uPortal Bristol Fashion

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uPortal Bristol Fashion

• UoB Portal Team

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Why uPortal?

• No software budget so needed to be free to us
• Long list Blackboard, ZopeCMF, Oracle Portal,
  uPortal
• Short list Oracle Portal, uPortal
• Extended San Diego State University's Rubric for
  Rating Commercial Portal Vendors)
• OP uP scored the same but hardware footprint
  Exit Strategy swung it
• Zope will be our CMS

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What are we using it for?

• Pilot Institutional Portal by July 2003
• Initial focus post-graduates
• Now broadened to student administration
• And broadening to integration with VLE
• Ambitions Library and existing Web apps

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Implementation I

• Information Processes System Plan (From Desktop
  to Webtop)
• Portal Steering Group (26)
• Portal Team (10)
• Portal Development Team (3)

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Portal MLE VLE CMS
fundamentally content-free
Content Management System (CMS)
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From Desktop to Webtop An Information Systems
Strategy?
Many readers, some writers
Multiple views, depending on role
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Implementation II

• Phase 0 startup
• Phase 1 user requirements
• Phase 2 PDT uPortal immersion
• Phase 3 authentication authorisation
• Phase 4 CalPoly Blackboard Access Channel
• Phases n Channel (n 4)
• Phase x migrating a channel to Oracle Portal

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Problems Successes

• No Project Board yet
• Drifting project definition
• New Director not in post until July 2003
• The project cant fix bad processes
• Central vs. Local data
• Scepticism track record
• Anxiety cuts across turf
• Blackboard
• IRIS, Contact Directory, personinfo, Law
  Intranet, SOBS Intranet, VetSci Portal, etc

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Blackboard issues

• We risked two portals
• Provoked decision about BB Enterprise
• CalPoly BB Access Channel is all or nothing
• Will BB Building Blocks allow us to cherry pick
  features?
• Looking at open source alternatives

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Issues

• Delivering high-performing, resilient and
  scalable portal
• Load balancing
• How does the UK give to, and not just take from,
  the uPortal/JASIG community?
• If it's not done in Java it's not worth doing

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Questions

• What methods are available to achieve single
  sign-on to multiple apps?
• How stable have the pioneering sites found
  uPortal?
• How have sites dealt with developing against
  constantly changing uPortal code?
• When will Web Services be supported?
• What strategies are being used to develop
  channels?
• What about channels being available to existing
  web sites?

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Suggestions

• Formation of product-based consortia
• CMS (Zope)
• VLE (Blackboard)
• SIS (SITS)
• Library (Aleph)
• Formation of technology-based consortia
• Authentication (AD, LDAP)
• Load balancing (Cisco, Foundry, Linux Virtual
  Server)