1. uPortal Meets Campus-wide Login at UBC Paul Zablosky ITServices The University of British Columbia
Slide 1

2. The Portal and the Institution
Introducing a portal to an institution
Fitting a portal to existing infrastructure
Technical
Organizational
Functional
Institutional Identities and Roles
Slide 2

3. About UBC Departments, Services, Customers Individual service mandates
Diverse identity repositories
Diverse authentication mechanisms
Slide 3

4. Institutional Services
Institutional E-Business
Spanning constituencies
Individual-centred
Portals
Slide 4

5. The Problem
Diverse identities
No unifying service
Slide 5

6. So what can a Portal do? Expose the problem A target for the solution
Slide 6

7. Solution Components Identity repository Authentication service (CWL)
Links between the two
Slide 7

8. The Institution needs Central identity repository
Institution-wide “ID’s”
Central authentication service
Central “Roles” repository
Slide 8

9. The Portal framework Needs
Access to:
A mechanism for authentication of principals (logins)
A repository of roles associated with each login
An immutable key associated with each login name
Slide 9

10. The Portal is a repository for:
The user’s layout and channel set
Profile information (customize)
What roles enable access to each channel (authorize)
Slide 10

11. The Channel Applications Need
Access to:
A mechanism for proxy authentication (SSO)
Roles associated with the current login
An immutable key for the current login
A key for each channel instance
Identity information (for personalization)
Profile information (for customization)
Ticket service
Slide 11

12. The Framework Doesn’t Need
The portal framework does not needs access to:
The User’s name
Identity information
Slide 12

13. What is the Campus-wide Login?
Institution-wide login names
Authentication
Connection to identity repositories
Central roles repository
Single signon
Slide 13

14. Architecture uPortal CWL UBC Identity myUBC Layouts Profiles
Channels
CWL
Login Names
Roles
UBC
People
Affiliations
Job Functions
Channel
applications
Slide 14
Identity
HR Information
Student Information

15. Limitations in the models
We have users
We have logins
We have roles
Slide 15:

16. Implementation with Uportal 1.6
Modified roles support
Replaced keys
Modified authentication to use external service
Added channel-roles channel
Added ticket support
Slide 16

17. Problems Problems mainly with transition
All users need to subscribe to CWL
Parallel running (move from two old principals to one new principal)
Call 3 different authentication services
Channels still use old ID’s
Slide 17

18. Ticket Support in the CWL
In the Portal Framework
In the channels
Supports Single-Signon
proxy authetication for channels
services referenced by channels
Slide 18

19. Why are we doing all this?
Identities and Roles are fundamental
Institution wide Authentication
Authorization and privacy
Slide 19

20. Lessons Learned Fitting uPortal to existing conventions
Architecture: What’s in and what’s out
Local decisions
Theory doesn’t always have the scope of the real world
It’s not hard to do, technically
Slide 20

21. Conclusion Architectural design goal
Maintain clean interfaces to embedded services so that they can be locally replaced with external services
Slide 21

22. Visit us at my.ubc.ca
Slide 22: