1. Preparing for Portals Paul Dempsey Director of Electronic Communication Dickinson College

2. 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

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

4. Dickinson College

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

6. Why prepare for portals?  Goal of the portal

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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Our motto:

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

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

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

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

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

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

17. Strategies for collecting

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

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

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

21. Using prior to the portal

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

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