business intelligence ERP CRM – Customer Relationship Management SFA – Sales Force Automation E-Business 15 We’re concerned with the Enterprise! 16 17 18 The Higher Education “Enterprise” Academics Student life Faculty & Staff Research Administration Institutional web Dining Clubs Etc. 19 Enterprise characteristics Complexity Diverse constituents Many applications, silos Community building Multiple brands Distributed content development Delegated authority/administration Collaboration across many boundaries Multiple sources of identity information 20 Some Enterprise Portal Requirements Single sign-on Granular access to content, transactions Personalization Customization(?) Flexible layout Accessibility Scalability Open to integration within and outside the enterprise 21 Enterprise Portal 1.0 Simple, stand-alone: e.g., Bookmarks e.g., Ride board e.g., Surveys Single sign-on Groups & Permissions Aggregated content File sharing News and announcements (in uPortal): WebProxy Channel (a “window on the rest of the web”) 22 Enterprise Portal 1.5 A personalized view of enterprise data Transactions Facebook interface Business Intelligence Pull data from disparate sources Enterprise mashups Application messaging (e.g., Alerts) Aggregate campus and personal events Aggregate email and calendar 23 What’s Next? We asked some basic questions… 24 Questions: Is the enterprise portal still important to higher education? If so, does the portal meet current expectations for a web-based user experience? What new requirements should be addressed by the campus portal? For portal users For portal administrators For portal deployers 25 We talked to a lot of people… Stakeholder calls Conference sessions Research Campus surveys(?) 26 Spoiler Alert: The enterprise portal is still important to higher education 27 Nielsen says… “Web portals have suffered a highly variable existence. Every few years, they're in, and every few years, they're out, with many of last season's darlings filing for bankruptcy or being snapped up on the cheap. It's a different story inside companies: enterprise portals know only one way, and it's up. More and more companies are establishing intranet portals, and they keep improving their features and usability.” - Jakob Nielsen, “Enterprise Portals are Popping”, July, 2008 http://www.useit.com/alertbox/portals.html 28 Jim Helwig Perception portal had become dated http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Car.JPG my.wisc.edu www.wisc.edu What goes where? Portal vs. Home Page Photo by Tom Ventura Viewed as Unfunded Mandate cc: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11138083@N00/6940141 Alignment with campus IT strategic planning effort Associate Vice Chancellor from Enrollment Management Associate Director of University Communications Graduate School CIO Director of Cross College Advising Director of Academic Technology Director of Enterprise Internet Services 36 Principles and requirements Process and structure Active portal champions 38 Representatives from across campus Service providers and end users What is NOT visioning http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Car.JPG Personal vision: portal of the future http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gelehrter_in_Bibliothek_18_Jh.jpg Small group visual diagrams Indentify wants Develop and share guidelines Providing campus services in portal: Campus infrastructure and applications need to share common standards and APIs Internal/External: The portal should provide access to personal information from campus systems Ease of Use: All portal content should be tag-able and searchable Identify consensus and priorities cc http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2249064379/ Develop draft principles Develop narrative of axioms, requirements, principles Champions and sponsors Session participants Strategic planning project leads Campus Communications User groups Service providers Vetting will help us: Feedback on the principles Show support Establish a dialog 48 49 Executive Group Advisory Group Service Team Development Teams Infrastructure Team (proposed) Portal is essential All important services available Enterprise and ad hocgroups and roles Public, group-specific, private Internal and external Use for notifications Search and Browse Flexible, customizable Access for all Access for life http://bit.ly/MyUW-Visioning Jim.Helwig@doit.wisc.edu Jens Haeusser From customization to personalization From content aggregation to dashboards What about… Why? We know- Your affiliations (faculty, staff, student) Your department (Chemistry, English) Your classes (Physic 101, Spanish Tapas) Your roles (TA, Tenure Committee) Your demographics (age, gender, address) Your likes (club memberships, advising) Your preferences (colour blind, large text) Your device (laptop, iPhone, screen reader) The portal should reflectwho you are,what you need, andwhat you can do The portal should reflectwho you are,what you need, andwhat you can do The portal should reflectwho you are,what you need, andwhat you can do The portal should reflectwho you are,what you need, andwhat you can do The portal should be your one-stop-shop that highlights your available resources, and provides a sense of a unified institution The portal should be your one-stop-shop that highlights your available resources, and provides a sense of a unified institution The portal should be your one-stop-shop that highlights your available resources, and provides a sense of a unified institution The portal should be your one-stop-shop that highlights your available resources, and provides a sense of a unified institution The original vision- Provide as much content as possible inside the portal Provide single sign-on links to content you can’t aggregate The challenge- Not all content fits nicely in little boxes Not all content plays nicely in a portal So many SSO sites, so many links… How can we provide access to the information you need, when you need it? One solution: Dashboards Provide summary information about a range of content and services Provide up-to-date information that allows you to choose when and where to dive deeper Web 2.0? Mashups? SOA? Usability and Accessibility? Questions and Discussion Questions and Discussion

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