1 Roadmap to myRutgers: A University Portal CUMREC Joe Percoco – Director for Application Development and Data Management Bill Thompson – Associate Director for New Technology

2 Roadmap to myRutgers: A University Portal Copyright Rutgers University This work is the intellectual property of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of Rutgers. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from Rutgers.

3 Overview  Background  Live Demonstration  Technology Tips  Future Roadmap

4 Rutgers, The State University of N.J.  Chartered in 1766 as Queens College  8 th oldest higher education institution in the U.S.  AAU member institution  One of America’s leading public research institutions  50,000 students on three campuses  19,000 faculty and staff  30 degree granting schools and colleges

5 Goals  To provide personalized and customized web- based service delivery for Rutgers constituents through the development and expansion of the myRutgers university portal.  To facilitate streamlining of services and service integration where appropriate  To enhance customer satisfaction  To position Rutgers as a leader in higher education by providing innovative and customer centric solutions

6 Needs  Increasing difficulty for individuals to locate relevant online services.  Growing expectation for targeted online service delivery that is customized and personalized for the end-user.  Recent focus on student service delivery has highlighted areas in need of improvement which could be addressed by an expansion of online web services.  The Route 18 construction project is creating an urgent need for Rutgers to expand online service offerings and reduce the need for “in- person” services.

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8 Background and Current State  Rutgers College Pilot  Partnership with consortium of higher-ed. institutions focused on open source software  myRutgers Task Force and sub-committees  Student focus groups and ongoing feedback  myRutgers pilot expanded to all NB/P students  Evolving framework and functionality  myRutgers faculty/staff “mock-up” prototype

9 myRutgers – 1 st Generation  In production since Fall 2002  Based on uPortal 1.x  3000 first-year Rutgers College students  1500 registered users  300 daily logins  Major Features Web-based Grades & Schedule Links to Administrative applications Campus Information

10 myRutgers – 2 nd Generation  In production since August 2003  Based on uPortal 2.x (scalability)  Rolled out to all NB/P students  16,000 registered users  5,000 daily logins  200 peek concurrent users

11 myRutgers – 2 nd Generation  channel security & usability upgrades  Redesigned Look-&-Feel (Skins)  Central Authentication Service  Campus Aware Channels  Featured Events  Ask Colonel Henry  Feedback Channel  Google Search  FAS Gradebook  Learning Center Channel

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13 myRutgers – Demo

14 myRutgers – Tip #10  Deliberate staged expansion of target population Gain production experience Scale hardware to meet real needs

15  Distributed Channel Development Web Proxy Channels Colonel Henry Channel FAS Gradebook Library Channels myRutgers – Tip #9

16 myRutgers – Tip #8  Layered Architecture Presentation tier independent of business logic and data access strategy Spring Framework

17 myRutgers – Tip #7  No Guest Sessions Welcome page is a simple HTML Only use resources for authenticated users

18 myRutgers – Tip #6  Drive Complexity out of the system! CAS  Web Initial Sign-On  n-tier “proxy” authentication  No shared secrets Drive user attributes into a standard LDAP directory service

19 myRutgers – Tip #5  Identifiers are the foundation of campus middleware…and portal! Key user profile on opaque internal identifier Credentials can and will change Authentication mechanism can and will change Rely on directory services to resolve internal identifier from credentials

20 myRutgers – Tip #4  When to expand the “committee” Trade off of flying under the radar “just get it done” vs. getting wider buy-in and support Project messaging “Portal is not the web” Let the students drive requirements  Feedback channel

21 myRutgers – Tip #3  JA-SIG and uPortal - “you’re not alone” Features, bug fixes, etc driven by the community Community support and direct access to core developers Member contributed channels Growing list of institutions adopting and contributing to uPortal Open standards and vendor agnostic Commercial support Free and Open Source

22 myRutgers – Tip #2  Open Source is a viable platform for Enterprise systems development uPortal JASIG Channels Apache / Tomcat Spring Framework CVS, Cygwin Eclipse, Ant, JUnit

23 myRutgers – Tip #1  Just Do It If you build it, they will come Focus on simple tools that make campus life easier Listen to your users “The myRutgers Portal is absolutely outstanding. It is truly innovational and addictively useful!” “This is my fourth year at the New Brunswick Campus; this is definitely one of the best informational sources Rutgers has provided for the students.” “Well, what can I say? It is beautiful. It is everything that a student computer system should be.”

24 Current Roadmap  myRutgers 2.1 – Target date: July 2004 Faculty/Staff pilot Web Initial Sign-On (ACS apps) Personal Benefits Statement Absentee Report  myRutgers 2.2 – Target date: September 2004 Web Initial Sign-On (ACS apps) myBriefcase (file upload/download) channel usability upgrades Alerts & Notifications Library Tab/Channels

25 Future vision  myRutgers as the primary platform for online service delivery  Personalized and customized services for all Rutgers constituents  Integration of services where appropriate  Reduction of “in-person” services  Enhanced end-user satisfaction  Enhanced reputation for innovation in online services

26 Questions? Joe Percoco – Director for Application Development and Data Management Bill Thompson – Associate Director for New Technology Presentation URL –