MyUGA: Building a Student Portal

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MyUGA Building a Student Portal
Michael WeaverEITS weaver_at_arches.uga.edu
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Agenda

• The Idea
• What is a portal?
• Why do we need one?
• The Plan
• What to implement?
• Timeline?
• The Technology
• What is NPS?
• How does it work?
• Partnerships
• How to allow for departments to leverage the
  portal?
• Futures

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The Idea

• The Problem
• UGA has a large and increasing number of
  web-based services and applications
• Gathering relevant information often requires
  accessing (and authenticating to) a number of
  different web sites
• The Solution
• A student portal

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What is a portal?

• A portal is a single web location (or address)
  where an individual can access the web-based
  services and information most important to that
  individual. As a gateway to web access, a portal
  offers self-created, personalized, and customized
  information environments.
• Albert DeSimone, Jr.

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The Plan

• Implement a student portal (MyUGA) using Novell
  Portal Services (NPS)
• Provide pass-through authentication for
• E-mail
• WebCT
• Others, as appropriate and possible
• Collect useful student news and information
• Provide lightweight views
• Configurable summaries of important content
• Provide for rich campus partnerships
• Delegate sub-sections of the portal to
  departments and units for local control of
  relevant material

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Timeline

• Initial Design Work
• Procure production equipment
• Identify and form the Portal Advisory Board
• Faculty, staff, and student representation
• Complete Alpha portal
• Solicit feedback from the PAB and selected
  testers
• Complete Beta portal
• Large scale testing across campus
• Final Go Live portal completed

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UGA MyID

• UGAs central authentication system
• Built on Novells eDirectory
• Three NetWare 6 servers
• Over 80,000 user objects in the system
• Access via open standards
• SSL armored LDAP
• Other methods forthcoming
• Used for desktop logins
• EITS labs
• Other departmental facilities

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What is Novell Portal Service?

• A suite of tools and an environment to implement
  and deploy a custom portal solution
• Implemented in Java
• Servlets, JSPs
• Cross Platform
• NetWare, Windows, Solaris, Linux
• Standards Based
• XML, HTML, LDAP, RSS, etc.

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NPS Technology Structure

• NPS runs under a servlet engine
• Jrun, Tomcat, WebSphere, possibly others
• Portal content is provided via Pages
• Look and Feel (Skins) provided via Themes
• Other content layered on based on various rules
  or inheritance
• Pages contain gadgets
• Gadgets are java code that provides content
• E-mail, news, remote content, etc
• Novells eDirectory provides the back-end
• User database, authentication, preferences
• Accessed by NPS with LDAP (SSL available)

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Our Portal Technology

• Built using Novell Portal Services 1.5
• Latest production code
• Tight integration to the UGA MyID system
• Built using Novells eDirectory
• Access via SSL armored LDAP
• Production system
• Two Compaq(HP) DL380 servers
• Dual 1.33 GHz CPUs
• 4GB RAM
• RedHat Linux 7.2
• Foundry ServerIron layer 4 switch

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Integration with eDirectory
UGA
Users
Dept.
Portal
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Potential Flow of Content
Portal Server
HTTPS
HTTP
Secure LDAP
Remote Content
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Portal Design
External Content
Portal1
Client
Portal2
portal.uga.edu
eds.uga.edu
Layer 4 Switch
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Parnerships

• Campus Partnerships are key to a successful
  campus-wide portal
• Upcoming enhancements to MyID will allow
  departments to provide content based upon user
  criteria
• Major
• Current course load
• Department of employment or affiliation
• Content is provided on the fly based upon
  users attributes
• Control of partner content can be delegated to
  departmental representatives

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A Sneak Peek
Let's Have a Look!
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Futures

• Enhanced WebCT integration
• Ability to harvest important data from WebCT and
  present it in the portal
• OASIS integration
• Maybe sooner, stay tuned
• Improved storage and collaboration
• Home Directory Project

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Sources of Information

• www.uga.edu/design/portal
• UGAs portal development site
• www.novell.com/products/portal
• Novells product information page
• www.novell.com/coolsolutions/psmag/
• Novells Tips and Tricks for NPS

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Q A