uPortal at Yale

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uPortal at Yale

• Susan Bramhall
• ITS Technology and Planning
• January 2002

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Original Web
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Yale Web
Difficulty of trying to be all things to all
people.
www.yale.edu
DW web reporting
Yaleinfo
ePortal
Library Site
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Our Vision
Portal lens
Yale Security Model SSO architecture
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How to Achieve the vision?

• Product bombardment 2000
• Campus Pipeline, Blackboard, others
• Information presentation is core mission critical
  function in an Academic Institution
• University needs to own the framework
• Buy it? Some are now available
• Build it together with other schools
• JA-SIG uPortal
• Validate model of collaborative development by
  and for higher ed.

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uPortal Framework Customized to Role of User

• Employee
• Administrative links
• Announcements
• Workflow links and alerts
• Student
• Academic links
• Class work
• Library searches
• Student applications

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Administrative Content
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Student Content
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Other Portal Visions Brio Portal
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Yale Brio Portal Report Mart
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Brio Portal and uPortal Functionally different,
technically similar

• Brio
• 95 data (RDBMS)
• 5 other information
• New vision for EIS
• Vendor Product
• uPortal
• Critical mass of
• Ideal experience clipping service plus
  administrative assistant
• 100 dedicated to integration of diverse
  information sources
• Open Source / Higher Ed initiative
• Consortium of schools and commercial companies

HIGHLIGHTS
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More examples of portal vision

• Harvard my.harvard
• University of Delaware UDme
• UC, Irvine SNAP
• Princeton

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my.harvard
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Princeton onDemand
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UC, Irvine
University of California - Irvine
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UDme
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uPortal Framework Personalized Customizable
to Device

• Channels at UBC
• Preferences at portal.yale.edu
• Meteor navigation style
• Skins, WAP phone at IBS demo

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Yale preferences
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Meteor Project
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UBC channel list
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Skins, wap at IBS
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Single Sign on Architecture (SSO)

• Central Authentication
• Service (CAS)
• Preferred mechanism
• Some Student apps
• using CAS already work
• netreg, yalestation
• Back door as well not preferred
• For example
• Add funds to printing account
• HR self service
• Buy computers

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More Content under construction

• Concept of "Workflow" notification
• START, brio reports, self service hr
• See also task list at UC, Irvine
• Framework for ePortal
• Forums, notepad, calendar, SOAP, etc.
• IBS demo
• See University of Delaware

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Tasklist Concept
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uPortal Benefits

• Standard XML formats RSS, iCal, xMsg
• RSS from BBC, stock charts, other schools
• Sharing between schools
• Shared design with Columbia for announcement
  channel
• Email and calendar from UBC
• Powerful, flexible, open standard framework
• Customized by role, flexible
• Choice of security providers
• Personalized content, presentation, devices

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Our Vision requires an Architecture which is

• Flexible, Scaleable
• Secure
• Integrated with
• rapidly evolving
• web technologies
• Shared with other schools

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Current Status (January 2002)

• Version 2 of uPortal release Feb. 2002
• Production server
• Managed by workstation support
• Now running beta software release
• New Sun AEP Granted machine
• Enabled for shared authentication (CAS)
• CAS version 2 with proxy function in testing
• Demo content for staff / students
• Classes live feed
• System Status live feed
• YDN web scraping
• RSS Editor in development and automatic listing
  of new RDF site summaries by category

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Content coming soon

• Announcements channel from Columbia
• Event Calendar?
• Meeting Maker integration???

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Some Participating Schools.

• Athabasca
• Laurentian
• British Columbia
• Delaware
• Princeton
• Yale
• Memorial Univ of Newfoundland
• Cal Poly
• Columbia
• Hawaii

Rutgers Villanova Nottingham UK Illinois
State Iowa State U New Mexico Kansas Medical UC
Irvine Loyola Chicago Cornell