Pushing the Right Stuff

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Pushing the Right Stuff

• Profile Oriented Content Management in Enterprise
  Portals
• Ron Sawyer Monash University

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Overview

• Introduction
• Role of an Enterprise Portal
• Enterprise Portal view of Content
• A Content Management View of Enterprise Portal
  Architecture
• Profile Oriented Content Management
• Issues and Strategy Options
• Conclusion

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Introduction

• Lessons learned from my.monash
• my.monash in service since July 1999
• 54,000 users over 3 academic years
• 5,000 users each day (200,000 hits)
• Caters for students and staff
• A centrepiece of Monashs IT Strat. Plan
• Changed the way people think

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Role of an Enterprise portal

• Portal Doorway or Gate (Concise Oxford
  Dictionary)
• What is the value to the user?
• Find services and information resources
  easier/faster
• Access services not otherwise accessible
• Easily access services from off campus
• Improve work satisfaction
• Save time getting to commonly used resources

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Role of an Enterprise portal (2)

• How does the enterprise benefit?
• Improve productivity
• Improved service to customers
• Improve image
• Increase revenue
• Improve job satisfaction of staff

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What do users want in a portal?

• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content

• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Content

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Enterprise Portal View of Content Management (1)

• What is content?
• Knowledge
• Services
• Entertainment
• All of the things people come online to get or
  use
• Types of content resources
• Static content - text, graphics, stored video
• Communication collaboration tools
• Dynamic content news, sport, weather
• On-line services application interfaces

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Enterprise Portal View of Content Management(2)

• Where is content?
• Web Servers
• Online Applications
• Other portals
• Not online yet
• Internal external content
• Internal to the Portal
• Internal to the Enterprise
• External to the Enterprise

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Enterprise Portal View of Content Management (3)

• How manage the content
• Finding content
• Filtering content
• Summarising content
• Maintaining relationships between users and
  content
• Maintaining relevance to individual users
• Organising content - Channels
• Active delivery (pushing)

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Subject Page

• Administration - handbook and regulations
• Faculty - tutorial allocation system
• Library
• Past exam papers, audio on-line, Subject
  Librarians selection
• Lecturers materials
• Lecture material, Discussion groups, notices,
  references etc
• Coming soon
• Bookshop, WebCT

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(my.)monash Content

• 550 Web servers internal to Monash
• 400,000? web pages internal to Monash
• Hundreds of computer systems
• many services in each computer system
• Estimate lthalf content needs are internal
• 4 weather services

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my.monash content philosophy

• Concentrate on content that already exists
• Manage it where it is
• Dont host content in the portal itself
• Empower existing content owners
• they continue to own it
• they continue to maintain it
• Dont compromise security

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CM View of Portal Architecture
Presentation Agent(s)
Relevance Engine
Profile Agent
Resource Catalogue
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Presentation Agent

• Allows different filters to be applied to
  different browsers
• different interpretations of standards
• different browsers
• WAP
• Palm
• IVR

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Resource Catalogue

• Name of resource
• Key words (for use by search tool)
• Resource locator (URL)
• Resource handler
• Authentication and filtering
• Target Audience
• Push, Recommended, Available, Denied

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Profile Oriented Personalisation

• Association of tight target audience metadata
  with each content item (resource)
• Directly or indirectly
• e.g. via a subject page
• In isolation or in combination
• e.g. business students at Clayton campus

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Sample user profile (current attributes)

• Student or Staff
• Home campus
• Gender
• Faculty/Course/Department
• Subject associations
• Contact details

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Sample Profile(proposed new attributes)

• Club memberships
• Roles (Departmental, OHS, Expertise etc)
• Research interests
• Other interests
• Preferred contact modes
• Preferred security level

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Choosing Profile Attributes

• Defining an attribute
• First year student
• doing one or more first year subjects
• doing only first year subjects
• lt12 months since first enrolling at Monash
• lt12 months since first enrolling in this course

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Sourcing user profile information

• Possible options to manage profile attributes
• Find a system that stores this data already
• May not be online yet
• Build a system
• Appoint somebody
• Let users manage their own
• Will they bother?
• Will they be accurate?

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Customisation and Personalisation

• my.monash users can
• Add/delete cameos and links
• Change presentation template
• Sequence of components on the page
• And many more complex functions
• Of 54,177 users 3,115 have customised
• (my.monash 23 July 1999 to 18 April 2001)
• 94 have never customised

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Managing Dependant System Reliability

• Portal is dependant upon many other systems for
  reliability and performance
• Short timeouts (2 seconds)
• Tolerate unavailability (eg during backups)
• Grab and cache system
• Autonomous resource collection
• Resource dependant refresh rate
• Republish results in XML RDF (RSS)

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Managing Resource Metadata

• Authority specified (manual)
• Lots of work
• Author specified
• Peer recommendation
• Analysis of usage
• No easy way?

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Portalmania

• My.SAP - finance and HR functions
• Blackboard - learning and teaching
• Callista Connect - Student Information
• my.Library - internal Library services
• ARLIN - external Library Research
• Alumni Portal
• Prospective student portal
• etcetera ad infinitum

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Hiearachy of Portals
Enterprise Portal (Umbrella)
ARLIN
Callista
My.SAP
Blackboard
ALUMNI
OLAA
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Conclusion

• Content is still king
• Most users dont customise
• Profile-Oriented Personalisation
• Extensive user profiles, automated maintenance
• Target Audience in resource metadata
• Beware of Portalmania
• Enterprise Portals are effective for active
  delivery of content

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Questions?