Portals, uPortal, and the Meteor Channel Justin Tilton instructional media + magic, inc. As presented at the 2001 EAC-EASCI Financial Aid Administrator Advisory Board Meeting Thursday, June 14th 2001 Monticello, Minnesota

Portal defined generally synonymous with gateway, for a World Wide Web site that is or proposes to be a major starting site for users when they get connected to the Web www.whatis.com, May 19, 2001 software integrating many divergent systems for presentation and use on the Web

Yahoo, the portal example

MyYahoo, a personal portal

The Academic Web World Research Library Administrative Instruction

Students expectations shaped by... Their experience applying for federal financial aid Their use of financial services portals Their use of the Internet Their life in a “real-time, information rich” environment

Why a campus portal? Improve user productivity and satisfaction Integrate divergent administrative systems Standards for developing Web materials Introduce new, improved productivity technologies

Why are portals important Makes knowledge workers more productive Preferred by users Market share Brand identity A viable architecture for information services Time to market Improved services Lower costs

Features of uPortal Framework for presenting aggregated content (channels) Personalization Role-based access control “Toward” single signon

University of British Columbia

University of Hawaii

University of Hawaii

The College of the Holy Cross

University of Delaware

uPortal 2.0

The key technologies Java programming language XSL transformation Internet messaging

Standards XSL RSS RFC SSL TLS XML DTD Java IFX J2EE ISO XSLT ANS LDAP HTTP SAML HTML HTTPS TCP/IP X.509c3 XML Path XML Link XML Schema IFX ISO ANS UDDI MIME SMTP IMAP WfML SOAP vCard WSDL cpXML ebXML eduPerson Dublin Core ECMAScript Channel API

Typical user services Single signon e-mail and Internet messaging Web channels Calendaring College or university announcements Administrative applications

uPortal Interfaces Authentication Proving your identity Authorization Deciding what you can access User preferences Profiles, structure, themes, skins Channel information Availability and configuration

Flexible Layouts Structures Tab / column Tree / column Themes Multi-column Multi-row Skins Matrix, Java, UoSM, im+m

Content Transformation XML XSLT Processor XHTML: Web Browser HTML: PDA Stylesheet WML: Cell Phone

Tab / Column Layout

Tree / Column Layout

Theme: uosm

Theme: java

Theme: imm

Theme: matrix

Multiple Target Devices

What is a Channel? Displays content XML feeds Legacy systems Rich Site Summary (RSS) Web services Legacy systems Interactive applications Bookmarks Email, chat, list serves

RSS Channel

The Meteor “channel” Meteor is the software and service to obtain a student’s own financial aid information from a number of different data sources. Provides a needed information service for students and alumni Provides an information resource for financial aid professionals Becomes a step toward implementation of the Department of Education’s real-time “Common Origination and Disbursement” (2005).

Data from multiple sources, locations

uPortal Meteor Channel - Display

Sample Meteor loan detail

The Meteor channel

As implemented ... Web Services Meteor Secure HTML Secure XML Standard Browser uPortal Meteor SOAP Meteor SOAP Database

Pilot implementation Sallie Mae Great Lakes PHEAA Home Page Access Provider Website Authentication National Student Clearinghouse Loan Locator List Loan 1 National Student Loan 2 Clearinghouse Loan 3 Sallie Mae Great Lakes PHEAA

Why uPortal for Meteor? Standards based for broad compatibility Open Source - adaptation, control New, proven, broadly adopted real-time technology Java + “Web Services” technology XML/XSL/XSLT, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI Community of higher education developers, users

Relationship of Meteor and JA-SIG uPortal The Meteor Project Meteor Channel

Shared standards, JA-SIG and Meteor Java components J2EE XML XSL, XSLT RSS HTML, WML (Devices) HTTPS SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0 SAML     possible   likely

Why is this important to schools? Schools will have to implement XML business messaging to participate in the Department of Education’s financial aid programs. Schools must use Java to implement SFA-provided Java software components Need analysis EFC, entrance and exit interviews, and Pell Grant computation SFA UDDI directory will likely replace PEPS and be the source of a participant’s customer service contacts and supported electronic services

The end www. immagic. com www. meteorproject. org and www The end www.immagic.com www.meteorproject.org and www.meteorproject.net:8080/portal/