Thursday February 26, 2004 EDUCAUSE Southwest Deploying a Portal Solution: An IT and Academic Unit Perspective Dr. Harry Koehnemann Associate Professor

Thursday February 26, 2004EDUCAUSE Southwest

Deploying a Portal Solution: An IT and Academic Unit Perspective

Dr. Harry KoehnemannAssociate Professor

Division of Computing StudiesArizona State University

[email protected]://latitude.east.asu.edu


Outline

What is a portal? what is uPortal? Portal advantages What is going on at ASU?

IT organization Division of Computing Studies

Application integration strategies for uPortal Experience and recommendations


About Harry

Academic Associate Professor for 3 years in Division of Computing Studies Adjunct faculty for ASU’s Computer Science for 4 years

Software Developer Over ten years experience, many in e-learning

web applications Understand software development and deployment issues


What is a Portal?

“ “A site featuring a suite of commonly used services, serving as a starting point and

frequent gateway” **

Single access point to a suite of applications Provides end-user customization and personalization

** http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/portal/


What is a Portal?

Personalization/

Customization

Authentication

Single Access Point toMultiple

Applications(should

provide single sign-on)


What is uPortal?

“a free, sharable portal under development by institutions of higher-education”

Low entry cost Complete open-source solution Many channels freely and commercially available

Vendor support UNICON-IBS – channels, CMS, services, support SCT – integrated into product, community involvement


Who Created uPortal?

Original development funded by Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Continues with university and business collaboration


Why Portals? One Stop

Single access point and sign-on – simple, easy What was that URL? Which password?

Record Final Grades

Library

Roster

Class ScheduleCMS

Change Health Plan

Check Pretax Accounts

Manage Pretax

AccountsCampus

Organization Web Sites

Payroll

Traffic Fines

Bookstore

Dining Hall

Register


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?

Students

Faculty

Staff

AlumniLocal

IndustryLegislature

Grant Agencies

Future Students

DonorsParents

Guests

Local Commun

ity


Why Portals? Personalization

Give individual user the content he/she needs to perform tasks

Add, remove, organize channels

Add, remove,

and organize channel

structure (columns and tabs)


Why Portals? Open-Source Solutions

Open-source means: Value

Quality implementations exist for free

Quick, easy access Install and run in an hour

Support Active on-line groups Commercial support exists


What’s Going on at ASU?

Information Technology 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


ASU uPortal Instance

Portal Vision “Front door to the Mall” Destination of choice for all constituents Cyber real estate for all online traffic

Selected uPortal after extensive review process 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



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



Low hanging

fruit – open source

channels

Single sign-on

Personalization



More low hanging fruit –

custom integration

with campus services



Integration with campus records

system



Integration with Blackboard and campus email

application


Division of Computing Studies Activities

Write portal applications to automate department businesses Use students for development Leverage IT investment in uPortal deployment Share results with open source community (scholarly activity)

Projects 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)


Admin Committee Members

Chair WebXtend

Creates formsDistribute

Review and recommend

Return

CollateGive all reviews

Final decisionReturn Forms

Place in student's file

View admission packet

View adminission packet

Graduate Admissions Project

Current process involves routing paper forms


Graduate Admissions Requirements

No more phone calls from perspective students!!!

Enter applicant information

Print final eval form

Admin

Committee Members

Chair

Check statusStudents

Final review

Review applicants

WebXtender


Graduate Admissions Pages

Graduate Admission Demo


uPortal Channel Integration Techniques

Support tight or loose integration with portal system Require more or less support from IT staff and resources

Portal is an aggregator of content Data, functionality, and content may reside in different locations

Portal

ContentAggregation

DatasourceNative channel

Datasource

Proxy/feed channel

IT Supported SupportedElsewhere

External feed/app

Native channel



1. RSS Feeds 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

2. In-line Frames 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



3. Proxies 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



3. Proxies (cont’d)1. Write a proxy channel (or use uPortal’s CWedProxy)

Grabs content and renders filtering URLs and HTML

2. WSRP Formalized web service standard for proxy Specification includes standard CSS elements, etc.

3. JSR168 Portlet Specification includes ability to proxy servlets and JSPs Standard for rendering J2EE web app through a portal Requires some target modification to support fragments Also defining CSS integration



4. Complete channel Application functionality and rendering performed by portal Data may or may not be managed in uPortal system database

Portal

ContentAggregation

DatasourceChannel

Datasource

Channel

Web ApplicationCustom proxy or CWebProxy

WSRP/J2EE AppStandard proxy

RSS FeedRSSChannel

Web ApplicationCInlineFrame


Channel Advantages

Portal (software developer) No need to worry about login or role Don’t need to manage deployment or buy server

Department (academic) More efficient - no more paper, lost forms, collating, etc. Can perform work remotely No more calls from perspective students


IT Challenges

Open source means limited tools Little support for channel development and deployment No object (data abstraction) layer inside uPortal No application development environment No application management tools

Policy for deploying outside channels Rogue application can bring down entire portal (System.exit()) Where is channel’s supporting databases, server, etc?

Standards – which? when? Non currently sufficient – permissions, multichannel interaction Will continue to evolve


Departmental Challenges

Quality of resulting product 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… the costs are almost zero with very little risk there is great educational value for students - increased

academic value


Summary

Portals are the next step to a complete virtual academic environment 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

Documents

Thursday February 26, 2004 EDUCAUSE Southwest Deploying a Portal Solution: An IT and Academic Unit Perspective Dr. Harry Koehnemann Associate Professor