1. Portals and CMS – Why You Need Them Both

2. Route map Environmental scan What is a CMS? What is a Portal?
How does the CMS relate to the Portal?
Demo (maybe some magic, if there’s time)
Some reflections

3. True confessions … We don’t (yet) have a centrally supported CMS
We don’t have an institutional portal
We plan to have made decisions on both by August 2002
What follows is a mix of vaporware, prototypes and incomplete understanding

4. Environmental scan I
From the viewpoint of a research-led University say five years ago:
The Web is not life threatening
The Web is another hassle – what is it replacing?
We’re over-subscribed with well qualified candidates
“It’ll be very expensive to put a server in Mexico”

5. The pre-millennial Web
A hobby for someone
Apache on a file system
Highly manual methods of content creation and maintenance
In effect a read-only medium
A spot of Perl
A Webmaster
Let the “professionals” get back to serious computing
“Three clicks away from crap”

6. Environmental scan II
From the viewpoint of a research-led University today:
DDA 1995 & SENDA 2001
September 2002
Perhaps the Web is career threatening?
Let’s re-do the Web to make it accessible
Let’s re-paint the Forth Road Bridge again and again and again
Let’s work harder rather than smarter

7. The pre-millennial Web can’t scale
The pre-millennial Web is broken
We need a Web Content Management System:
A web site is like a dog – it’s for life
We need to move beyond the “Freds in the Shed”
We need a dynamic, automated, write-enabled, de-skilled Web …..
….. supported by a multi-skilled Web Team (who never touch the content)

8. The content life cycle

9. The defining features of a CMS
A CMS has substantial overlaps with DMS, VLEs, Groupware, Weblogs, Portals ….
Browning & Lowndes (2001)
Versioning (checkout/in, rollback)
Workflow
Integration (“joinupability”)
Not a finished product; a concept, a set of processes, a framework
CMS
Portal √ x

10. The most desirable features of a CMS
(IWMW, 2000)
Template-based self-service authoring for non-technical content providers (‘frictionless publishing’)
Roles-based security
Workflow management - submit, review, approve, archive
Integration with existing data/databases and user authentication systems
Metadata management
Flexible output - write once, publish many times

11. The Prospectus in 5 BC (Before Cms)
Fax
Fag packet
Annotated copy
of last year’s
Word
Departments
Word
Admissions
Web pages
Fourth party
Page
Maker
Marketing
Printer
Third party
Webmaster

12. The Prospectus in 5 AC (After Cms)
Printer
Browser
Web pages
Standard
Browser
CMS
Robot
Text-to-
speech
Browser
Browser
CD-ROM
Browser
Departments
Admissions
Marketing
Web Team

13. CMS in 2002
If you haven’t got one or aren’t thinking about getting one then you either:
Have a web site of less than 100 pages or
Have a web site with less than three authors or
Are probably dead meat

14. Content Management System (CMS)
Portal = MLE = VLE + CMS
Content Management System (CMS)
eStrategy = an institutional understanding of these relationships?

15. What is a portal? A portal:
Aggregates information and applications one stop shop
Is personalised or ‘groupilised’ one size does not fit all
Aspires to be your desktop on the Web Webtop

16. Examples of portals Law Intranet Blackboard Amazon Tesco LSE for You
TABS
Law Intranet
Blackboard
Amazon
Tesco
LSE for You
CHANNELS or PORTLETS

17. The benchmark? LSE For You
Modules (=“channels”) already implemented
Room Booking
Student Photo Boards
Tuition Fees
Address Maintenance
Emergency Contacts
Private Accommodation
Exam Results
Reprographics Usage
Reprographics Jobs
Mailing Lists
Teaching Timetable
Payslips
Examination Details
Class Mailer
Locate a Study Room
Transcripts
DPA Consent
LSE Experts
Application Progress
Collect Network Account
Alumni Employment

18. The benchmark? LSE For You
Room Booking
Teaching Timetable

19. The benchmark? LSE For You
Address Maintenance
Tuition Fees

20. What is a portal architecture? Why bother?
Before (i.e. now) …..
PIMS
IRIS
BOFINS
BORIS
Coda
Dolphin
User confusion?
Lots of stovepipes of variable length …
Desk-
topped
Pseudo-
webified
Webified
Invisible

21. What is a portal architecture? Aggregation
After …..
Happy User
PIMS
IRIS
BOFINS
BORIS
Coda
Dolphin
Portal
framework
Portal ?
Extending, bending and merging the stovepipes …
Desk-
topped
Pseudo-
webified
Webified
PORTALISED

22. What is a portal architecture? Personalisation = “stickiness”
Prospective employee
After …..
Prospective student
Casual visitor
Portal
framework
Show Room
Portal
Back Office
Student
Staff
HoD
Multiple views depending
on user and/or device

23. Ahem …. don’t some CMS do …
Aggregation (a.k.a. syndication)?
Personalisation?
And other bits of a portal framework?
Yes ….
Conversant, Frontier (News/magazine type)
Vignette, Broadvision (E-business/e-commerce type)
Zope + CMF (Framework type)
Which is why you need to be clear about the join between the CMS and the portal

24. Dog’s dinner alert I …. what follows are just sketches
by someone with a poor sense of screen design
aimed at demonstrating some concepts
a future portal will not look like this!

25. The “back office” – student1v e r s t y o f B l S a c h M L b T P u N w d E m g F p C x k
STUDENT
ph0044 E D I T E D I T P A Y

26. The “back office” - staffU n i v e r s i t y o f B r i s t o l S e a r c h M y B r i s t o l L i b r a r y T o o l s P u b l i s h N e w s a n d E v e n t s C o u r s e s
STAFF T i m e t a b l e M y h o m e a d d r e s s E D I T
Porpoise
BOFINS M y n e x t o f k i n E D I T B o o k m a r k s M y p a r k i n g F i l e s t o r e P A Y

27. The “back office” – student2v e r s i t y o f B r i s t o l S e a r c h M y B r i s t o l L i b r a r y T o o l s P u b l i s h

28. The “back office” – a customisable Webtop
View of CMS and other content repositories to which you have write access U n i v e r s i t y o f B r i s t o l
TTW editing into CMS S e a r c h M y B r i s t o l L i b r a r y T o o l s P u b l i s h
wyziwyg W e g o t 1 5 f i v e - s t a r s !
The portal is fundamentally content-free – the CMS holds the content
Tools to automagically upload, convert and publish Office files
zlave P u b l i s h O f f i c e f i l e :

29. What makes a good portal framework?
Interoperable (open standards)
Agnostic
Secure
Flexible (incl. “skins”)
Stable, scaleable, supportable
Future proof

30. Candidate portal frameworks?
Blackboard Level 2 û
Blackboard Level 3 - Now BB Learning System £32k/annum + <= £60k consultancy for set-up?
Zope û
Long list of payware options û
Short list
Oracle Portal ?
uPortal ?

31. Demo
Is there time?
If not, and you’d like see it, then back 17:30

32. Oracle Portal demo
Glasgow Caledonian

33. uPortal demo
Delaware

34. Dog’s dinner alert II …. what follows is a proto-prototype
constructed by staff with other day jobs and some students
no concessions made w.r.t. usability or presentation
running on a desktop PC
aimed at demonstrating some concepts:
Aggregation
Integration
Personalisation
Customisation
a future portal will not look or work like this!

35. uPortal demo
Bristol out of the box
Bristol prototype

36. What is a portal architecture?
“Browsers”
Application
server
Content
Portal channel
PIMS, etc
Database
File system
Message store
News store
RSS feeds
Anything XML
CMS
(Zope)
Views depending on user and/or device
WAP
PDF
Disabled
Applicant
The portal is fundamentally content-free – the CMS holds the content
Servlet container
Portal framework
XML/XSLT
Authentication
service

37. LoadsaX’s to get our heads round
XML
XSLT
XHTML
Browser
Printer
WAP
XSLT
XML
uPortal
Application
or Data
XHTML
We all need a Sebastian Rahtz!

38. Some reflections CMSPortal Siloware vs. Glueware Senior managers
Who’s the CTO?
IWMW 2003
Putting lipstick on bulldogs

39. CMSPortal

40. How we’d like things to be ….
SIS
Portal
framework
CMS
Digital
Library
Agnostic, open standards compliant
– plugs and sockets
DNER

41. just sockets – “do it our way”
… but how it often is
Siloware
SIS
Digital
Library
Portal
framework
CMS
just sockets – “do it our way”
DNER

42. Doncha love Senior Managers?
Why can’t we just use Google?
We don’t need a portal – we just need a well-designed Web site
Our SIS is ‘Best of Breed’ so it must be good
Why can’t we just use Outlook and Exchange?

43. Who’s the CTO? Your Director of IT Services?
UCISA? Siloware is often golfcourseware
“It gets sold to senior executives by smooth-talking sales executives who claim their products solve every conceivable business problem, is a doddle to install, standards compliant, holographic user interfaces, everything.”
SCONUL?
ALT?
JISC?
eEnvoy?
Who’s the CIO?
We need to be investing in glueware and the people who can use it

44. The Scaleable Web (IWMW 2003)
Making it easy for the end-user means more complexity behind the scenes
The increasing dynamic Web will start to fail as sites get busier
Who in your institution is looking at:
Load balancing
Clustering
Cacheing
Amazon & Tesco have
Overlaps with the GRID?

45. The technology is the easier bit
"The worst thing you can do is to Web-enable a bad process," said Friedlein. "As a client once put it: 'There's no point in putting lipstick on a bulldog,'" he added.
Getting content management strategy right, ZD Net UK, Dec 12th, 2001, Geoff Choo
From Information Strategy to eStrategy?
Future performance target:
Four clicks away from 7x24 crap

47. An Information Systems Strategy?
From Desktop to Webtop
An Information Systems Strategy?
Casual visitor
Prospective student
Prospective employee
HERO
Operational
processing
Maintrix
CARB
PIMS
Dolphin
Coda
User
Aleph
Envision
Sports
stellar
Many readers,
some writers
Information
deployment
fsb
Web
Application
server
IRIS
VIOLET
DataHub
Corporate
information
eclipse
Show Room
The Portal
Back Office
Student
DataHaven
Staff
HoD
HESA
Multiple views,
depending on role