Deploying a Portal Solution: An IT and
Academic Unit Perspective
Dr. Harry Koehnemann
Associate Professor
Division of Computing Studies
Arizona State University
harry@asu.edu
http://latitude.east.asu.edu
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Outline
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What is a portal? what is uPortal?
Portal advantages
What is going on at ASU?
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IT organization
Division of Computing Studies
Application integration strategies for uPortal
Experience and recommendations
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
About Harry
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Academic
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Associate Professor for 3 years in Division of Computing Studies
Adjunct faculty for ASU’s Computer Science for 4 years
Software Developer
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Over ten years experience, many in e-learning
web applications
Understand software development and deployment issues
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
What is a Portal?
“ “A site featuring a suite of commonly used
services, serving as a starting point and
frequent gateway” **
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Single access point to a suite of applications
Provides end-user customization and personalization
** http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/portal/
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
What is a Portal?
Authentication
Personalization/
Customization
Single Access
Point to
Multiple
Applications
(should provide
single sign-on)
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
What is uPortal?
“a free, sharable portal under development by
institutions of higher-education”

Low entry cost

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Complete open-source solution
Many channels freely and commercially available
Vendor support

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UNICON-IBS – channels, CMS, services, support
SCT – integrated into product, community involvement
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Who Created uPortal?
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Original development funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Continues with university and business collaboration
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Why Portals? One Stop

Single access point and sign-on – simple, easy


What was that URL?
Which password?
Class Schedule
CMS
Library
Register
Dining Hall
Roster
Change Health
Plan
Bookstore
Check Pretax
Accounts
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Traffic Fines
Payroll
Record Final
Grades
Manage Pretax
Accounts
Campus
Organization
Web Sites
Why Portals? Serve Diverse Groups

University’s scope spans beyond students, faculty, and
staff

Does the home page communicate the proper message to each
group?
Guests
Parents
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Why Portals? Personalization

Give individual user the content he/she needs to perform tasks
Add, remove,
and organize
channel
structure
(columns and
tabs)
Add, remove,
organize
channels
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Why Portals? Open-Source Solutions
Open-source means:

Value

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Quick, easy access

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Quality implementations
exist for free
Install and run in an hour
Support
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Active on-line groups
Commercial support exists
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
What’s Going on at ASU?
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Information Technology
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Reviewed multiple portal solutions
Chose uPortal and rolled out instance in Fall 2003
Includes channels for payroll, email, news, etc. – more to come
Division of Computing Studies


Using students to create uPortal channels to automate
department business
Leverage portal instance deployed by IT
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
ASU uPortal Instance
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Portal Vision

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“Front door to the Mall”
Destination of choice for all constituents
Cyber real estate for all online traffic
Selected uPortal after extensive review process
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Other vendors did not share above vision – too teaching and
learning centric
Other vendor’s architectures were difficult to learn and integrate
uPortal architecture allows scalable portal site
 Channel content served off other servers
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
ASU uPortal Instance
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Initial role out Fall 2003
Attract 15,000 visitors per day
Currently supports the following channels
General
Students
Faculty
Directory Search
My Grades
Payroll
Library Catalog Search
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Receivable
Dictionary/Thesaurus
Academic/Financial Links
Faculty/Staff Links
Outlook mail client
Bb Courses/Groups
Bb Courses/Groups
ASU Webmail
Student Fees
Spam filter
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
ASU uPortal Instance
Single sign-on
Personalization
Low hanging
fruit – open
source
channels
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
ASU uPortal Instance
More low
hanging fruit
– custom
integration
with campus
services
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
ASU uPortal Instance
Integration with
campus records
system
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
ASU uPortal Instance
Integration with
Blackboard and
campus email
application
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Division of Computing Studies Activities
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Write portal applications to automate department
businesses
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Use students for development
Leverage IT investment in uPortal deployment
Share results with open source community (scholarly activity)
Projects
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Tracking graduate admissions process (deployed)
Integrate UNICON Academus (uPortal-based CMS) and
Blackboard with True Outcomes for outcomes-based
assessment (started)
Manage “defense day” presentations and schedule (started)
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Graduate Admissions Project

Current process involves routing paper forms
Committee
Members
Admin
Chair
WebXtend
Creates forms
Distribute
View admission packet
Review and recommend
Return
Collate
Give all reviews
View adminission packet
Final decision
Return Forms
Place in student's file
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Graduate Admissions Requirements
Review applicants
Committee
Members
Enter applicant information
Admin
Final review
Print final eval form
Students
WebXtender
Check status
No more phone calls from
perspective students!!!
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Chair
Graduate Admissions Pages
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Graduate Admission Demo
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
uPortal Channel Integration Techniques
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Support tight or loose integration with portal system
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Require more or less support from IT staff and resources
Portal is an aggregator of content
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Data, functionality, and content may reside in different locations
IT Supported
Supported
Elsewhere
Portal
Proxy/feed channel
Content
Aggregation
Native channel
Native channel
Datasource
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
External feed/app
Datasource
uPortal Channel Integration Techniques
1.
RSS Feeds
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2.
RSS initially designed by Netscape to build portals of headline
news – now many different types of feeds (blog, etc.)
uPortal provides RSS channel
One-way information flow
In-line Frames
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Channel content rendered by external application outside
control of portal system
Quick and dirty, browser talks directly to server
However, lose consistent look and feel, personalization,
security, single sign-on
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
uPortal Channel Integration Techniques
3.
Proxies
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Render content remotely and pull through portal
Can require some changes to target application to facilitate
better integration – look and feel, CSS, single sign-on
Can pass information such as user credentials in HTTP header
Proxy must perform URL rewriting
Target must use portal’s CSS and constrained HTML (no
javascript, etc.) depending on proxy’s abilities
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
uPortal Channel Integration Techniques
3.
Proxies (cont’d)
1.
2.
3.
Write a proxy channel (or use uPortal’s CWedProxy)

Grabs content and renders filtering URLs and HTML
WSRP
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Formalized web service standard for proxy
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Specification includes standard CSS elements, etc.
JSR168 Portlet
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Specification includes ability to proxy servlets and JSPs
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Standard for rendering J2EE web app through a portal
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Requires some target modification to support fragments
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Also defining CSS integration
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
uPortal Channel Integration Techniques
4.
Complete channel
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Application functionality and rendering performed by portal
Data may or may not be managed in uPortal system database
Portal
Content
Aggregation
RSSChannel
RSS Feed
CInlineFrame
Web Application
Custom proxy or CWebProxy
Web Application
Standard proxy
WSRP/J2EE App
Channel
Datasource
Channel
Datasource
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Channel Advantages
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Portal (software developer)
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No need to worry about login or role
Don’t need to manage deployment or buy server
Department (academic)
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More efficient - no more paper, lost forms, collating, etc.
Can perform work remotely
No more calls from perspective students
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
IT Challenges
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Open source means limited tools
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Policy for deploying outside channels
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Little support for channel development and deployment
No object (data abstraction) layer inside uPortal
No application development environment
No application management tools
Rogue application can bring down entire portal (System.exit())
Where is channel’s supporting databases, server, etc?
Standards – which? when?
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Non currently sufficient – permissions, multichannel interaction
Will continue to evolve
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Departmental Challenges
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Quality of resulting product
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Expertise with uPortal and web applications strongly encouraged
 Get support from IT, constituents, vendor
Need experienced manager/tech lead with allocated resources
100% turnover on all teams each semester
 “Hire” students for better continuity
But…
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the costs are almost zero with very little risk
there is great educational value for students - increased
academic value
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest
Summary

Portals are the next step to a complete virtual academic
environment

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Deliver the entire campus, not a discussion board and a gradebook
Move closer to fulfilling the true promises of e-learning
Open-source portal solutions provide an excellent boundary
between IT support and department investment
Departments can leverage portal investment with little risk

Need good students and knowledgeable manager with time
 Need knowledge of software development process

Knowledge of uPortal deployment and integration strategies key to
productivity and success
Thursday February 26, 2004
EDUCAUSE Southwest