System Design
Specification
for
Mobile Information Solution with MyEd
(uPortal)
Project Code: WEB005
Version: 1.1
Date: 15/05/2014
Template Revised April 2013
Template Revised April 2013
System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
Contents
1
1.1
1.2
DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT .................................................................. 3
Contributors ..................................................................................................... 3
Version Control ................................................................................................ 3
2
OVERVIEW .............................................................................................. 4
3
DEVELOPMENT TOOLS AND STANDARDS ......................................... 5
3.1
3.2
4
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
Development Tools ........................................................................................... 5
Development Standards................................................................................... 5
SYSTEM PROCESSES ............................................................................ 6
Theme (profile) setting/switching solution for mobile (requirement 1.1) ... 6
Mobile login (requirement 1.3) ....................................................................... 7
Guest Layout (requirement 1.6) ..................................................................... 7
Mobile Layout (requirement 1.9) ................................................................... 7
Mobile Navigation View (requirement 1.10) ................................................. 8
Mobile Dashboard (requirement 1.11) ........................................................... 8
4.7
PC Availability (requirement 2.11) .............................................................. 10
4.8
Shuttlebus (requirement 2.16) ...................................................................... 10
4.9
Library account/Web Voyager integration (requirement 2.8) .................... 9
4.10 Changes to Existing Channels........................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4.10.1
Email Preview Portlet (requirement 2.1) ................................................... 8
4.10.2
Calendar Portlet (requirement 2.2) ............................................................ 8
4.10.3
Learn (basic - requirement 2.3) .................................................................. 9
4.10.4
Print Credit (requirement 2.13) ................................................................ 10
4.10.5
Announcements (requirement 2.15)......................................................... 10
4.11
New Portlets to be developed ............................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
5 NON-PROCESS REQUIREMENTS ............... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT
DEFINED.
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
6
6.1
Mobile platform support (requirement 1.0) .................................................. 6
Re-Enable Mobile theme (requirement 1.2) .................................................. 6
Default Mobile Theme Customisations (requirement 1.4) ........................... 7
"iPhone" Skin (requirement 1.5).................................................................... 7
USER INTERFACE ................................................................................ 11
Announcements Portlet (requirement 2.15) ................................................ 11
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
6.2
Email Preview Portlet (requirement 2.1) ..................................................... 13
6.3
6.4
Calendar Portlet (requirement 2.2) .............................................................. 13
Print Credit Portlet (requirement 2.13) ....................................................... 14
7
7.1
7.2
APPLICATION SECURITY .................................................................... 15
Authentication ................................................................................................ 15
Authorisation .................................................................................................. 15
8
DATABASE DESIGN ............................................................................. 16
9
APPLICATION INTERFACES ................................................................ 17
10
DATA .................................................................................................. 18
10.1
10.2
Data Migration ............................................................................................... 18
Archiving Policy ............................................................................................. 18
11
IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................ 19
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
1 DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
When completing this document, please mark any section that is not required as ‘N/A’. A brief
description of why the section is not required should also be included.
1.1 Contributors
Please provide details of all contributors to this document.
Role
Systems Analyst
Designer
(Owner)
Business
Analyst
Project Manager
Project Sponsor
Business Area
Manager
Other document
contributors
Unit
IS Applications
IS Applications
Name
Richard Good
Ross Nicoll
Neil Hanlon
Maurice Franceschi
IS Applications
IS Applications
IS Applications
Maurice Franceschi
Martin Morrey
Maurice Franceschi
1.2 Version Control
Please document all changes made to this document since initial distribution.
Date
22/04/14
14/05/14
15/05/14
Version
0.1
1.0
1.1
Author
RN
RG
RG
Section
All
All
All
Amendment
First draft
Misc edits
Revisions due to feedback
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
2 OVERVIEW
The mobile information solution project will enable and configure the mobile view(s)
for MyEd. This specification details the main configuration changes required to
enable mobile views, and also the theming changes required to give them the MyEd
look and feel. Finally, this specification also details some minor theming changes to
be made to a select number of portlets to be added to the mobile view.
Full builds of the timetable and map portlet are covered in separate specifications.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
3 DEVELOPMENT TOOLS AND STANDARDS
3.1 Development Tools
Specify which technologies will be used to develop the application, eg Oracle 9i, Cold Fusion MX,
Oracle Forms, Business Objects, Java, PL/SQL etc.
The core application will consist of Java portlets embedded within the uPortal framework. Database
backends for most of these portlets already exist, based on the Oracle DB.
3.2 Development Standards
Tick the appropriate box to indicate the standards being followed for this application:
√ indicates compliance
Standard
Database Design
Cold Fusion
Java
Uportal Development
Accessibility
Web Style Standards
Supported Web Browsers
√
√
√
√
√
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
4 SYSTEM PROCESSES
Due to the BRD being prepared by technical staff familiar with uPortal, and based on
an existing platform, the BRD primarily reflects process changes rather than
conventional requirements. As such, much of the requirements are repeated here as-is:
4.1 Mobile platform support (requirement 1.0)
Mobile support in uPortal 4 is to be enabled.
Documentation will be prepared of the supported mobile platforms, based on the
official list of supported platforms for jQuery Mobile 1.3.2
(http://jquerymobile.com/changelog/1.3.2/). Documentation prepared as part of this
project will be of a technical nature, and it is presumed that others will prepare
content for use on the university website based upon that technical documentation.
Devlopment team will write an initial version, which will be taken and a public facing
version produced by Service Management.
4.2 Theme (profile) setting/switching solution for mobile
(requirement 1.1)
Following the design specified in the BRD, theme switching is to be enabled via
parameter specified in the URL of a page. The parameter will be called “profile”, and
take the name of the theme as its value. The selected theme will be saved in a cookie,
and used as the default where the user accesses MyEd from the same browser without
specifying a theme.
Supplying no “profile” parameter will result in the theme being determined based on
user agent detection. Supplying an invalid theme name to the “profile” parameter will
be treated as if no parameter was provided. The results of specifying the “profile”
parameter more than once are undefined.
4.3 Re-Enable Mobile theme (requirement 1.2)
The mobile theme was disabled as part of WEB003, and requires to be re-enabled as
pre-requisite of this project. This has been disabled in test/production environments
only, and as such is a matter for implementation to those environments, rather than for
development.
The following changes should be applied across the environment profiles as the
project is rolled out (and revised as necessary based on testing feedback):
<mobile.user.agent.regex>(.*iPhone.*)|(.*iPod.*)|(.*Android.*M
obile.*)|(.*IEMobile.*)|(.*Safari.*Pre.*)|(.*Nokia.*AppleWebKi
t.*)|(.*Black[Bb]erry.*)|(.*Opera Mobile.*)|(.*Windows
Phone.*)|(.*Fennec.*)|(.*Minimo.*)</mobile.user.agent.regex>
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System Design Specification for WEB005
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4.4 Mobile login (requirement 1.3)
The EASE login page will determine the correct style to use based on user agent
testing; this is expected to be in place already, and only requires checking as part of
this project.

This requirement is to be delivered by Service Management.
4.5 Default Mobile Theme Customisations (requirement 1.4)
Service management will provide changes to be applied the mobile theme.
Development services will apply these changes to uPortal via the MyEd overlay.
4.6 "iPhone" Skin (requirement 1.5)
Service management will provide changes to be applied the mobile theme.
Development services will apply these changes to uPortal via the MyEd overlay.
4.7 Guest Layout (requirement 1.6)
A guest layout is to be provided for users who wish to access MyEd without logging
in, either because they do not have suitable credentials (i.e. visitors), or do not wish to
access sensitive/personalised data.
The guest layout will be made available to any users accessing MyEd without logging
in to EASE first. Users will not be able to access the guest layout while logged in to
MyEd.
It is assumed at this stage that the guest layout will be enabled by following the
shibboleth guidelines (https://wiki.jasig.org/display/UPM40/Shibboleth), specifically:

Configure server to protect URI /uPortal/Login (i.e. Cosign protection will be
changed to only protect that URI)
4.8 Mobile Layout (requirement 1.9)
Mobile layouts by default are assigned if they are in the current user layout (including
any assigned fragments) and have the “Hide in mobile theme” (hideFromMobile) set
to false.
In addition to this, R&D was carried out to show that a layout fragment can be applied
which checks whether the mobile theme is present by using the
ProfileEvaluatorFactory (value equal to mobileDefault).
So, all current layout fragments will have a check added which will evaluate that the
Profile is not mobileDefault.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
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This will ensure that any mobile enabled portlets are not applied erroneously into the
mobile layout by nature of being in another layout fragment.
NOTE: We will need to ensure that only portlets we wish to display in the mobile
theme have hideFromMobile set to false, i.e. all other portlets we wish to hide should
be set to true.
Then in addition, new layout fragments will be created which evaluate to only display
when mobileDefault profile is set. If additional layouts are needed for individual
person types then they can be created as per requirement. Any mobile fragment will
be suffixed –mobile (e.g. staff-lo-mobile.fragment-layout.xml).
All layout fragments will be manageable as per current, via the GUI.
NOTE: At this stage it is expected that layouts will be managed via the GUI only, and
exported into other environments as necessary. There is no agreed mechanism for
storing and managing changes to layouts across environments via SVN.
4.9 Mobile Navigation View (requirement 1.10)
Mobile navigation is to be set to the default grid layout. No option will be provided to
change the layout, at this stage.
4.10 Mobile Dashboard (requirement 1.11)
The mobile dashboard will be integrated into the theme, embedding a
WebProxyPortlet channel proxying a jQuery mobile panel.

The mobile dashboard is to be delivered by Service Management.
4.11 Email Preview Portlet (requirement 2.1)



Improvements to be made to general user interface to bring it in line with UoE
standard look and feel, specifically concentrating on the email details view
buttons
Count of new emails to be overlayed on the icon shown for the portlet should
be styled as per the new mobile MyEd layout.
Add banner at top of the portlet to link to information on the OWA native app
4.12 Calendar Portlet (requirement 2.2)
The following are Must requirements:


Improvements to be made to general user interface to bring it in line with UoE
standard look and feel.
Add banner at top of the portlet to link to information on the OWA native app
NOTE: The look and feel changes are to be provided by Service Management
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System Design Specification for WEB005
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The following is a Should requirement to be done if time permits:

Investigate feasibility of showing/hiding date picker UI element (see
screenshot below)
Figure 1. Calendar date picker
4.13 Learn (basic - requirement 2.3)


Use existing Learn Services portlet, modified to work in a mobile environment
Banner at top of the portlet to link to information on the Blackboard native app
Note that Learn (Enhanced) is not covered by this document, as part of the changes
for 2015/6.
4.14 Library search (requirement 2.7)
The library search channel will be configured as a WebProxyPortlet wrapping around
an application provided by service management.

This requirement is to be delivered by Service Management.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
4.15 PC Availability (requirement 2.11)
The PC availability channel will be configured as a WebProxyPortlet wrapping
around an application provided by service management.

This requirement is to be delivered by Service Management.
4.16 Print Credit (requirement 2.14)
A new channel will the configured to proxy the Cold Fusion based print credit web
application. A new channel will be used such that its CSS and path slicing (which
parts of the HTML document are used for the portlet) settings are independent of the
existing channel.
The initial channel will only show the current balance and account history (i.e. not the
option to add credit).
4.17 Announcements (requirement 2.15)
The existing mobile interface for the announcements portlet is to be used, however
requires some minor corrections to integrate with the University of Edinburgh look
and feel. See section 5.1 for details.
4.18 Shuttlebus (requirement 2.16)
The shuttle bus channel will be configured as a WebProxyPortlet wrapping around an
application provided by service management
For reference, if needed, it uses the API outlined at
http://www.mybustracker.co.uk/docs/edinburgh/10124-MAN-11251C%20MyBustracker%20Web%20Services%20-%20Thirdparty%20developer's%20guide.pdf behind the scenes.

This requirement is to be delivered by Service Management.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
5 USER INTERFACE
5.1 Announcements Portlet (requirement 2.15)
The existing portlet, as rendered in Chrome on an Android 4.4 device, is shown below
as Figure 2 and Figure 3. The workflow will be retained as-is, such that a top level list
of announcements is presented as the main page, and selecting (clicking/touching)
takes the user to a display of a single announcement. Theme changes will be made to
bring the portlet into line with UoE standard look and feel.
Figure 2: Mobile view of announcements list
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System Design Specification for WEB005
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Figure 3: Mobile view of a single announcement
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System Design Specification for WEB005
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5.2 Email Preview Portlet (requirement 2.1)
An example of the “grid” navigation layout of portlets, with the email count overlayed
on top of the Email portlet’s icon, is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Portlet grid view showing email count overlay
Design of the email preview portlet itself is derived primarily from the existing
portlet, with theme changes to match standard UoE look and feel.
5.3 Calendar Portlet (requirement 2.2)
Design of the calendar portlet itself is derived primarily from the existing portlet, with
theme changes to match standard UoE look and feel. An example of the revised
portlet is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Calendar portlet
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
5.4 Print Credit Portlet (requirement 2.13)
The print credit portlet will be provided as a WebProxyPortlet around the existing
print credit application (“pcounter”). jQuery mobile manipulation will be used to alter
the UI to be compatible with mobile devices; that work to be undertaken by service
management.
Figure 6: Print credit UI
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
6 APPLICATION SECURITY
6.1 Authentication
Authentication is handled by EASE login to MyEd.
6.2 Authorisation
Authorisation is handled by uPortal/MyEd, in line with specification from WEB003.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
7 DATABASE DESIGN
No new database tables are required for this SDS, please refer to other specifications
for details of required tables.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
8 APPLICATION INTERFACES
Several of the channels use WebProxyPortlet to embed content from other
applications into the portal. These include:
Channel
PC Availability
Shuttlebus
Library search
Print credit
Application
http://labmonitor.ucs.ed.ac.uk/myed/index.html
http://appstest.myed.ed.ac.uk/channels/shuttlebus/prototype.shtml
https://www.myed.ed.ac.uk/web_files/launchers/librarytabs.html
https://www.pcounter.mis.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm
These applications themselves also interface with further systems, which are out with
the scope of this document. Refer to the SDSes for these applications for further
detail.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
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9 DATA
9.1 Data Migration
No data is to be migrated as part of this project.
9.2 Archiving Policy
The overall project has no data archival requirements.
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System Design Specification for WEB005
Version: 1.1
10 IMPLEMENTATION
It should be noted that process 4.3 is an implementation task for TEST/PROD only.
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