Preparing for Portals Paul Dempsey Director of Electronic Communication Dickinson College

Introduction  Portal content  How/where do you get information for portal content?  Not components of MIS  Who is involved?  Communications staff  IT/technical staff  Status of your portal

Presentation Overview  Dickinson College environment  Why prepare?  Sources of information  Strategies for collecting  Using prior to the portal  Using with the portal

Dickinson College

 Residential, liberal arts college  Administrative organization  Recent Banner conversion  Implementing Luminis portal  Web infrastructure  ColdFusion application server

Why prepare for portals?  Goal of the portal

Why prepare for portals?  Goal of the portal  Central point of contact  Useful or required services  Content, content, content

Why prepare for portals?  Goal of the portal  Central point of contact  Useful or required services  Content, content, content  Implementation challenges  Technical issues  Configuration, customization  User behavior

Why prepare for portals?  Addressing in advance:  One less thing to worry about  Behavior of information providers  Range of content available for launch  Benefits for portal users  Downside?  Duplicating portal features

Our motto:

Sources of information  Who is communicating?  What are they communicating?  How are they communicating?

Sources of information  Events listings  Announcements  News releases  Sports information  Menus and specials  Publications

Sources of information  Events listings  Types of events  Submitted by sponsors  Reviewed and published  Announcements  Submitted by offices  Reviewed and published

Sources of information  News releases & sports information  Media relations/SID  Menus and specials  Dining services  Publications  In-house newsletters  Student newspaper

Strategies for collecting  In general:  Ease of use  Avoid duplicate efforts  Replace inefficient processes  Provide incentives  Focus on institutional needs

Strategies for collecting  Example: events & announcements  Previous systems:  Printed newsletters, s  Haphazard collection  Now: The Compass  Web forms to submit  Reviewed and edited  Distributed by web and

Strategies for collecting

 Compass assessment  In use since fall 2003  About 1,000 announcements/year  Issues  Appropriate items  Editing submissions  Length of time

Strategies for collecting  Dining services  Manual system for posting  Custom web forms to manage  Other systems  News releases  Sports schedules and results  Publications

Using prior to the portal  Displaying on the web  Printing  Distributing via  Feeds available as RSS  Add events to calendar

Using prior to the portal

Using with the portal  Future for Dickinson  Standard formats (RSS/XML)  Adapt output for portal  Impact on current systems  Future development

Conclusion  Evaluation of current efforts  Opportunities for improvement  Requires cooperation between communications and IT staff  Adapting to new environment with the portal  Thoughts? Questions?