Miami University
Sungard SCT Luminis
and
Documentum Content Management System
Evaluation
Final Report
November, 2004
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Table of Contents
Executive Summary ................................................................................................. 3
Project Objective & Summary ............................................................................... 3
Subteam Summaries ................................................................................................ 3
Technical Subteam ........................................................................................................ 4
Features and Usability Subteam .................................................................................. 4
Content Management System Subteam ...................................................................... 5
Summary of benefits of Luminis and Documentum ............................................ 5
Summary of concerns with Luminis and Documentum ...................................... 7
Additional concerns with Luminis and Documentum ......................................... 9
Summary of lost functionality when moving to Luminis ..................................... 9
Follow-up Actions .................................................................................................. 10
Deliverables and Recommendations .................................................................... 10
Additional Recommendation ................................................................................ 11
Additional Research Items .................................................................................... 11
Final Recommendation.......................................................................................... 12
Appendix A – Scope Document ............................................................................ 14
Appendix B – Technical Subteam Report ........................................................... 18
Appendix C – Features and Usability Subteam Report ..................................... 31
Appendix D – Content Management System Subteam Report ......................... 35
Appendix E – Sungard SCT Response to Concerns ........................................... 37
Appendix F –Conference Call on Luminis Single-Signon ................................. 41
Appendix G – Investigation into “Shining Star” institutions ............................ 43
Appendix H – Additional interviews with Luminis institutions ........................ 47
Appendix I – Interviews with institutions using the Blackboard Portal .......... 49
Appendix J – Blackboard Portal Demonstration ............................................... 52
Appendix K – Unicon Academus Portal Demonstration ................................... 53
Appendix L – Comparison of portal products .................................................... 54
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SCT Luminis & Documentum CMS License Evaluation
Final Report
Executive Summary
This project was charged with evaluating the Sungard SCT Luminis portal and
Documentum Content Management System for use at Miami University. After careful
study focusing on the technical issues, features, and usability, the committee does not
recommend implementing the Sungard SCT Luminis portal or the Documentum Content
Management System at this time. Based on this recommendation the core team also
investigated the Blackboard Portal System (now called the Blackboard Community
System) and the Unicon Academus Portal. The core team believes that the Blackboard
Portal is the best of the three products for Miami University.
Project Objective & Summary
The intent of this project is to evaluate the SCT Luminis Portal product and the
Documentum Enterprise Content Management Solution and define a recommendation on
continuation in a report accepted by the Vice President of Information Technology
Services by July 31, 2004.
The evaluation was to consider the following items:
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Robustness and reliability
Cost
Effort and time to implement
Acceptance by stakeholders
The following deliverables were anticipated:
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Recommendation to continue with an implementation of the Sungard SCT
Luminis portal including the limited version of the Documentum Content
Management System that is included or to drop the product
Recommendation to purchase or not purchase the Documentum Enterprise
Content Management System
Broad implementation timeline or possible scenarios for an implementation or a
recommendation on how to proceed in the case of an unfavorable
recommendation
The entire scope document can be found in Appendix A.
Subteam Summaries
Below is a summary of each of the subteams that aided in the evaluation of SCT Luminis
and Documentum CMS. The charge of each subteam and the activities performed by that
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subteam are included. The findings of the subteams are listed collectively in the
Summary of benefits of Luminis and Documentum and the Summary of concerns
with Luminis and Documentum sections below.
Technical Subteam
The Technical subteam was charged with evaluating the technical details of the products
including a review of technical problems plaguing our original Campus Pipeline
installation, technical problems with the current myMiami application, and technical
concerns for a future portal and content management system and how well the
Luminis/Documentum solution addresses these problems/concerns. In addition, this team
should evaluate how well a Luminis/Documentum solution would integrate with our
current core services (LDAP, WAS, Email & Calendaring Solution, Shibboleth, etc.)
The Technical subteam completed the following items:
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reviewed and categorized the problems related to the initial Campus Pipeline
implementation
Researched how Luminis would integrate into our current infrastructure
Researched hardware and software requirements for a Luminis implementation
Conducted a conference call with Gartner concerning the Luminis product as well
as a short discussion of alternate portal solutions for educational institutions
Conducted a technical conference call with SCT
Conducted a conference call with Notre Dame concerning their Luminis
experience to date
The complete report from the Technical subteam can be found in Appendix B.
Features and Usability Subteam
The Features and Usability subteam was charged with evaluating the features of the
Luminis portal to determine if they meet Miami's needs. In addition, this team should
evaluate the usability of the product from a user perspective.
The Features and Usability Subteam completed the following items:
 Reviewed the functionality in the current myMiami system
 Developed a list of required functionality to be included in a new portal
 Reviewed Luminis portals at the following institutions via demo accounts:
o University of Nottingham – England
o La Salle University
o Northeastern University
o Savannah College of Art and Design
o Southern Alberta Institute of Technology
 Engaged the Office of Equity and Equal Opportunity in evaluating the ADA
compliance of the Luminis software
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The complete report from the Features and Usability subteam can be found in Appendix
C.
Content Management System Subteam
The Content Management System subteam was charged with evaluating the features of
the Documentum Content Management System to determine if they meet Miami's needs
for managing web content.
The Content Management System subteam completed the following items:
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Initially worked to educate the subteam on content management systems in
general, what they do, and how they might help Miami University
Conducted a conference call and demo with SCT concerning the Documentum
product
The complete report from the Content Management System subteam can be found in
Appendix D.
Summary of benefits of Luminis and Documentum
Below is a summary of some of the benefits of a Luminis and Documentum
implementation. Some of these are improvements over our current myMiami service.
Others are different ways of implementing features we already have.
1) Multiple Roles – Luminis automatically sets up roles for users depending on their
involvement at the university. The following roles are available by default:
o Admin
o Alumni
o Employee
o Executive
o Executive Admin
o Faculty
o Student
o DevelopmentOfficer
o WebTailorAdmin
o Finance
Additional roles can be setup by the university (although population of those roles would
need to be done manually or by software written by Miami).
2) Customizable interface – The Luminis interface allows considerable customization
based on roles and on the user’s own preferences. For example, a channel devoted to
faculty elections could be displayed only for faculty. Faculty who were not interested in
faculty elections could decide to remove it from their view of the portal. The interface
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also allows channels to be locked so that users cannot remove them from their view of the
portal.
3) Community Groups – The Documentum integration with Luminis allows community
groups (student organizations, faculty groups, etc.) to create content within the portal that
is shared with their members. Community groups can create announcements, add
calendar events, conduct chat sessions, manage message boards, post new items, post
links to web pages, share files, display pictures, etc. However, this feature duplicates
functionality already offered in our Blackboard implementation.
4) Banner Roles shared with Luminis – Luminis is aware of elevated roles in Banner.
It was implied that the BannerWeb Menu channel should show all the menu choices
available to the user based on Banner permissions, not just their role. This was a problem
in Campus Pipeline.
5) Personalized Announcements – Announcements can be sent to categories of users.
The categories that can be selected from are: roles, imported groups, major, students
registered for a course, or community groups.
6) Calendar – Luminis includes the SunONE Calendar Server. However, it’s unclear if
this calendar can be integrated with other calendars on campus (including Meeting
Maker, Blackboard, etc.)
7) Use of the LDAP password for single-signon to external applications – Campus
Pipeline stored the password for every external service in their internal database. This
created security concerns and support problems when a user changed his or her password.
Since Miami has already invested a great deal of work to use LDAP as our central
authentication service, the ability to use LDAP for single-signon to external applications
will remove many of these security and support problems.
8) uPortal base – Luminis is built upon the open source uPortal portal framework. This
gives Luminis a number of features including JSR 168 compatibility, compatibility with
uPortal channels, etc.
9) Single-signon – Luminis provides a good single-signon framework. With a moderate
amount of work, it appears that the Luminis single-signon framework could replace our
current WAS system.
10) Content Management System – the Documentum CMS could provide Miami with a
mechanism to develop standardized web pages and maintain them in a distributed, but
supportable, fashion.
11) Web-based Email – the Luminis web-based email client is based on the SunOne
web-based email client and appears to be full-featured.
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Summary of concerns with Luminis and Documentum
While the committees found a number of positive aspects of the Luminis and
Documentum products, a number of serious concerns were also discovered. These
concerns were provided to SCT for a formal response. SCT’s response is included in
Appendix E. The concerns are outlined below:
1) Service reliability - Luminis contains multiple single points of failure (Application
Server, LDAP Service, Database Service, etc.) with no supported method for redundancy.
As a web portal is a critical piece of our infrastructure and the "front door" to all of our
services, uptime is of foremost importance. During the 17 months Campus Pipeline was
running at Miami, we had numerous outages. Lengthy and numerous service outages
have also been mentioned by representatives of other schools running Luminis including
Saint Louis University, Pepperdine University, and Ferris State University.
2) Support response time - During the time Miami ran Campus Pipeline, resolution of
support calls averaged approximately one month. Discussions with other schools have
confirmed that this average of one month still exists with calls relating to the Luminis
product (with extremes of 9 months on some simple issues).
3) Support knowledge - During the time Miami ran Campus Pipeline, the quality and
ability to answer support calls appeared to depend on the support representative that the
call was assigned to. Often, a support representative would work on a problem for
several days or weeks without resolution before turning the problem over to another
representative who would resolve the problem immediately. Integration problems
between Banner and Campus Pipeline were never resolved and we replaced this
integration with our own code. The last technical problem (frequent crashes) Miami had
with Campus Pipeline continued for approximately one month before Miami
discontinued use of the application. Approximately two weeks after Miami had replaced
Campus Pipeline, the solution was found by Campus Pipeline support reps as a wellknown problem. Discussions with other institutions running Luminis have confirmed
that these support problems still exist especially in the areas of Banner and Luminis data
integration.
4) Limited BannerWeb integration - the BannerWeb channel is limited to only
displaying BannerWeb menus as described in the Banner Self-Service Administration
Guide:
"WebTailor works with SCT Luminis Platform III to provide a channel that can
contain links to the various self-service applications. The menus and menu items
that appear in the self-service applications appear automatically in a channel on
the portal when the user logs on, so end users have to click fewer times to access
the information they want."
5) Lack of ADA compliance - Miami’s Office of Equity and Equal Opportunity
performed a preliminary ADA compliance assessment of some of the demonstration sites
that were provided. They used the Bobby analysis tool (http://www.cast.org/bobby) and
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used the JAWS application for testing. Both showed numerous problems with the
Luminis implementations reviewed.
6) Lack of HTML standards compliance - We evaluated several of the test sites using
the W3C HTML validation service (http://validator.w3.org/) and found significant
numbers of compliance problems. This could cause incompatibilities with future browser
versions as well as non-mainstream browsers (including specialty browsers used by
handicapped individuals).
7) Limited Blackboard integration - Blackboard is our primary LMS on campus.
Luminis provides only single-signon capabilities between itself and Blackboard.
Blackboard announcements are not integrated into Luminis announcements. The
Luminis Courses channel is not aware of which courses are in Blackboard and which are
not.
8) Multiple answers to questions - During the research into Luminis, the committee was
provided with multiple answers to the same questions. For example, the committee was
told that using the Luminis LDAP server for non-Luminis activities was both supported
and not supported depending on who was asked. Questions about using Macs with
Documentum were met with ambiguous answers as well.
9) Lack of good references - On numerous occasions, the committee asked for
references or demonstration sites for evaluation purposes. A list of 5 demo sites was
provided, but several contained errors and seemed incomplete. The committee was
provided with a list of 25 universities in the area that had purchased Luminis. Research
into these sites proved difficult, as most of these sites had been live for more than a
couple months if at all. The committee sent an additional request for a list of sites with
more Luminis experience. That request was not answered. The committee has now
asked for 5 "shining star" sites and has not received a response yet. The committee also
asked for a demo site for Documentum and none was provided.
10) Small list of supported browsers - For Windows, Luminis supports IE 5.5 (SP2)
and 6.0 (with security patches) and Netscape 4.7, 6.2, and 7. For Macs, Luminis supports
IE 5.1x (OS 9) and 5.2 (OS X) and Netscape 4.7x and 6.2x. For a university with close to
30,000 users plus alumni, parents, and perspective students, it's difficult to make sure all
users meet these requirements. Many browsers commonly used by our clients are not
supported, including Safari (default browser on Mac OS X), Opera, Mozilla/Firefox
(based on Netscape), etc. This is especially troubling now that many organizations
(including The Office of Homeland Security) are stating that IE should not be used due to
security concerns. In addition, new browser versions require an upgrade to Luminis to be
supported. For example, it appears that if IE 7.0 were released tomorrow, Luminis would
generate a warning to anyone using it.
11) Pop-ups required - Browsers must have support for pop-up windows enabled to use
Luminis. Many of our clients have disabled pop-ups due to the number of pop-up ads.
Requiring our clients to re-enable this feature will discourage many from using Luminis.
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Additional concerns with Luminis and Documentum
The following concerns were also expressed in the evaluation of the Luminis and
Documentum products. These concerns were not included in the list provided to SCT
either because they were deemed as more opinions rather than actionable items or they
were discovered after the original list was provided to SCT:
1) Poor administrative documentation – While the user documentation seems relatively
complete, the documentation provided to administrators is considerably lacking.
2) Misleading feature set – A number of features of the product appear to be overmarketed. Once pressed, SCT acknowledges that implied features are not present. Some
examples of this are as follows:
o Announcements can be sent to groups based on any set of Banner attributes.
While true, this feature is not ad-hoc. These groups must be setup by an
administrator prior to using them for an announcement.
o Roles can be created based on any set of Banner attributes. While true, Miami
would need to write the code to populate and maintain these roles.
o Luminis is integrated with Banner. While true, the only direct integration
currently available for clients is a channel that displays the BannerWeb menu
choices.
Miami experienced this “marketing hype” with the original implementation of Campus
Pipeline. Interviews with Notre Dame indicate that this issue still exists.
3) Lack of LDAP synchronization – Luminis does not provide a mechanism to
synchronize LDAP servers. It’s also unclear if the internal LDAP server is usable for
external purposes. Miami will need to continue to synchronize the servers using our own
solutions.
4) Text-only Announcements – Announcements in Luminis may only contain text.
They cannot contain rich text (bold, italics, lists, etc.), URL links, images, etc..
Summary of lost functionality when moving to Luminis
Below is a list of features in our current myMiami service that would be lost with a move
to Luminis.
1) Redundancy – myMiami is currently spread across four web application servers, two
LDAP servers, and three WAS servers (with two database backends). The service also
uses one database server and one local director that are not currently redundant.
2) HTML Announcements – Announcements in the current myMiami can contain any
HTML code. Luminis only supports text (no rich text or URL links).
3) Course services – myMiami currently provides direct links from courses into email to
the instructor (for students), the Blackboard site for that course (only if the course is in
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Blackboard), class rosters – both normal and midterm (for faculty), and grade submission
– both midterm and final (for faculty). Luminis provides email to the instructor and a
single link into another service that can be customized by the system admin or the faculty
member for the course. This single link could link to the Blackboard application, but it
doesn’t appear that it could link directly to the Blackboard site for that course. This link
would also appear even if a Blackboard site doesn’t exist for that course.
Follow-up Actions
Based on the preliminary findings, the committee was asked to complete two additional
tasks:
o Provide the summary of concerns to Sungard SCT for a formal, written response.
Sungard SCT did not respond in writing. In place of this, Sungard SCT gave an
in person demonstration and response on September 8, 2004. This response is
captured in Appendix E. An additional conference call was conducted on
September 30, 2004 to discuss the single-signon capabilities of the product. The
results of this conference call are included in Appendix F.
o Request a list of “shining star” institutions from Sungard SCT and determine their
level of satisfaction with the products. Conference calls were conducted with
Northeastern University and Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. The
results of this investigation are included as Appendix F. In addition, the core
team conducted a conference call with The College of William and Mary: one of
Miami’s peer institutions that uses the Luminis Portal. The results of this
conference call are included in Appendix H.
Deliverables and Recommendations
The committee presented the following deliverables/recommendations to the CIO:
Deliverable 1:
Recommendation to continue with an implementation of the Sungard SCT Luminis portal
including the limited version of the Documentum Content Management System that is
included or to drop the product.
While the committee agrees that Miami needs to improve our portal service, the
committee recommends not implementing the Sungard SCT Luminis product as a
portal solution for Miami University at this time based on the concerns listed above
and references from other universities.
Based on the slow progress in improving the product over the last several years, the
committee believes it will be several more years before the Sungard SCT Luminis
product would be acceptable for use at Miami University. Based on this, the
committee recommends that Miami University drop our current Sungard SCT
Luminis annual license.
Deliverable 2:
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Recommendation to purchase or not purchase the Documentum Enterprise Content
Management System.
The committee recommends not implementing the Documentum Enterprise Content
Management System for Miami University at this time based on reliability, usability,
stakeholder acceptance, and climate at Miami University.
Deliverable 3:
Broad implementation timeline or possible scenarios for an implementation or a
recommendation on how to proceed in the case of an unfavorable recommendation.
The committee recommends investigating other portal solutions to replace the current
myMiami service. In particular, the committee believes the JA-SIG uPortal project
and the Blackboard Portal show particular promise.
Additional Recommendation
Based on large usage of the portal by students, a number of clients have expressed that
the primary emphasis for Miami’s portal should be in integrating it with the academic
needs of the university (particularly Blackboard, Libraries, etc.). Integration with the
ERP (BannerWeb) is important, but should be secondary to the need for academic
integration.
Additional Research Items
Based on the deliverables/recommendations listed above, the core team and CIO
investigated two additional portal products: the Blackboard Portal (now called the
Blackboard Community System) and the Unicon Academus Portal.
Conference calls were conducted with two institutions using the Blackboard Portal.
These are included in Appendix I. Blackboard demonstrated their portal to the CIO and
core team on September 28, 2004. This demonstration is captured in Appendix J.
Unicon demonstrated their portal to the CIO and core team on October 14, 2004. This
demonstration is captured in Appendix K.
A tabular comparison of all three products is included in Appendix L.
While the three products investigated represent a large percentage of the academic portals
implemented within universities, this was not an exhaustive review of the products
available. A number of other portal products are available (including uPortal, Oracle
Portal, etc.) that were not reviewed.
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Final Recommendation
After reviewing the Sungard SCT Luminis Portal with Documentum, the Blackboard
Portal and Academic Suite, and the Academus Suite, the core team believes that the
Blackboard Portal is the best of the three products reviewed for Miami University.
Some of the factors that impacted this recommendation included:
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Available features (communities, surveys, polls, announcements, etc.)
Ties to the academic mission of the university (Blackboard Learning System and
Content System)
Existing user base at Miami University (86% of Miami students have at least one
course that uses Blackboard)
Reliability and scalability capabilities of the Blackboard product
Branding/customization capabilities of the Blackboard product by campus,
college, role, major, department, etc.
Recognition of ADA concerns in the Blackboard product
Ties to the Blackboard Transaction System
Recognition of existing and emerging web standards and applications (LDAP,
Shibboleth, JSR 168, Sakai, uPortal, etc.) in the Blackboard product
Document sharing capabilities of the Blackboard Content System (including
electronic portfolios, eReserves, sharing with non-Miami entities, etc.)
Cross-platform GUI HTML editing capabilities (expected by end of 2004)
Resource sharing (personnel, servers, etc.) between Learning System solution and
Portal solution
Wide-spread web browser support
Ability for information to be presented without logging in or with guest access
Potential future use for enhancing or replacing the Universal Disk Space (UDS)
service currently offered.
Reviews by other institutions using the Blackboard Portal system
This recommendation does not come without some concerns, however. These concerns
include:
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Lack of Banner integration in the Blackboard product - None of the solutions
reviewed included any significant Banner integration in the near future. Luminis
is scheduled to gain limited integration with Banner in version 7 (currently
scheduled for Fall, 2006 at Miami at the earliest) with additional integration in
subsequent versions. Assuming SCT develops this integration using portal
standards (SCT has not returned our inquiries into this), these integration
components could potentially be migrated to other portal products.
Lack of email client - Miami University would need to provide our own email
client. It is assumed that the Email/Calendaring project will include a web-based
email and calendar client that would be used in place of any portal delivered
client.
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
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Calendar client that does not integrate with university calendar solution –
Blackboard contains it’s own calendar. This calendar does not
integrate/synchronize with Meeting Maker nor, it is assumed, with the calendar
solution implemented by the Email/Calendaring project. The Email/Calendaring
project may provide a calendar that could be used in place of the Blackboard
calendar.
Limited User Interface Customization – The Blackboard user interface is not as
customizable as the other two solutions reviewed (e.g. only one and two column
layouts are available). Blackboard acknowledges this deficiency and is looking to
improve this in the future. Based on recent demonstrations, it appears that this
functionality will be delivered by the end of 2004.
Blackboard does not include a single-signon solution – Miami University would
need to continue to utilize the WAS application or find another SSO product to
handle this function
Lack of Account and Data integration tools – Miami is currently creating accounts
and populating the metadata in the Blackboard system via the Acctgen
application. This would need to continue and be expanded. This is the case, in
some capacity, for all three of the products reviewed.
Lack of Content Management System (CMS) – the Blackboard Content System is
a Document Management System with some CMS features. It is not a fullfledged CMS nor does Blackboard claim that it is. Blackboard does not currently
have plans to implement a full CMS although this may change based on future
demand. This does not preclude Miami University from implementing an
external CMS and linking to/deploying content to the Blackboard system.
The committee would also like to provide a comment stated by almost every institution
we talked with: no portal product will work straight out of the box – all require
substantial resources and support to be successful.
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Appendix A – Scope Document
SCT Luminis & Documentum CMS License Evaluation
Scope Document
March 6, 2016
Project Sponsor:
Project Manager:
Reid Christenberry, Vice President, Information
Technology Services
Kent Covert, Manager, IT Services Network
Applications
Project Steering Team:
Reid Christenberry, Vice President, Information
Technology Services
William Custer, Interim Asst. Director, Information
Systems & Services
Richard Little, Senior Director, University
Communications
IT Services Project Consultants:
Cynthia Hauck
Jennifer Erickson
IT Services Project Management Office
Cornelius & Associates
Objective & Narrative:
The intent of this project is to evaluate the SCT Luminis Portal product and the
Documentum Enterprise Content Management Solution and define a recommendation on
continuation in a report accepted by the Vice President of Information Technology
Services by July 31, 2004. A demo of the products will take place on April 1.
Stakeholders and team members should be finalized prior to the demo to insure
participation in the demo.
History:
In the summer of 2001, MCIS deployed Campus Pipeline's portal product at Miami
University as the myMiami service. In the fall of 2002, citing ongoing severe technical
problems, MCIS decided to replace Campus Pipeline's portal product with an in-house
developed solution.
Since that time, Campus Pipeline (now part of Sungard SCT) has replaced their product
with a new portal known as Luminis. This portal is based on the open source uPortal
project developed by the Java Administration SIG. This new product also includes the
Documentum Content Management solution for managing web content within the portal.
An enterprise-wide edition of Documentum can be purchased to manage additional web
content outside the portal.
Realizing that the new portal might be better for Miami than the original portal product
and that the university might decide to install Luminis, MCIS continued to license the
Campus Pipeline portal products even though the product was not currently being used.
Criteria:
The following items should be considered in evaluating the products:
 Robustness and reliability
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Cost
Effort and time to implement
Acceptance by stakeholders
Project Teams:
The following teams are proposed to perform the work of this project:
Sponsor - executive who authorizes and supports the project. J. Reid Christenberry
will be the sponsor of this project.
Steering Team - oversees the project and makes decisions on scope/schedule/budget
and other high level policy/procedure questions. The Sponsor will chair this
group. The members of this team are J. Reid Christenberry, William Custer,
Richard Little, Judith Sessions, and TBD.
Project Manager - responsible for achieving the project objective within scope,
schedule, and budget for the project. Kent Covert will be the project manager for
this project.
Core Team - responsible for the work of the project. This group will be responsible
for developing the final recommendation based on the results of the teams.
Comprised of the project manager and team leaders.
Subteams
Technical Issues - responsible for evaluating technical details of the products
including review of technical problems plaguing the original Campus Pipeline
installation, technical problems with the current myMiami application, and
technical concerns for a future portal and content management system and
how well the Luminis/Documentum solution addresses these
problems/concerns. In addition, this team should evaluate how well a
Luminis/Documentum solution would integrate with our current core services
(LDAP, WAS, Email & Calendaring Solution, Shibboleth, etc.) Team
members include: Carrie Ledford (IT Services - team leader), John Moose
(IT Services), Brian Simms (IT Services), Steve Beckman (IT Services),
Dean Harris (IT Services), and Micah Cooper (Engineering and Applied
Science).
Portal Features & Usability - responsible for evaluating the features of the
Luminis portal and determine if they meet Miami's needs. In addition, this
team should evaluate the usability of the product from a user perspective.
Team members include: Stan Brown (University Libraries - team leader),
Peggy Sander (IT Services), David Schaefer (IT Services), Chris Wolfe
(Western College), Leigh Mondello-Garrett (Student Financial Aid), Jeri
Moore (University Communications), Lisa Sheard (Student Affairs), Jim
Lipnickey (Hamilton Campus), Steve Thole (Housing, Dining and Guest
Services), Glenn Platt (Interactive Media Studies), and Mike Good
(undergraduate & IT Services).
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CMS Features - responsible for evaluating the features of the Documentum
Content Management System and determine if they meet Miami's needs for
managing web content. Team members include: Craig Taylor (University
Communications - team leader), Aaron Garrett (IT Services), Leslie Smith
(IT Services), Christine Noble (???) (Engineering and Applied Science),
Rob Casson (University Libraries), Karen Shaffer (University Secretary),
Sumit Sircar (School of Business), and Rob Withers (University Libraries &
University Accreditation Committee).
Schedule:
Below is the rough schedule for this project:
3/15/2004
Establish stakeholders through scope document with the VP
3/22/2004
Finalize team leaders and team members
4/1/2004
Demo of Luminis and Documentum by SCT
5/1/2004
Subteams establish decision criteria
6/15/2004
Subteams complete draft of their recommendations
7/1/2004
Subteams complete their final recommendations to the core team
7/15/2004
Core team completes draft of final report
7/31/2004
Report due to VP
Deliverables:



Recommendation to continue with an implementation of the Sungard SCT
Luminis portal including the limited version of the Documentum Content
Management System that is included or to drop the product
Recommendation to purchase or not purchase the Documentum Enterprise
Content Management System
Broad implementation timeline or possible scenarios for an implementation or a
recommendation on how to proceed in the case of an unfavorable
recommendation
Boundaries:


This study will only consider the Sungard SCT Luminis product and the
Documentum Content Management System. Other products will only be
evaluated after the Luminis and Documentum products have been dismissed.
Research into other products is allowed for research and comparisons, however.
This project is responsible for producing a recommendation only. This project is
not responsible for implementing the recommended solution.
Concerns and Risks:


Documentum and Legato (SCT's imaging and workflow partner) were both
bought by EMC. Due to overlap in these products, it's unclear what will happen
with them in the future.
A separate project is evaluating email and calendaring at Miami. The results of
that project will not be known until approximately one year after this project is
completed. Since Luminis contains an email and calendaring component,
incompatibilities or retooling may result.
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Stakeholders:
The following potential stakeholders and contacts have been identified:
 University Communications - Richard Little, Holly Wissing, Arlene Werts
 Student Affairs - Dennis Roberts, Rick Devine
 ASG - Pushpam Srivastava (2003-04 Communications Director - ASG)
 University Secretary - Karen Shaffer
 Academic Affairs - Joe Urell, Mary Woodworth
 Faculty - Steven Wright, Gerald Cruez, Glenn Platt, Christine Noble, Chris
Wolfe
 Registrar - Bob Kubat
 Bursar - Ginny Layton
 Financial Aid - Chuck Knepfle
 Admission - Pam Neese, Jen Collignon
 University Libraries - Judith Sessions
 Housing, Dining, and Guest Services - Adolf Haislar, Steve Thole, Kirk
Hopkins
 Business Affairs - Dale Hinrichs, Mollie Hansel, Dennis Deahl, Janet Cox
 Alumni Affairs - Jerry Wright
 Students - Jeff Toaddy, Mike Goode
 Hamilton Campus - Jim Lipnickey
 Middletown Campus - Barb Edwards
Approvals:
Name: Kent Covert
Name: J. Reid Christenberry
Role: Project Manager
Title: Manager, Network Applications
Date:
Role: Executive Project Sponsor
Title: Vice President, IT Services
Date:
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Appendix B – Technical Subteam Report
Technical Team Charge
The technical team is charged with evaluating technical details of the products including
review of technical problems plaguing the original Campus Pipeline installation,
technical problems with the current myMiami application, and technical concerns for a
future portal and content management system. The team will evaluate how well the
Luminis/Documentum solution addresses these problems and concerns. Also, this team
has been asked to evaluate how well a Luminis/Documentum solution would integrate
with our current core services, such as LDAP and WAS. Team members include: Carrie
Ledford (IT Services - team leader), John Moose (IT Services), Brian Simms (IT
Services), Steve Beckman (IT Services), Dean Harris (IT Services), and Micah Cooper
(Engineering and Applied Science).
The team developed a list of topics around which to base the investigation. The topics of
concern included:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Campus Pipeline experience
Current myMiami offering
Luminis integration with fundamental services
Luminis hardware requirements
Luminis software concerns
Luminis performance and support
The team took the following steps to evaluate the technical details of the product:
1. Discussed technical concerns surrounding the current myMiami offering with
support staff responsible for supporting it
2. Reviewed logs of support calls for the Campus Pipeline product
3. Reviewed vendor documentation
4. Discussed Portal products in use at schools of higher education with Gartner
5. Discussed technical concerns with SCT technical staff
6. Discussed Luminis experience with an institution that has implemented the product
(Notre Dame)
Strategies and Findings:
Campus Pipeline experience
The team reviewed the issues that caused the Campus Pipeline product to be removed from
production status. We then attempted to understand whether those issues would be a
concern with the Luminis product as well. More detail concerning this experience can be
viewed at http://naslnx07.mcs.muohio.edu/~moosejc/cp_support_incidents.html
These issues can be addressed in-house :
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1. We had heavily modified their code, mostly to remove unwanted function. Our
recommendation with any product we acquire is that we only make changes to the
system as documented in the Customization Guide.
2. We had no test system on which to test enhancements and patches prior to
implementing them in the production environment. Our recommendation is that
test equipment and software is included as part of the initial acquisition cost of any
product we acquire.
3. Some pieces were incorrectly or not optimally configured. Our recommendation is
that SCT be engaged to assist with initial installation and configuration.
These are vendor issues:
4. Campus Pipeline support staff appeared to be actively engaged in resolving
problems, but real solutions were not found expeditiously.
5. Problems similar to those that had been resolved reappeared in newer releases of the
product.
6. Overall system instability over a long period of time. We were at the point that the
software was crashing three times a day when we decided to quit using it. Several
weeks later, a solution was revealed to us.
7. Campus Pipeline’s single-sign-on (SSO) system was incompatible with Miami’s
policies on authentication and password changes. Modifying Campus Pipeline’s SSO
to meet Miami’s policies lead to reduced security and increased system instability.
Luminis appears to use the same incompatible model as Campus Pipeline.
8. Banner integration was challenging to get implemented. Campus Pipeline did not
use roles defined in banner. Users were not able to have multiple roles. We
understand that this issue has been resolved in the Luminis product, but there is no
indication that event handling has changed between the version of Campus Pipeline
that we had and the Luminis product.
9. Reliance on InfoSpace for news items resulted in an outage of news links for over
one month after InfoSpace upgraded their servers without warning. This could be
an issue with any reliance on external news sources.
Current myMiami offering
The software currently in use was developed in-house. It is built on redundant hardware
and has excellent performance. However, it lacks a lot of the features expected in a
portal product. To enhance current functionality would require substantial staff
resources. .
Luminis integration with fundamental services
LDAP integration
We reviewed issues with Campus Pipeline and LDAP integration. We reviewed Luminis
documentation to gain insight into Luminis’ use of LDAP service and integration
opportunities with our current LDAP service. The Luminis product continues to depend on
its own internal LDAP database. While it would be possible to replace our existing central
LDAP services with the Luminis LDAP service, use of this database as our main directory
would be extremely risky because SCT could make modifications at any time that would
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cause non-Luminis access to break. In addition, the LDAP service provided with Luminis
would not provide redundant access for the portal product. Note also that SCT does not
provide tools to synchronize their LDAP service with another LDAP service.
WAS integration
The Web Authentication Services (WAS) is a Miami-developed application that sits in front
of many of our web services and provides forced password changes, password change
policies, single-sign on, login messages, and other such services in a relatively transparent
way. Luminis includes its own single-sign on API, Campus Pipeline Integration Protocol
(CPIP). Note that CPIP is designed solely for authenticating users to remote web services
after they have logged into Luminis. It does not include any of WAS's other features, such
as forced password changes, password change policies, and login messages. It is thought
that the initial sign on to Luminis can be WAS enabled, but it is unknown if WAS can be
used within channels inside Luminis. A Luminis installation would be required to determine
the degree to which Luminis and WAS could be integrated.
Banner integration
There are three main areas in which Luminis is integrated with Banner. These include
account creation and maintenance, notification of Banner events, and access to BannerWeb.
Most of the integration is accomplished through the use of events that are triggered from
banner.
Events that create and maintain accounts are known as synchronization events.
Theoretically, all account maintenance could be done through the use of synchronization
events, thus achieving a real-time account generation system. However, it has been our
experience that the use of these events alone did not guarantee all accounts would be
successfully created and maintained. Fortunately, nightly batch extracts are also available for
extracting Banner data into an xml file. This can be fed into the Luminis system to create
and maintain accounts.
There are two types of notification events. These are referred to as Notify and Smart
events. Notify events are used to send a message to notify an individual that some bit of
information within banner has changed. Smart events additionally provide the ability for the
individual to follow up on the event. This is usually done in the form of a URL.
Integration with BannerWeb consists solely of a channel containing a menu of links into
BannerWeb. Users may click these links and will be logged into BannerWeb via CPIP.
The three event types behave in the same way: When the event is triggered, the event detail
is written to a database table. An event processor within the Luminis server reads this table,
takes the appropriate action and records the status of the event in the banner database. We
were unsuccessful with getting the events to work in the Campus Pipeline product. There is
not indication that this will be better in the Luminis product.
EMail/Calendaring integration
Luminis provides a webMail client that is documented to work with any back-end mail
store. We believe this client could be used to provide access to po.muohio.edu.
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Luminis provides a calendaring solution. This solution does not integrate with Meeting
Maker in any way.
Shibboleth
Shibboleth provides federated user management by implementing a trust fabric between
institutions, allowing the secure exchange of user attributes for the purpose of authorizing
access to shared resources.
Shibboleth is not a single-sign on system, though it can be integrated with an SSO.
The only circumstance under which Shibboleth and Luminis would interoperate is if we
want users from external institutions to access our portal as themselves.
The common point between any Shibboleth protected service and Luminis will be WAS.
WAS provides the single-sign on authentication service which will yield the least
intrusive user experience. The basic idea is that Luminis will be integrated with WAS to
build an SSO session on login. From within Luminis, links to any Shibboleth protected
resource would recognize and validate the SSO session, allowing easy access to the
desired resource.
Unless there is a need for federated user management for access to our portal,
implementing Shibboleth to protect Luminis would result in an unnecessary transaction
overhead for each login. Our focus should be on integrating WAS with both Luminis and
Shibboleth to provide an effective solution.
Luminis hardware requirements
We reviewed the Luminis documentation to understand hardware architecture, including
server requirements, backup needs, disk needs and opportunities for providing redundancy.
Details can be found in appendix B.1. Currently, there are no opportunities for redundancy.
Luminis software concerns
File sharing
We reviewed vendor documentation concerning file sharing opportunities provided by the
product. Two services provide file sharing.
1. Groups – ie. Chess Club members could have access to files an administrator, not
other members of the club, makes available to the group.
2. Course Studio – We anticipate that this service will not be used because the
functionality is offered to the community via the BlackBoard service.
Database requirements
We reviewed vendor documentation concerning database needs and authentication
concerns. The documentation states the Oracle 8i is required. Reviewed this with the
vendor during our technical discussion. The current product requires Oracle 8i. We were
told that Luminis 3.2 (III.2), due out June 30, supports 9i.
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Desktop/browser requirements
We reviewed vendor documentation to learn what browsers the product supports.
1. General access is supported through Internet Explorer 5.5 sp2, Internet Explorer
6.0, Netscape 4.7 and above. Access will not be denied if an unsupported browser is
used.
2. Administrative access for Publisher Studio and Admin Studio require plug-ins that
are not available for the Macintosh.
Luminis performance and support
We did not find clear information on performance issues. Recent support experiences at
Notre Dame indicate that the issues we had with Campus Pipeline support continue.
Gartner discussion
We spoke with Gartner analyst Ron Yanosky on Monday, May 10 at 2:30 p.m. Following
are details of that conversation.
Luminis product
 Luminis is built around Sun technology for directory management,
calendaring and group creation.
 Ron suggested that, because we are SCT Banner customers, there may be
Banner integration advantages afforded to us if we go with Luminis. They
would be our only source for tight integration.
 Banner is a difficult system with which to integrate.
 Luminis is anticipated to become the primary interface to Banner, which
indicates it is a strong strategic direction for SCT.
 Luminis was on shaky ground. Ron views the acquisition by SCT as a good
sign, as the prior company had a hard time standing on their own. Ron
questions whether a Portal can stand on its own in a university environment.
 100 – 120 customers are running Luminis in production. School sizes range
from 5000 to 25,000 FTEs.
 Ron has not heard a lot of complaints with getting the product up and
running.
 Scale-ability issues existed early on, but have been resolved.
 The SCT webmail client is “pretty weak”. The Sun client is strategic.
 Ron agrees that we should get customer references from SCT and check the
SCT users group and listserves for peer institutions that are using it.
 We should carefully evaluate how big of an issue redundancy is. Other
portals have the same situation.
 Ron believes the LDAP issue would be the same for other portals, but is not
knowledgeable enough to say for sure. He commonly finds that other
institutions are just beginning to address LDAP.
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Alternatives to Luminis
 uPortal: This is a presentation layer solution, not intertwined with ERP.
There is a community of users coming together to write channels, but it is
not really there yet. A decent channel library of integration with higher
education products is being developed. There are SCT users in this
community. Ron is concerned with, after the Mellon Foundation funding is
gone, how the momentum will sustain itself. The Sakai project has recently
expressed an interest. uPortal is based on the JSR 6.68 portal portability
specification. It is in use on large campuses (30,000-35,000 FTEs), is very
java intense. Several vendors offer support (ie. Unicon) in a Red Hat-style
maintenance package. Same redundancy issues as with Luminis.
 Oracle is another common solution, though it is mostly used by clients who
run Oracle, such as Case Western. The vendor seems to be trying to get
clients into a “stack”, increasing the dependency on additional Oracle
products. We may already be licensed for it, but would need additional
pieces to actually get it running.
 Vignette is used at the University of Wisconsin. Getting it implemented is a
large project. There is no banner integration.
 Plum Tree is not often found in higher education, except at a few smaller
schools. It is purely Microsoft.
 BlackBoard has a portal that is usually implemented as a nicer front-end to
the BB system. It is a separate environment from the Learning System. It is
not a complete system.
 Sun Portal solution is available but does not have a lot of higher education
customers.
Luminis technical discussion
We spoke with Ward Maddux, Technical Sales Engineer, on 5/18/2004 at 3:00 p.m. We
started with a list of questions, listed below with responses. Also included are questions and
responses sent to SCT after our discussion.
We are concerned about keeping our SunOne directory in synch with the one used by Luminis. Does SCT
provide a synchronization tool we may have overlooked?
Ward stated that external authentication to another directory is supported. The internal
one can be used for other applications, too. Typically, clients move to using the one that
is closely integrated with Luminis. If they are kept separate and we use our existing
directory, it would only be used for authentication. Their method for integration is via
channels. The system can now be configured to use the credentials provided to Luminis
at login time as the credentials for other applications, in which case storing the
passwords for each application is not necessary. If we set it up this way, using only the
system key for encryption would be satisfactory, since no password will be stored.
Does access to Content Management require a Windows browser? We see that the administration plug-in
does.
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In version 3.0, use of studio in the context editor is obsolete. There may be one desktop
piece, which may go away. The real question is for us to obtain a list of functionality that
works on Windows but not on a Mac. He will follow up with that. The Palm Pilot
synchronization utility is Windows-only (?)
The required Oracle version is documented to be 8.1.7. Is this correct? Is it true that 9i and above are not
supported?
Luminis 3.2 (III.2), due out June 30, supports 9i.
Does the Banner integration piece use BannerWeb authorization or is a Luminis-specific authorization used?
Luminis should have access to different roles in BannerWeb. Banner 7 will integrate
with LDAP right out of the box. Banner 6 can be configured to use LDAP natively.
Channels will take a user into specific forms within banner from the link in Luminis. This
is integrated with announcements, for example.
Is the issue that Campus Pipeline had with recognizing multiple roles within Banner resolved with Luminis?
Ward knows of no problems. Multiple roles are allowed. Colors and logo are limited to
a single role. Luminis gets an aggregation of roles.
How does integration with Documentum and Luminis work? How is content published?
The user sees a Publisher channel on the screen. Clicking on the Content Management
icon takes the user into the role defined for that user. Content can be pushed to internal
or external destinations. Ward will follow up to get us information about how content is
delivered to other Web servers. What protocols and setup are required?
What are the plans for supporting JSR 1.68 or other Portal standards?
The Luminis interface is based on UPortal, which is working toward getting JSR 1.68
standards into their code base. Ward will follow up on the question about Luminis
lagging behind. He said they upgrade, but may make changes the make it appear as if
they haven’t.
What are SCT’s plans for building redundancy into their product?
High availability is on the road map, but about a year out. This in not firm. They are
investigating but have no answers yet. Load balancing and failover options are both
under consideration.
Smart Events - has the reliability improved since Campus Pipeline? Do
we still need to turn them off when grades come out?
There is no reliability problem delivering smart events from Banner to
Luminis. Likewise, the single sign-on back to Banner from the smart
event announcement in Luminis should have no issue. Some schools choose
to turn off the grade change event during final grades so that Students
don't see multiple announcements stating essentially the same thing.
This decision is functional as opposed to technical.
Credential pass-thru with BannerWeb - does this require Banner 6? Are
there any passwords at all that have to be stored within Luminis?
Luminis can integrate with other versions than Banner 6. Luminis keeps
the Banner credentials in an encrypted store to perform single sign-on.
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How are statistics kept? What statistics are kept and how do we
retrieve them? Can we get the raw stats to do our own analysis or just
summaries? Are stats kept per channel and/or link access?
Standard web logs are the only statistics kept on usage. This data can
be analyzed through a third party tool such. Channel configuration
statistics are kept in the relational database and are accessible.
What is Luminis' reliance on external servers (News, weather, stats,
etc.)? What happens when those servers are unavailable? Does it slow
down logging into Luminis?
The number of external systems that Luminis may deliver through the
portal environment is entirely up to your institution. A channel that
accesses an external resource will have timeout (like 5 or 10 seconds)
so that the rest of the channels can be rendered even when one is not
available.
We currently run SunOne LDAP, replicating the directory between two
servers for redundancy. If we did switch to using the LDAP service
that is supplied with Luminis, would this replication be supported?
Using the native Sun ldap tools, replication is possible and supported, however, should
the primary Luminis ldap server fail for whatever reason, we are not currently "falling
through" to the backup ldap server, so service to the portal would be down. As we move
to the high availability infrastructure (once multi-server deployment is rolled out), this
will be possible. The ‘Roadmap’ shows Q2 of ’05 for a full HA capability.
In previous discussions, our grandfathered Luminis license included 2 single-signon
connectors which we would have used for BannerWeb and Blackboard. Does this limit
of 2 still exist? Does upgrading to Premier give us access to all of them? Can we write
our own single-signon connectors to applications that we've written or purchased?
There is no limit to the number of single sign-on connectors (CPIP) that you can
configure. SSO to BannerWeb and Self Service are delivered as part of the integration
package between Luminis and Banner. Blackboard does require a CPIP adapter.
Typically, SCT services will provide you with the training to develop CPIP adapters for
SSO to your many web based applications. From that point on, SCT services will certify
your adapters for reliable use in a production environment.
Performance of Announcements - How long does it take to send an announcement to all
20,000 students? Are they still individual announcements? Can you modify them (under
CP you had to delete the old one
and create a new one).
A Campus Announcement will be seen by all users immediately. The announcements are
delivered individually and can be modified. Anyone who has already read the
announcement will see both the original and modified announcement. However, with the
dynamic delivery, users who have roles or attributes added to their profile after an
announcement is sent (for example, students who enroll in a course or major midsemester) will be able to view previously sent active announcements
What is your average resolution time for critical problems that have been reported to
you?
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Timing depends on the nature and impact of the defect, and whether or not it requires a
third party fix from Sun. When critical issues are reported to the support group, they are
escalated immediately to the Product Release Team, which evaluates the scope and
severity of the issue. If it is determined to require code modification or patch, it is
assigned to an engineer who then creates a hot fix. This process can average between 25 business days. On very severe Luminis issues, there is the possibility several hot fix
iterations are needed. For example, in some cases we need to instrument code that will
provide more information on root causes. This process can extend the total time to
resolution. Should a hot fix be required from Sun, this process can take longer, but we
have direct access to their escalation group to provide assistance on critical issues.
Current user discussions
On Monday, June 7, at 3:00, we spoke with Patricia Sperry, Portal lead at Notre Dame.
Larry Latarte, their functional lead, and Brian Egendoerfer, their technical lead, were also on
the call. We didn’t have a lot of specific questions, but asked them to relay their experience
to us.
They have Luminis in pilot production status, with about 800 users from various groups.
They use their enterprise LDAP service for authentication (Sun Java System Directory
Server), which was a smooth transition for them. They also have the eMail component
working with their back-end mail store, which is commercial SendMail. This is currently
working with the web mail client supplied with Luminis. They are working on implementing
single sign-on to IMP, their preferred web mail client. They do single sign-on to ColdFusion
and PHP applications, among others. They had SCT do the initial installation.
There have been some major difficulties with the product, including
 Lack of documentation – they described major holes in the documentation
supplied with the product.
 Vendor technical support – There is no standard, shared knowledge.
Support received depends on the personality of the technician responding.
There is no integrated support between Banner and Luminis. Some banner
technicians have never seen the portal, and Luminis technicians don’t know
banner. SCT needs to train integrated consultants, but have not done so.
Also, technicians within the Luminis product support team do not share
information. They described a situation where they spent 9 months trying to
integrate the product with other software for single sign-on. After working
with SCT for 9 months, they were finally told about the CPIF product
(Campus Pipeline Integration Framework). Within a few hours, using this
tool, they were successful. They were very frustrated that this had gone on
for so long and the technician they had been working with didn’t even seem
to know about the product.
 Need for multiple servers – There is a one-to-one relationship between
banner instances and Luminis servers. Therefore, Notre Dame has 4
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



identical servers to connect to 4 banner instances for development, training,
pre-production and production.
Redirection – if a server needs to be replaced, it is not a simple matter of
redirection to implement the replacement. Hostname is used as the key and
there are many hard-coded urls. The replacement server must have the same
name and url as the original server. The recommend that the url to be given
to users be carefully planned ahead of time.
Migration – there is no real data migration available. They recommend that
DR strategy be carefully planned with the installation technician.
No fault tolerance – there is no redundancy of any kind. Planned
redundancy is a year away and only involves the web server.
Misleading feature set – they stated that some features sound really great,
but have not-so-great limitations and are awkward to implement. It is like
the last 20% isn’t really complete.
They indicated these positive aspects of the product:
 Building channels – this is fairly easy and straightforward, although not as
granular as they would like as far as user roles.
 Account synchronization – they have had no problems synchronizing
accounts.
 CPIP – indicated that this is a must. It should be included in 3.2, but may
have to pay for training separately.
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Appendix B.1 – Hardware Requirements
Server Solution 35,000-50,000 users
1) SCT Campus Pipeline Basic
Solutions software server (Sun One Webserver, Sun One LDAP directory server, and uPortal
components)
Sun Fire v880, six UltraSparc III processors
or higher, 4 GB RAM
hard drive space, RAID-5 recommended :
(2 MB) X (total number of system users)
2 MB * 35,000 to 50,000 = 70 GB to 100 GB
2) Sun One Calendar server
Sun Fire v880, six UltraSparc III processors
or higher, 3 GB RAM
hard drive space, RAID-5 recommended
(3 MB) X (total number of system users)
3 MB * 35,000 to 50,000 = 105 GB to 150 GB
3) Content management Server (1 to 3 servers)
While you will need at least one server—and maybe more—dedicated to the content
management components of the system, the size and processing power of the associated
machines depend on four interrelated factors:
• Total number of concurrent system users expected at peak usage times
• Type and quantity of the documents that will be managed by the system
• The expected growth in users and documents over time
• The distribution of system components (RDBMS, eContent server, etc.) across one or more
machines
Here is an example server with the following assumptions:
• The Docbase will have up to 500,000 objects within the next two years.
• The maximum number of active users will be 50 (20 percent of 250 users).
• The RightSite and HTTP servers must always be installed on the same machine.
All components in One server (should be a three-processor box)
Software component Minimum memory capacity
Operating system 128 MB
RDBMS 500 MB
eContent server 32 MB
RightSite and HTTP server 32 MB (note, when combined with eContent server
you do not need to allocate 32 MB for each)
50 active users x (10 MB + 20 MB) = 1.5 GB
Total Estimate 2.2 GB
4) Sun One Messaging server
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* If you already have a mail system running on your campus (IMAP) and you are integrating that
system with the SCT Campus Pipeline Solutions software, you will not need to buy an additional
machine to host the mail components of the system.
Backing Up the System
To complete a backup of the system data, you will perform the following tasks:
1. Place the system into hot backup mode.
2. Back up system data files that store content and channel information, configuration settings,
and group and course photos and shared files.
3. Back up the LDAP directory data.
4. Back up the e-mail and calendar datastores.
5. Back up the database instances on the external database where the Group Studio, uPortal, and
targeted announcement data is stored. If you are using the Content Management System (CMS)
functionality, back up the data stored in the CMS database.
6. Return the system to normal operating mode.
While the system is running in Hot Backup mode there are a number of administrative and enduser functions that are unavailable:
-
-
-
CPTool functions unavailable
System admin functions unavailable
• Create new user
• Manage user profiles
• Send targeted announcements
Groups and Course Studio Function unavailable
• Manage photos
• Post photos
• Edit photos
• Manage shared files
• Post shared files
• Edit shared files
Processing of external events are temporarily suspended
Monitoring the System
There are tools built into the Campus Pipeline and Luminis products that consist of three Web
pages that let you track system usage and performance. It tells you how many users are currently
logged on, how long the system has been up, system version, etc. It allows you to take a snapshot
of the system. It displays http response time and other http statistics.
SCT and Luminis also provides numerous logs.
Startcp is a master script that starts all the components—the directory server, Web server,
external database, etc. The script also verifies that the Campus Pipeline or Luminis environment
is configured correctly and verifies that remote systems are running, such as the Messaging and
Calendar servers.
./stop & ./start – restart web server
./stop-cal & ./start-cal – restart calendaring service
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./stop-slapd & ./start-slapd – Restart directory service
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Appendix C – Features and Usability Subteam
Report
Prepared by: Stan Brown, University Libraries
Team Members:
Peggy Sander (IT Services)
David Schaefer (IT Services)
Chris Wolfe (Western College)
Leigh Mondello-Garrett (Student Financial Aid),
Jeri Moore (University Communications)
Lisa Sheard (Student Affairs)
Jim Lipnickey (Hamilton Campus)
Steve Thole (Housing, Dining and Guest Services)
Glenn Platt (Interactive Media Studies))
Mike Good (undergraduate & IT Services)
Objective
The team was charged with evaluating “Portal Features & Usability”. The specific charge
stated that the team would be “responsible for evaluating the features of the Luminis
portal and determine if they meet Miami's needs. In addition, this team should evaluate
the usability of the product from a user perspective”.
In addition the team discussed two additional areas.
(1). There was some discussion about the need for a portal at the University.
(2) The political issues involved in implementation were addressed.
Criteria
A list of required features was developed. It is recognized that some of these are related
to other products such as Blackboard and Banner but it is important to view them from a
portal perspective as well. It is also recognized that there is a fine line between
evaluating the product and discussion of future implementation issues. The portal
product must be able to meet the needs of all possible implementation issues.
Implementation issues must be part of the discussion at all stages.
(1). Customizable for target audiences including clients with multiple roles and granular
customization by clients. The product must allow users to be recognized by majors,
divisions, offices, classes and other granular criteria. Information must be able to be
targeted based on these criteria.
(2) Users must be able to customize their own portal interface. It is recognized that
certain aspects will not be customizable but this must be a major component of the
system.
(3). Content - autonomy vs. consistency or some might say control vs. academic
freedom. It is vital that there be a broad involvement from all constituents in the actual
implementation of the product. While it is recognized that a portal requires some
centralization the diverse needs of the all constituencies must be recognized.
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(4). Focused content and easy navigation. There is a relationship with item number 1
here. It is important to keep the number of levels to a minimum.
(5). Seamless navigation with University data.
(6). Single LDAP authentication for multiple systems. As much as possible there must
be a single authentication for all systems. This includes providing a gateway to Kronos,
email, scheduling, Library resources etc.
(7). Faculty and staff need ad hoc granular roles tied to reporting. There needs to be a
seamless interface with Banner.
(8). Read receipt technology was desired by some team members.
(9). A seamless interface to student turnins/handouts is needed. This may be a
Blackboard issue.
(10). It should include ability for date/event focused channels and content.
(11). It should be possible to deliver content based on location (IP, lab, division, campus
etc.)
(12). Seamless access to Central Disc Space and Universal Disk Space is required.
(13). The decision must be made in light of attracting users. Students and faculty have
different needs and both must be considered.
(14) There needs to be an interface for prospective students throughout all phases of the
application process.
(15). email - An easy interface with single sign on feature to Miami’s web email client
is required. It is not necessary to use the Luminis email product but the interface must be
seamless.
(16). Spam filter – This does not relate to the Luminis product specifically but spam
filtering for email is an important element to increase usage of the product. This must be
implemented in order to promote usage of the portal.
13. There needs to be a calendaring feature with multiple views seamlessly tied into
Blackboard and University calendaring system including class schedules.
ADA compliance
The matter of ADA compliance was referred to Doug Ledford (Equity and Equal
Opportunity Office). He examined several Luminis sites. His preliminary findings are
that the implementations of the product he examined did not meet ADA requirements. It
is possible that this conclusion relates only to the selected implementations and not the
product itself. The major problem mentioned is that screen reading software has
considerable difficulty with these implementations. Doug is continuing to examine the
product and further inquiries may be made to him.
Conclusions relating to charge
The team was unable to arrive at a conclusive recommendation. The reason for this is
that we were unable to find a Luminis site which was sufficiently sophisticated. All of
the trial sites received were relatively new sites which did not do many of the things we
required. The conclusion is that if Luminis is able to do everything claimed it would be
acceptable from a usability and interface standpoint. The ADA question may still be a
problem. The fact that we were not able to find a sophisticated running site makes it
impossible to recommend Luminis. Note: the sites we examined were received from
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Kent Covert’s inquiries to Luminis.
Additional Conclusions
There was not a consensus reached concerning the need or desirability of a portal at
Miami. Opinions ranged from those with serious questions about its usefulness to those
who were strongly in favor of the concept. The group did reach a consensus concerning
the implementation issues. It was agreed that this process will be extremely critical in
arriving at the proper balance between control and freedom.
Appendix: Assorted Comments
Lisa Sheard:
All the sites seemed really useful, informative and customizable.
Luminis, as it has been presented to us, is very acceptable in my opinion. It will allow
for most of the features we were expecting in the earlier incarnation of the web portal
and also contains some additional bells and whistles. We would be very hard pressed to
come up with a system that will be everything to everyone. This system contains an
acceptable number of the desired features with enough room for possible growth.
David Schaefer
Unfortunately the guest logins provided generic access to the sites. I saw a lot of content
and links to other university sites and policies. (The SCAD Luminis had the most content
of the three I looked at.) I would've liked to have seen more personalized information,
perhaps data that would have come from Banner such as application status, list of
courses, bursar statement, etc.
The "groups" feature looked good, allowing for the creation of online communities.
Admission is interested in rolling out Luminis (or a portal) to applicants and eventually
prospective students. Could the students update their address, email, phone information?
Could prospective students enter their interests and then we tailor the site specific to
those?
Chris Wolfe
I looked at the Luminis product at Northeastern University and here are my main
observations:
(1) It was slow starting up.
(2) Infochannels look clunky. The student announcements were trivial (Memorial day
will be observed) reinforcing the tendency to ignore the channel.
(3) MyNEU Central the default. Looks a lot like myMiami.
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(4) Co-op also has much irrelevant information.
I understand that one of the key concepts of the portal concept is to produce "sticky eyes"
-- in business settings to sell advertising, and at organizations such as Miami University
to make the portal the primary means of distributing information to various constituencies
-- prospective students, students, staff, and faculty. I think that it is unlikely to be
successful. I predict that users will experience a large number of (what they consider to
be) irrelevant messages. They will learn to ignore most channels, so when the university
(or someone at the university) wants to communicate something really important they
will find that their message was not read by most users.
The problem is confounded because the e-mail interface does not have a spam filter.
When I use myMiami to access my e-mail I delete up to 100 messages/day without
reading anything more than the subject and sender lines. Seriously. The only reason to
visit the portal at least once a day is to access one's e-mail. Without a spam filter people
are likely to find other ways to access their mail, and even with a spam filter people are
likely to learn to ignore most channels most of the time. So, I can not recommend the
product but do not have any particular objections concerning features other than the spam
filter.
As for the issue of implementation, particularly concerning Content Management, what
you call autonomy vs. consistency (or, in your words "control vs academic freedom") is a
serious issue, and I come down heavily on the side of decentralization. A key issue comes
at the level of academic units such as departments, divisions, programs, etc. It is
important to give these units a good deal of latitude in how they represent themselves.
One of the noteworthy things about Miami is our high retention rate -- students who
come to Miami tend to stay here much more that at most other schools. Several programs
are now implementing tougher requirements, for example education students will now
have to earn a specific GPA before applying to be majors. This means that many more
students will have to change their majors, and that some departments will need to
"market" themselves to students changing majors. This is not easily accomplished in a
centralized system. In the case of my own division, the School of Interdisciplinary
Studies (Western College Program), the issue is recruiting new students. We tend to
attract students who are interested in a small school and many, if not most, would not
come to Miami if it were not for the Western program. Our competition is the small
liberal arts school (e.g. Kenyon or Oberlin) which requires a different face on the Web.
For me, academic freedom is also an important issue at the level of the individual faculty
member and how we present ourselves. Even the Luminis representative was impressed
with the consistency of Miami's Web presence. I urge IT not to adapt a more "top down"
system than is already in place.
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Appendix D – Content Management System
Subteam Report
Prepared by: Craig Taylor, Marketing Communications
CMS Features Team:
Craig Taylor (Marketing Communications - team leader)
Aaron Garrett (IT Services)
Leslie Smith (IT Services)
Christine Noble (Engineering and Applied Science)
Rob Casson (University Libraries)
Karen Shaffer (University Secretary)
Sumit Sircar (School of Business)
Rob Withers (University Libraries & University Accreditation Committee)
Objective
The evaluation of content management solutions both enterprise and portal side products. The
enterprise level Documentum product and its counter part bundled with SCT's Luminis portal
product. The deliverable is a recommendation to purchase or not to purchase the Documentum
enterprise content management product.
Criteria
Criteria for evaluation encompassed several factors including, robustness and reliability, cost,
effort to implement, stakeholder acceptance, usability, WAI/ADA, and ability to meet business
goals and objectives.
CMS Enterprise Solution
Robustness and Reliability:
SCT could not provide a working example of the product. The product appeared somewhat robust
in many aspects but the number of deficient areas diminished these.
Examples of deficiencies include:
1. Lack of administration notification when content isn't updated on set time frames.
Content is time sensitive through set dates. If update timelines aren't met content is
removed.
2. Lack of administration notification of employee transfers, turnovers, or related personnel
issues.
3. Does not support Macintosh. Although Ward did state the product does support
Macintosh environments it was later discovered within the documentation that it does
not.
4. Does not enforce ADA/WAI compliancy.
5. The product is tied into the same authentication system as Luminis. The single point of
failure discovered within Luminis would then transfer to the enterprise level of
Documentum.
6. Content generated through the enterprise product is completely separate from the content
within the portal.
7. Several questions still remain unanswered.
Cost:
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Miami is grandfathered into the Luminis Foundation level of license and the upgrade to Premier
would be an additional $165,000 license plus maintenance adjustments.
" The cost of integrating, customizing, and extending a CMS can easily set you back one to three
times the cost of licensing alone, depending on the scope of the engagement. Departmental
installations of mid-market packages tend to run toward the lower end; enterprise projects will
certainly edge up or above the 3X ratio."
--Tony Byrne, founder and managing editor of CMSWatch.
Effort to Implement:
 Unknown.
 SCT could not provide a client listing of other implementations of the enterprise level
system.
 The team could not establish detailed business goals or needs assessment for stakeholders
based on timeframe outlined in the scope document but based on each member's current
division/department.
Stakeholder Acceptance:
Based on the problems indicated it is believed the acceptance would not be favorable. However,
if the Luminis product is purchased it is recommended to implement the content management
portion. By doing so measurements of acceptance and use may provide a more accurate answer.
Usability:
 The system appeared complex with several interfaces that would require extensive
training and university support resources.
 Usability problems related to Macintosh and ADA/WAI compliancy issues.
Meets Business Goals and Objectives:
The diverse environment of Miami's academic divisions/departments, faculty, staff, students,
administrative divisions/departments, requires a product founded on flexibility. This does not
appear to be the case with the current edition of Documentum or Luminis.
Recommendation:
The recommendation is to not purchase the Documentum enterprise level system. If purchase of
the Luminis product is made the content management portion should be deployed for further
analysis.
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Appendix E – Sungard SCT Response to Concerns
On September 8, 2004, Sungard SCT met with Reid Christenberry, John Goerke, and the
core team to respond to the concerns presented in this document. Todd Baker (Sales
Rep) and David Murray (VP of Luminis Solutions) were present. A representative from
SCT’s Support Center was included via conference call. Below are notes from that
meeting.
Luminis Versions
o Luminis 2 – first Luminis release
o Luminis 3 – current release
o Luminis 4 – next year
Luminis team uses Rational suite for development
Redundancy
Phase 1, expected in 2005 will introduce redundancy/load balancing in the web
application servers. Phase 1 will not include redundancy for the following components:
o Messaging Server
o Calendar
o Directory Server
o RDBMS
o Luminis Message Broker
Some of these components may be made redundant using vendor (e.g. Sun, Oracle)
solutions. David Murray said that Sungard SCT supports this especially for the directory
server and database. Institutions who have implemented some redundancy include
University of Nottingham and Appalachian State University. David Murray claimed that
Technical Sales Engineers (like Ward Maddox who the Technical subteam conducted a
conference call with) wouldn’t have this information.
Messaging
Some roles are automatically maintained (staff, faculty, student, courses, major). Adding
additional roles must be coded and maintained by institution. Banner utility can be used
(by a programmer) to create an extract that can be imported into Luminis for sending
messages. This extract is not updated automatically.
Can a user have multiple roles? Yes
Can a user have multiple majors? Don’t know.
Are department roles defined? Don’t know…probably no
ADA Compliance
No work in this area and no work planned currently
Noncompliant HTML
No work planned. Request examples.
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Browsers
Mozilla and Safari are now supported (as of Luminis 3.2?)
Pop-ups
No plans to stop using – should only be a problem for Safari users.
Support
Rated at 4.5 out of 5 for the last several months
Not aware of integration support problems
SCT is hiring more documentation personnel
Field Engineers don’t work for support organization
Other Contacts
Damon Cody – Kent State University
Art Institute – heavy on academic side
University of Nottingham, Drexel, LaSalle – prospective students
Additional Items
Recommended setting up a conference call to discuss single-signon component and
replacement/integration of WAS
Core Team Interpretation
Below are the original list of issues and the core team’s interpretation of SCT’s response
to them:
Service Reliability – It is a positive step that SCT now supports redundant LDAP and
database servers and that they have a plan to introduce redundant web application servers
in 2005. It is disconcerting that this information is not known throughout the company,
however and anticipates potential problems acquiring support on these items.
Support Response Time – The Luminis Support Center has statistics showing good
support within their department (a rating of 4.5 out of 5 for the last several months) and
the company is aware of certain deficiencies within their organization (e.g.
documentation). However, it appears this does not necessarily extend to field engineers
and possibly other areas of the company.
Support Knowledge – As with the previous item, the Luminis Support Center has
statistics showing good support knowledge within their department. It is unclear that this
support knowledge is shared with other areas of the company.
Limited BannerWeb Integration – This continues to be a problem with Banner 6.
Banner 7 (currently planned for implementation at Miami in Fall, 2006) adds additional
read-only integration of data into the portal. Other sources have indicated that this will
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primarily through the use of RSS feeds. Versions after Banner 7 will add true interactive
integration with the portal.
In addition, roles within the portal are still very limited. This affects the granularity of
announcements within the portal as well as other customization options. Miami must
develop extensions external to Luminis to create, populate, and maintain any additional
roles. Luminis users cannot perform ad-hoc criteria for announcements.
Lack of ADA compliance – The lack of attention or concern for this issue is quite
disturbing. As we move towards a portal as our front door to services, this issue could
disrupt those services to a segment of our users.
Lack of HTML compliance – As with the ADA compliance issue, the lack of concern
for this issue is somewhat disturbing. As this continues, Miami should expect to upgrade
Luminis to coincide with every new release of the major browsers used by our clients.
Limited Blackboard integration – Blackboard integration within Luminis appears to be
limited to single-signon only. Data feeds from Banner to Blackboard may appear in later
releases. No plans for user interface integration.
Multiple answers to questions – This continues to be a problem as evidenced by the
change in the support status for redundant LDAP and database servers.
Lack of good references – Additional references were provided as stated above.
Small list of supported browsers – As stated before, the move from reporting a fatal
error to simply a warning when using an unsupported browser is a welcome change. In
addition, the addition of Safari and Mozilla as supported browsers is good news.
However, the fact that the latest version of Mozilla still isn’t supported is still a concern.
Also, the fact that this support is coming over 1 year after the release of Safari and 2
years after the release of Mozilla is a concern.
Pop-ups required – Due to the proliferation of pop-up ads, most browsers now allow
users to block this functionality in some fashion. Since many users now block pop-ups
within browsers, many developers have discontinued their use or developed methods that
do not interfere with this blocking feature (our Marmot environment users one of these
methods). The continued requirement of allowing pop-ups within Luminis will continue
to be an annoyance to most users (who must turn of pop-ups to the Luminis portal) and
an extreme irritation to users of the Safari browser (who must turn off all pop-up
blocking).
Poor administrative documentation – SCT appears to acknowledge documentation
problems and is in the process of hiring additional documentation personnel.
Misleading feature set – No new information was provided on this topic.
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Lack of LDAP synchronization – No current plans for LDAP synchronization. Miami
is currently handling this through Acctgen.
Password maintenance – No current plans to implement these features. WAS will be
needed for the foreseeable future to manage this activity.
Text-only announcements – No new information was provided on this topic.
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Appendix F –Conference Call on Luminis SingleSignon
On September 30, 2004, Sungard SCT and IT Services Network Applications Group had
a conference call discussing Luminis’ Single-Signon capabilities. Notes from that
conference call appear below.
o Luminis has two SSO technologies:
o CPIP
 proprietary
 requires application modifications (? – see generic connector
discussion below)
 application must return SSO capabilities – can be a static
file
 Miami would need to write code to implement each
capability
 user creation
 simple username/password or digest
 single signout
 timeout (won’t timeout while in a CPIP enabled system)
 proxy authentication service
 same credential for all users
 different for each user
 can use CP credentials
 login messages
 deep linking
o CAS
 developed at Yale
 open source
o password changes
o Luminis stores “backup” of “old” password
 requires x number of backup users to validate recovery of
password store
 x can be 1 which can be the system
o forced password changes – system-wide settings
o no grace periods
o voluntary password changes
o can change password on external server
o can write module to customize password changes
 called or via XML message
o Admin password reset
o web-based
o delegated
 admin can reset all passwords
 may allow more granular password changes in the future
o self-service
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o part of 3.2 or 3.3 ?
o predetermined list of questions
o pre-answer x questions (configured by us)
o lock after y failed attempts (no timing) – lock is for a period of time
o password policies are role based
o CPIP generic connector
o can do redirect pages without requiring changes to external app
o More information
o generic connector
o difference for links versus channels
Summary
The Luminis CPIP environment provides a good framework for a single-signon system.
It appears that with a moderate amount of development work on our side, we could use
the Luminis single-signon system to replace WAS.
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Appendix G – Investigation into “Shining Star”
institutions
A list of “Shining Star” institutions was requested from SCT. It was requested that these
institutions fit the following qualifications if possible:
o
o
o
o
Institutions similar in size to Miami (16,000 undergraduates) or larger
Institutions running Luminis for some length of time (1 year or more)
Institutions running Banner and/or Blackboard
Institutions who chose Luminis independently of choosing Banner
SCT provided us with contact information for Northeastern University and Southern
Alberta Institute of Technology. Below are the results of conference calls with those
institutions.
Northeastern University
Executive Summary: Northeastern affirmed many of concerns. It appeared that they
were more tolerant of these issues. In addition, they are not using several of the major
pieces of Luminis (Banner Integration, Groups tools, etc.).
Date:
7/29/2004
Contact: Richard Mickool, Executive Director of Information Services
Background Questions:
University size:
20,000 FTEs; Research institution
Luminis version:
2.x currently; moving to 3.2 in a couple weeks; reason for
delay going to Luminis 3 – available resources
Luminis decision date:
June, 2002
Luminis production date: September, 2002
Luminis usage:
18,000 active accounts; 3000 simultaneous users
Running Documentum?: No; tried it early on, but discontinued due to interface,
support, and lack of integration with Luminis issues; may
try again with Luminis 3.2; currently using Lotus Notes
Domino for some content creation/management
Running Banner?:
No; homegrown SIS
Running Blackboard?:
Yes
Architecture:
uPortal DB – One MS SQL Server with MS Windows
2000 (originally used DB2 on AIX)
Email – One Sun Solaris server
Portal and Calendar – One Sun Solaris server
Test Server – One Sun Solaris server
Staff Resources:
Two FTEs; looking to expand to three; some components
provided by SIS development team
Using Luminis Email?:
Yes, for students; Employees use Lotus Notes Domino
Using Luminis Calendar?: Yes, for students; Employees use Lotus Notes Domino
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Luminis LDAP server for external services?:
No; separate enterprise LDAP server with Luminis LDAP
server “referring” to the enterprise server
Luminis selection process: Looked at Blackboard, IBM portal, and uPortal;
discovered Luminis through uPortal research (Luminis
was still in beta); did all development on beta and
deployed production soon after 1.0 release
Experience Questions:
Reliability:
Fairly good; early problems with CPIP that caused singlesignon failures; install patches every couple months;
when service is down, they replace Luminis with a static
page of links
Support Resolution Time: Approximately 1 week on average for resolution; most
calls go through normal support center; also have internal
contacts that are used for some problems (especially
CPIP); many times, other institutions can provide
answers quicker than SCT
Support Consistency:
Quality of support is not consistent; depends on which
support rep answers the call
User Groups:
SCT is working to establish a more formal user group
ADA Compliance satisfaction:
Luminis provides some ADA compliance; hasn’t been a
major issue
Lack of diverse browser support:
Better in 3.2 (users are presented a warning instead of no
service); lots of complaints from users; may be able to
disable checking
Documentation:
Sufficient in most areas; CPIP (single signon)
documentation is poor
Feature Set Misleading?
Sometimes; email client is poor – replacing with Sun;
group tools were poor until Luminis 2 – better in 3.2, he
things; he commented that the developers don’t seem to
look at “real” users when developing features; features
are not implemented in the most useful fashion
Channel Development:
None from scratch; modified one Luminis provided
channel; primarily use single-signon to other applications
Single-signon to external apps:
Lots; fairly successful; many are custom single-signon
rather than the ones provided with Luminis
Smooth Upgrades?
Northeastern’s many customizations to the product have
made upgrades difficult;
Blackboard Integration Details:
Did not use single-signon module that comes with
Luminis – wrote their own; interested in more integration
in the future (course data, aggregation of data in channel,
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common announcements, etc.); hope to use new LDIF
protocol; haven’t started yet
Roles:
They have roles for the Law School, Faculty, Staff, parttime students, full-time students, etc.; administration is a
problem
Admission usage?
Currently customized for admitted and accepted students;
working on applicants next
Portal Focus:
primary emphasis was on front-ending SIS; now looking
at integrating academic components
Would they pick Luminis today?
Not sure; generally happy with Luminis; he knows other
products have matured, but he hasn’t kept up with what
other vendors are doing
Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT)
Executive Summary: SAIT seemed generally pleased with their Luminis implementation.
They have had few technical problems. However, they are not currently using several of
the major pieces of Luminis (Groups tools, Documentum), have not attempted to extend
the system, and have relatively few users compared to Miami’s portal implementation.
The core team felt that SAIT's satisfaction with the application is directly tied to their
limited use and lack of extensions to the system.
Date:
8/19/2004
Contact: Peter Kehler et al
Background Questions:
University size:
65,000 students, 8000 FTE, 1800 staff, 46 IT Personnel;
Specialize in both traditional college education (2 & 4
year degrees) and training (certifications)
Luminis version:
3.1
Luminis production date: February, 2000 with Campus Pipeline
Luminis usage:
11,000-12,000 unique users per month
Running Documentum?: Planning to start implementation in Fall, 2004
Running Banner?:
Yes – most modules including “Web for”
Running Blackboard?:
No; WebCT 4.1; Installed integration components in July,
2004
Using Luminis Email?:
Luminis client with IMAP connection to Exchange server
Using Luminis Calendar?: No calendaring from within Luminis; use Exchange for
Calendaring
Luminis LDAP server for external services?:
No; separate Active Directory server for external
applications; no synchronization
Luminis selection process: Picked Luminis because it was currently in development
and they felt they could influence the development
process
Hardware:
Luminis on Sun; Oracle on HP Tru64
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Other:
Experience Questions:
Reliability:
Primarily a “Microsoft shop”; not using groups tools
Fairly good; performance problems prior to hardware
upgrades; some crashes prior to 3.1
Redundancy, failover, disaster recovery – concerned about lack of redundancy but
keep a close eye on servers
Support Resolution Time: 3-5 days generally; All Support Calls go through normal
support channels
Support Consistency:
Consistency has gotten better; Luminis/Banner
integration support is okay
ADA Compliance satisfaction:
not evaluated
Lack of diverse browser support:
Almost all of their clients run IE 5.5
Documentation:
Decent; debugging/logging section and single-signon
could be better
Feature Set Misleading?
No formatting of announcements
Channel Development:
None
Single-signon to external apps:
Only using SCT provided integration components
(Banner, WebCT in future)
Smooth Upgrades?
Patches take a couple hours; major upgrades over a
weekend; schedule CP consultant to be available; run
through upgrade many times on test systems first
Content:
Currently stored on an external web server; hope to
mange with Documentum in the future
Personalization:
Portal is currently locked down so that users cannot
personalize
Positives of product:
Overall pleased with the application
Negatives of the product: None
Integration:
Going to use Biztalk for non-Luminis
communication/integration
Would they pick Luminis today?
Yes
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Appendix H – Additional interviews with Luminis
institutions
In addition to the “Shining Star” institutions provided by SCT, a conference call was also
placed with the College of William and Mary. The results of that conference call are
listed below.
College of William and Mary
Executive Summary: The College of William and Mary affirmed many of concerns.
They are using many of the components that come with Luminis (Groups tool, Banner
single-signon, etc) but have replaced other components with homegrown or 3rd party
products (Blackboard data integration, web-based email client, calendar, account
generation, etc.) They would not pick Luminis again if making that choice today.
Date:
8/10/2004
Contact: Susan Evans and Jeremy Baker
Background Questions:
University size:
7650 FTEs
Luminis version:
2.x currently; moving to 3.2 in the future (fall break?)
Luminis production date: March 2003
Luminis usage:
14,000 active accounts; 1000-1500 simultaneous users
Running Documentum?: No – not even the Luminis piece; no funding; not
integrated well with Luminis
Running Banner?:
Yes; student and finance; HR soon
Running Blackboard?:
Yes
Staff Resources:
One FTE; looking to expand
Using Luminis Email?:
No; Use Mirapoint; Used Luminis client at first but
switched to Mirapoint with custom single-signon after
complaints from users
Using Luminis Calendar?: Yes, for students – very low use; Employees use
Corporate Time
Luminis LDAP server for external services?:
No; separate enterprise LDAP server; enterprise LDAP
server is used for Luminis authentication
Luminis selection process: No evaluation process; included for free with Banner
purchase
Experience Questions:
Reliability:
Ongoing stability issue for past 6 months – system
crashes with large number of concurrent users; without
timeout, system crashes approximately every 4 hours; set
timeout to 30 minutes; SCT recommendation is to move
to Luminis 3.2; system needs lots of handholding – very
fragile; use static web pages when server goes down –
controlled by local director
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Support Resolution Time: One day for simple problems (generally things that are in
the documentation); for serious problems - considerable
delays – usually solves problem on their own quicker
than SCT responds
Support Consistency:
Quality of support is not consistent; depends on which
support rep answers the call
ADA Compliance satisfaction:
Haven’t done much research into this; assumption is that
it is poor
Lack of diverse browser support:
In Luminis 2, they disabled the browser warning with few
negative effects (most browses still work). They
anticipate that the pop-up requirement in Luminis 3 may
cause issues for them and will look at disabling it as well.
Documentation:
Documentation for pieces managed from web interface
are good; documentation of internals (file system,
database, server, Unix) non-existent; contacted and got
documentation directly from original vendors (Sun
iPlanet, etc.)
Feature Set Misleading?
Sometimes; email client is poor – replaced with
Mirapoint; features are implemented with a very specific
use in mind – not flexible at all; for example, users who
aren’t in Banner can’t sign onto Blackboard; features
have been promised in future versions but don’t appear
when those versions are released
Channel Development:
No custom production channels; have reused built-in
channel types such as RSS
Single-signon to external apps:
Some; fairly successful and very nice; Mirapoint email,
online course evaluation, W&M debit card balance
Smooth Upgrades?
Have only installed patches so far; upgrade from Luminis
2 to Luminis 3 looks difficult
Groups tool:
Good; 3.2 looks to be better
Other comments:
No portal comes complete out of the box – all require
significant development to be successful
Would they pick Luminis today?
No; would seriously investigate uPortal and Blackboard
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Appendix I – Interviews with institutions using the
Blackboard Portal
The core team conducted conference calls with institutions using the Blackboard Portal.
Below are the results of those conference calls.
Bowling Green State University
Executive Summary: Bowling Green State University is currently using Blackboard as
their university portal but will be switching to the Oracle portal in the near future. The
reason for this switch seemed to center on the lack of interface customization within the
Blackboard portal. They did not evaluate portals other than Oracle’s portal when making
the switch and that decision was made largely based on features and the CampusEAI
grant.
Date:
9/16/2004
Contacts: Jim Lach, Manager of Applications Development
Joyce Brady, Bb 5 Project Lead and current Enterprise Portal Project Lead
Don Schumacher, Bb System Admin, Enterprise Portal/Identity Mgmt Team
member
Portal:
Blackboard Portal but migrating to Oracle Portal
URL:
http://my.bgsu.edu/
Background Questions:
University size:
20,200 students
Portal software:
Blackboard 6 Portal system and LMS; not using the
content system currently
Portal production date:
August 1, 2001
Content Management System:
Percussion “Rhythmyx”; no decisions on how or if they
will use the Oracle Portal CMS
Running Banner?:
No; implementing Peoplesoft
Running Blackboard?:
Yes and plans are to keep Blackboard as their LMS
Staff Resources:
Approximately 5 FTEs spread across approximately 12
people
Email system:
???; Blackboard does not have an internal email system
Calendar system:
???; not using the Blackboard calendar; Blackboard
calendar is limited/inflexible – every event must have a
start and end time
Portal selection process:
Unknown for Blackboard; No wide-spread selection
process for Oracle portal – enticed by CampusEAI grant;
did not investigate uPortal, Luminis, etc.
Architecture:
1 Application Server, 1 Database Server – no redundancy
Portal Audience:
Applicants, Perspectives, Current Students, Faculty, Staff
(minimal); no Alumni
Experience Questions:
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Reliability:
Support Experience:
ADA Compliance:
Channel Development:
Single-signon:
Portal Layout:
Blackboard Issues:
Other:
CampusEAI:
Very reliable – only one hardware-related major outage
that lasted 23 hours
Poor; however this seemed to relate more to how
fixes/improvements were rolled out – especially relating
to Mac OS 9 support
No custom production channels; have used built-in
channel types such as RSS; plan to do custom channels
with Oracle Portal
Yes, using home-grown solution; Blackboard doesn’t
offer single-signon capabilities
My BGSU tab – announcements, news, links, areas of
interest, etc.
Courses tab – course related information
Community tab – student organizations, student services
(ride board, off-campus housing, trading post, etc),
discussion boards, etc.
Quick Links tab – links to lots of other sites
• Look and Feel cannot be customized as much as they
would like
• No content management system
• Limited roles (better in latest release?)
• System and Personal announcements “fight” for
attention – no separation
• Calendar is inflexible – all events must have a start and
end time
5 year grant to use Oracle Portal
5 schools involved at first; approximately 35 now
Oracle Portal has very few “out of the box” components
(no announcements, no calendar, etc.); participating
schools will develop and share channels
Loyola College in Baltimore
Executive Summary: Loyola has been using Blackboard for their university portal for
several years. They appear to be very happy with this solution.
Date:
9/27/2004
Contacts: Barry Rice, Director of Instructional Services, et al
Portal:
Blackboard Portal
URL:
http://www.loyola.edu/blackboard/
Background Questions:
University size:
5970 students
Portal software:
Blackboard 6 Portal system and LMS; content system in
test with production scheduled for January
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Portal production date:
LMS in 1998; portal components grew over time
Content Management System:
Site Executive – no integration with the portal currently
ERP:
Web Advisor – no integration with portal currently
Staff Resources:
Approximately 1/2 FTE (for portal specifically) spread
across 5 people
Email system:
Groupwise
Calendar system:
Groupwise for employees, Blackboard calendar available
but is not emphasized
Portal selection process:
Purchased Blackboard as LMS and expanded from there;
no portal evaluation
Architecture:
1 Application Server, 1 Database Server – no
redundancy; development/testing/production
environments
Portal Audience:
Applicants, Perspectives, Current Students, Faculty,
Staff; no Alumni (Alumni uses Liquid Matrix)
Experience Questions:
Reliability:
Support Experience:
Documentation:
ADA Compliance:
Channel Development:
Unique Applications:
Single-signon:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Overall Satistfaction:
stable
Good
Excellent – on “Behind the Blackboard”; multi-media
tutorials, download and install
some complaints primarily centered around framesets but
they have workarounds for them
No custom production channels
Student Officer voting, faculty voting, resident hall sites,
dining hall menus, bus routes and information
Not yet
• Traffic is already there
• Modules (channels)
• Delegate ownership of modules
• HTML, including HTML, RSS, Dictonary, Thesaurus
• Client can customize
• Can personalize based on roles
• Look and Feel cannot be customized as much as they
would like
• The system doesn’t push personalization
Very satisfied; have no plans to move off Blackboard at
this time
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Appendix J – Blackboard Portal Demonstration
Blackboard demonstrated their portal (now called the Blackboard Community System) on
September 28, 2004 to the CIO and the core team. Presenting were Gene Murray,
Miami’s Blackboard Representative, Peter Van Tienen, Director Sales Engineering, and
Tim Brunner, Sales Engineer. Below are notes from that demonstration.
o Desired Features of a portal
o Targeted announcements
o Organizational Tools
o Information delegation
o Seamless integration
o Information where people need to see it
o Reliability
o Personalization
o ERP integration
o The Blackboard Portal is now known as the Blackboard Community System
o Lots of content can be made available without logging into the portal
o Active Directory integration (log into Windows, SSO into portal)
o SSO can be used to substitute numbers (a later conference call concerning SSO
revealed that this is a add-on customization service Blackboard provides).
o Innovative Interfaces integration (used for the Library catalog system)
o Banner data feeds – via LDI or Mercury interface
o Look and Feel (branding) can change based on username or hostname. Would
allow Miami to have myMiami.muohio.edu, myMiami.ham.muohio.edu, and
myMiami.mid.muohio.edu with different looks and layouts
o Seneca College – good example
o App Pack 3 (due in December 2004) brings Blackboard Transaction System
(Harco) integration into the product
o University of Cincinnati is running Portal and testing Content System
o ADA 508 Compliance – information on Blackboard’s website
o uPortal channels should work in Blackboard (only if RSS?)
o More comprehensive UI customization coming in future versions – Skins, 3column layouts, etc.
o No firm plans for a full-blown CMS but may develop based on demand
o ePortfolios may do some of what is desired here
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Appendix K – Unicon Academus Portal
Demonstration
On October 14, 2004, Dan Barber from Unicon demonstrated the Unicon Academus
Portal via the web/conference call. Below are the notes from this demonstration.
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Based on uPortal
18 channels ship with Academus
Academus Portal is usually 1 release behind uPortal
Sungard has contributed only 1.78% of the uPortal code; Unicon has contributed
more than any other company
Integration is limited to SSO except for Collegue and SunOne Calendar; IMS
format integration in next version
SSO to Groupwise, Outlook, Blackboard, SunOne Calendar, Oracle Corporate
Time, etc.
Multiple branding – based on username/group – presented via templates
Multiple roles – knows about multiple roles; template is driven off primary
classification
Announcements are text only
Announcements administration can be deletegated and is granular
Groups are created via LDAP dynamically; can also use batch upload, GUI, or
IMS format
Survey results can be exported (character separated), printed, or emailed
Surveys can be authored via XML
Delegated administration of surveys coming in version 1.5
Campus News – users subscribe to topics
Site Statistics (appears to be MRTG and NetTracker)
Version 1.5 is in beta
o Due by end of 2004
o Will use uPortal 2.4
o Content fragments – push new content even if user has customized
o JSR 168
o IMS data format
Academus currently has no Banner clients using Academus
Academus supports a number of Banner clients using uPortal
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Appendix L – Comparison of portal products
Miami University asked three vendors to present their portal products for evaluation:
Sungard SCT Luminis (including Documentum Content Management System),
Blackboard Portal (including the Blackboard Content System), and Unicon Academus
Suite. Below is a comparision of these products.
Channel Architecture
JSR168 compliant
WSRP compliant
Email client included
Calendar
Channels personalized by role
Channels personalized by user
Ability to add channels at a later
date
Branding/Skins
Integration with Sungard SCT
Banner
Integration with Blackboard LMS
Integration with Blackboard
Transaction System
ADA Compliance
Single-signon
Surveys/polls
Student Organization / groups /
department tools
Content Management System
LDAP Integration
Redundancy/Failover
HTML standards compliance
Browser support
Browser requirements
Announcements
Distributed Announcement Admin
Roles
Luminis
yes
yes (future?)
Blackboard
yes
in 2005
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes (future?)
in 2005
no
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes; username
based
yes;
username or
virtual host
based
no
limited; more
in Banner 7 &
8
SSO only
SSO only
limited
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
limited (?)
limited
limited
Javascript &
pop-ups
System and
personal; text
only
limited
yes
Academus
yes
in version
1.5
yes
yes
yes
yes
yes
in version
1.5
yes;
username
based
no
yes
In App Pack
3 (Dec,
2004)
mostly
no1
yes
yes
SSO only
SSO only
limited
yes
yes
limited
good
Javascript
no
yes
yes
unknown
unknown
Javascript
yes; HTML
capable
yes; text
only
limited
yes
yes (?)
yes
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limited
yes
yes
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Account and data
population/integration
limited
RSS channels
HTML channels
Guest access (perspective students,
alumni, etc.)
Integration with Kronos
yes
yes
yes
LDI or
Mecury
interface
yes
yes
yes
limited;
more in App
Pack 3
(12/04) (?)
yes
yes
yes
Shibboleth support
File Sharing with internal clients
File Sharing with external clients
UI customization
no
limited
no
yes
SSO only
no1
Integration with Library resources
SSO only
eReserves
and III
(future?)1
no1
replace? 1
Integration with scheduling
Integration with student
turnins/handouts
CDS and UDS integration
Spam filtering
Calendar tied to Blackboard
calendar
Calendar tied to university event
calendar
Calendar tied to university
calendaring solution
ePortfolios
eReserves
Distribute content adminstration
File Sharing accessible as mounted
drive
1
SSO only
SSO
only/replace?
no
unknown
IMS
interface in
version 1.5
no
limited
no
yes
SSO only
(?)
SSO only
(?)
yes
yes
yes
SSO only
SSO only
no
unknown
no
no
no email
client
yes
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
yes (with
Documentum)
no (?)
yes
yes
yes
no
no
unknown
yes
unknown
no
Single signon possible via external SSO system (e.g. WAS)
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