uPortal – Bristol Fashion UoB Portal Team

Why uPortal? No software budget so needed to be free to us Long list: Blackboard, Zope+CMF, Oracle Portal, uPortal Short list: Oracle Portal, uPortal Extended San Diego State University's Rubric for Rating Commercial Portal Vendors)Rubric for Rating Commercial Portal Vendors OP & uP scored the same but hardware footprint & Exit Strategy swung it Zope will be our CMS

What are we using it for? Pilot Institutional Portal by July 2003 Initial focus – post-graduates Now broadened to student administration And broadening to integration with VLE Ambitions – Library and existing Web apps

Implementation I Information Processes & System Plan (From Desktop to Webtop) Portal Steering Group (26) Portal Team (10) Portal Development Team (3)

Portal Managed Learning Environment (MLE) Portal = MLE = VLE + CMS fundamentally content-free Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)Student Information System (SIS)Digital Library eTools Content Management System (CMS)

From Desktop to Webtop An Information Systems Strategy? Operational processing Maintrix CARB PIMS Dolphin Coda User Aleph Envision Sports stellar DataHub Corporate information eclipse DataHaven Information deployment fsb Web Application server IRIS VIOLET Many readers, some writers Multiple views, depending on role Show Roomhttp:// Back Officehttps:// HEROProspective employee The Portal Prospective studentCasual visitor HESA HoD Staff Student

Implementation II Phase 0 – startup Phase 1 – user requirements Phase 2 – PDT uPortal immersion Phase 3 – authentication + authorisation Phase 4 – CalPoly Blackboard Access Channel Phases n – Channel (n – 4) Phase x – migrating a channel to Oracle Portal

Problems & Successes No Project Board yet Drifting project definition New Director not in post until July 2003 The project cant fix bad processes Central vs. Local data Scepticism – track record Anxiety – cuts across turf Blackboard IRIS, Contact Directory, personinfo, Law Intranet, SOBS Intranet, VetSci Portal, etc

Blackboard issues We risked two portals Provoked decision about BB Enterprise CalPoly BB Access Channel is all or nothing Will BB Building Blocks allow us to cherry pick features? Looking at open source alternatives

Issues Delivering high-performing, resilient and scalable portal –Load balancing How does the UK give to, and not just take from, the uPortal/JASIG community? If it's not done in Java it's not worth doing

Questions What methods are available to achieve single sign-on to multiple apps? How stable have the pioneering sites found uPortal? How have sites dealt with developing against constantly changing uPortal code? When will Web Services be supported? What strategies are being used to develop channels? What about channels being available to existing web sites?

Suggestions Formation of product-based consortia –CMS (Zope) –VLE (Blackboard) –SIS (SITS) –Library (Aleph) Formation of technology-based consortia –Authentication (AD, LDAP) –Load balancing (Cisco, Foundry, Linux Virtual Server)