Enterprise Portal Team
Strategy Recommendation
Date: July 2008
During this past spring, the Enterprise Portal Team met bi-weekly to develop a strategy for an Enterprise Portal for the university. (STEC Assigned Membership: Dale Billingsley, Terry Blishak, John Drees, Neil Gibbs, Frank Mianzo, Gale Rhodes, Tom Sawyer, Andrew Wright.)
We conclude and recommend the following:
· The current portal (ULINK) is specialized to access specific automated business processes; for example, self service to update personal information in HR and student registration. ULINK has been implemented with limited personalization capabilities.
· Implement a flexible portal that permits extensive personalization of the portal’s style and content for an individual.
· After extensive research and analysis, we found that the current portal tools can be used to implement a flexible personalized portal. At this time, we do not recommend purchasing any additional tools to meet the university’s requirements for advanced portal technology.
· Organize a Project Implementation Team to conduct detailed analysis, design, and implementation of the new portal strategy defined above. The Enterprise Portal Team should serve as the steering committee for the Project Implementation Team.
Enterprise Portal Team
Strategy Recommendation
Overview of Committee Activities
During this past spring, the Enterprise Portal Team met bi-weekly to:
· Examine portal types and requirements for an enterprise portal.
· Determine issues with the University’s current portal technology and implementation (ULINK).
· Determine other portal technologies in use at U of L (Blackboard, etc).
· Examine enterprise portal offerings by commercial vendors.
· Review U of L’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal, (ULINK) to determine additional capabilities.
· Review the Blackboard Community module to determine feasibility for an enterprise portal solution.
Major Deficiencies Identified in Current Portal (ULink)
· Lack of granular roles (ie: academic units, departments, Alumni).
· Single sign-on (i-chain) causes undesirable time-outs during some links to processes.
· Inconsistent location of information (ie: faculty information on the Blackboard portal, some Student Grades can be accessed in BlackBoard and in Ulink, etc.)
Conclusion and Recommendation
There are essentially three types of portal implementation strategies:
(1) Permits extensive personalization of the portal’s style and content for an individual.
(2) Permits restricted personalization of the portal’s style and content for an individual.
(3) Specializes in access to specific and specialized automated business processes; for example,
self-service to update personal information in an HR system.
The PeopleSoft Enterprise portal as currently implemented is heavily weighted towards automated business processes with restricted personalization; for example, student registration and personal data modification self-service. U of L has implemented the PeopleSoft Enterprise portal as defined in (2) and (3) above.
The Portal Enterprise Team concludes that the PeopleSoft portal (ULink) is delivered with most of the functionality found in all three types of portal strategies described above. We therefore recommend the following:
(1) Organize an implementation team to conduct the following:
a. Detailed assessment of user needs and desires.
b. Utilize assessment to determine implementation design and deployment strategies.
c. Develop recommendation for a personalized portal strategy utilizing existing technologies.
(2) The Enterprise Portal Team commissioned by the STEC should serve as a steering committee for the implementation team.
(3) The purchase of additional portal software is not recommended at this time.
See addendum for additional details on requirements and issues.
Enterprise Portal Team
Requirements and Issues
Addendum
Requirements
· Portal should have transparency.
· Should contain a comprehensive set of applications.
· Single location to log-on to a single enterprise portal.
· Improve end-user experience. (We need to define how to measure this.)
· Invest in a better single sign-on solution (already started).
· E-Mail nice to have.
Issues
· Improve end-user experience and usability.
· Portals are delivered with software packages; for example, such as Peoplesoft, Blackboard, etc. This creates a fractured experience; also, creates inconsistencies with “look and feel”.
· Incomplete set of applications on portal.
· Multiple log-ons to different portals.
· Time-out issues affect end-users.
· Functional group defining organization.
· ULINK downtime.
· Arrangement of Links.