East Carolina University Onestop

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East Carolina University Onestop

• Leveraging Enterprise Portal TechnologySteven
  Forehand, Manager, NTDG
• forehands_at_mail.ecu.edu

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Who is East Carolina University?

• Founded in 1907
• Located in Greenville, North Carolina (about 80
  miles south-east of Raleigh)
• Approximately 22,000 enrolled students
• Approximately 3,500 staff members.
• Offers approximately 100 Bachelor degree
  programs, 18 Masters degree programs, and 13
  doctoral programs
• Visit http//www.ecu.edu for more.

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Who am I?

• Steven Forehand
• Current Manager of the New Technologies
  Development Group more later
• Graduated from East Carolina University with a
  B.S. in Computer Science
• 9 years of software development experience
• Been employed by ECU since 1997.

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Who is the NTDG?

• New Technologies Development Group
• Resides with Software Development Services
• Part of ECUs Information Technology and
  Computing Services (ITCS)
• Consists of 3 distinct divisions with 14 total
  employees more later
• Primarily responsible for the investigation,
  development and implementation of newer
  technologies

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NTDG Divisions

• Investigation and Integration 3 dedicated
  staff, development of Onestop portal
• Application Development 6 dedicated staff,
  development of applications
• Web Initiatives and QA 4 dedicated staff, main
  ECU website, usability and interface, ADA,
  Quality Assurance
• Each division has a project coordinator

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NTDG in a nutshell
The NTDG is mainly responsible for.

• E-business/e-services applications
• E-commerce
• Portal infrastructure development
• Student-centered and administrative web
  applications
• Design, development and implementation of
  internet/intranet applications
• Investigation of new technologies

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What is a Onestop?

• Traditional Portal functionality
• Addition of managed, secure software development
  environment
• Offers services for entire campus community (i.e.
  students, staff, advisers, instructors, etc)
• Designed and developed using Macromedia
  Coldfusion
• For lack of better term Campus Portal

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Why Macromedia Coldfusion?

• Minimal costs
• CFML syntax is tag-based
• No manual compile process for testing
• Source can be encrypted
• Short learning curve
• Allows code reuse and extensibility
• Custom tags (CFML and java based)
• User defined functions (UDF)
• External object calls
• Java
• C

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Why Macromedia Coldfusion?

• Easy to manage application and session data
  within applications
• IDE ColdFusion Studio and now Dreamweaver are
  very user friendly
• File Management (Visual SourceSafe) from within
  ColdFusion Studio
• Easy server administration
• Simple database connectivity
• Job/template scheduling
• Clustering capability

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Why Macromedia Coldfusion?

• Large developer community provided excellent
  support
• Coding methodologies (fusebox)
• Custom tags and code snippets
• Answers to the rare question
• Group of 4 (including a graphics artist) took
  only months for the first production rollout
• Most legacy developers find syntax and concepts
  easy to understand

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ECU Onestop Development

• Developed initially by a team of 4 dedicated,
  talented software developers
• Design and development process took approximately
  8 months
• First University portal within the N.C.
  University system
• Was a lot of fun!

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Develop? Why not purchase?

• Evaluated packaged and open-source solutions
  (i.e. Uportal)
• Others did not offer the entire package
• Functionality was somewhat limited
• Some processes were unnecessarily difficult (i.e.
  channel development)
• Had a talented staff could do it ourselves and
  better.

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Is the Onestop successful?

• Used by over 98 of students
• Used by over 94 of staff and faculty
• Over 15,000,000 logins by 82,000 unique visitors
  since 2000
• Strong campus support
• Recently selected over SCT Luminis more later
• Nearly zero maintenance
• Requires little funding

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SCT Luminis vs ECU Onestop

• ECU recently purchased SCT Banner Enterprise
  solution.
• After analysis, Onestop chosen over SCT Luminis
  as campus portal
• ECU Onestop 100 compatible with SCT Banner
  (including self-service applications)
• ZERO functionality loss with selection of Onestop
  over Luminis
• Onestop better financial decision
• Onestop would work with any campus SCT Banner
  implementation

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Security

• Servers use 128-bit SSL security for HTTP
  requests
• ECU Onestop requires login by University userid
  and passphrase
• Servers located behind several firewalls
• Hardware clustering solution offers better
  performance and security
• Datasources are located behind firewall
• To date, no major hacks

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ECU Onestop Login Process

• Go to http//onestop.ecu.edu
• Login using University email userid and
  passphrase
• Login verified
• Roles and permissions are established
• Session created
• Access granted! Have fun

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Roles and Group Permissions

• Roles and permissions are determined dynamically
  according to University databases
• Can be member of large groups (i.e. student,
  employee, adviser, instructor, etc)
• Can be member of small group (i.e. specific
  department, job class, student class, etc)
• Permissions can be given to an individual

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Roles and Group Permissions

• Content and applications based on roles or
  combination of roles
• Dynamic roles allow instant access to
  applications and content
• Dynamic roles require very little maintenance
• Allows creation of traditional, maintained groups.

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ECU Onestop Tabs

• Sections of the portal content are accessed
  through tabs
• Each tab contains user specific and customizable
  content
• Not all tabs are available to all users

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ECU Onestop Tabs

• Home first tab encountered, channelized content
  with login area
• My Page traditional portal with channelized,
  personal content
• Tools personalized applications available to
  users
• Profile snapshot of current user
• Community threaded discussion, chat
• Email one click access to University email
  system

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Have it your way

• Look and feel entirely customized by user
• Themes change the look (graphics) of all content
  including individual applications
• My Page channels can be selected and arranged
• Channels can be forced
• Again, content and applications available are
  based on roles

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Applications Available
A sample of typical student applications or
tools.

• Course grades and schedules
• Course catalogs
• Course registration
• Tuition payments
• Parking Citations and Appeals (interacts with T2
  solution)
• Various surveys (i.e. DE Survey, Adviser Survey,
  etc)
• More

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Applications Available
A sample of typical applications offered to
advisers, instructors, employees, etc.

• Advisee listing including contact information
  and schedules
• Course rosters including contact information
  and schedules
• Service Request
• View pay check information
• Faculty and Staff training
• Publications database
• Academic difficulty reports
• More

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Applications Available
A sample of typical applications offered to all
(or most) users

• Employment opportunities
• Campus Directory / People Search
• Register vehicle and purchase permit
• Majors and degrees
• Course catalog
• Graduation and honors listing

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Application Development

• Portal and internal applications written in
  CFML.
• APIs provided for formatting, data elements, and
  business logic.
• Portal and internal applications written using
  Fusebox development methodology
• Rapid Application Development

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Questions to ask ourselves

• What do others have that we want?
• What do they not have that we want?
• What technologies are available for doing what we
  want?
• Is it feasible to make this work within our
  environment?
• Is it worth the effort?

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Whats missing? Changes?

• Dynamic content formatting
• Currently, each channel or app is responsible for
  display
• Theme settings passed to apps for formatting
• Multiple display types established at the
  application level
• PDA
• cell phones
• Consistency is hard to maintain

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Whats missing? Changes?

• Reusable code
• Currently, some reusable code is stored in CF
  Custom Tags and UDFs
• Not efficient
• Duplicate code in various channels / apps is
  difficult to maintain
• Adaptability to other channel standards
• Advanced Proxy capability

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Whats missing? Changes?

• Single Sign-On capability
• Interaction with JMS (i.e. SCT LDI)
• Greater use of web services to syndicate data for
  external and internal sites.
• Portal Standards
• Investigating three
• JSR 168 Portlet Spec
• JA-SIG channel archive (educational market)
• Web Services for Remote Portals (WSRP)
• As always, improved performance

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Moving Forward Version 2

• Single Sign-On
• JMS
• Expanded development API
• Environment controlled content rather and
  application controlled
• Full support of SCT Banner solution
• Macromedia Blackstone or CF version 7.0
• Expanded Channel architecture support

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Expectations with Version 2

• Will be based on Macromedia Blackstone
  platform.
• Will be object based
• Better support for external applications (i.e.
  Banner, Blackboard, T2, etc.) not based on CFML.
• Better support of industry standards
• Summer 2005 beta release
• Possible package and licensing for marketing

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So how does it work?

• Live Demo Keep our fingers crossed!