PORTALS: THE BYU STRATEGYFebruary 2013

A Definition

A portal is a personalized, single point of access to relevant information, processes and people. A horizontal portal platform is the infrastructure used to deliver portals for various purposes.

Types of Portals• Information Portals vs. Content Management Portals• Application Centric Portals vs. Content Centric Portals• Vertical Enterprise Portals vs. Horizontal Enterprise

Portals

Gartner: “Portals are not dead”• Enterprise portals are crucial for organizations amid the

nexus of mobile, social, cloud and information forces• By 2016, more enterprise portals and websites will be deployed by

end users, rather than by IT organizations.• Enable end-user creation and management of Web assets by

devising governance processes and deploying and supporting appropriate tools.

• Prioritize initiatives according to the portal's essential value for your business

• Don't be fooled by the lack of marketing hype around portals. By whatever name, they'll be critical in providing end-user, IT and business value in the Web's next phase.• Your constituents always need a unified, personalized point of

access to relevant information, business processes and people.

• Create person/user-centric portals by employing social profiles and user-centered design.

Why a Portal?

User Experience

Identity and access

User Personalization

Search & Navigation

Content Aggregation

Content Discovery

User Productivity

Developer Integration Platform

Unified Personal Point of Access

Unified Personal Point of Access

Social Media• Create more cohesive solutions built on infrastructure that

spans social and portal concepts• Enable and cultivate peer-to-peer interaction and social usage

patterns• By 2015, more than 50% of all business-to-employee (B2E) portal

initiatives will employ social constructs like profiles, activity streams, social graphs, tagging and rating.

• Select a small set of challenging business processes that may have strong social characteristics.

• Rather than defining discrete activities and workflows, enable the community to determine the means to a purposeful end.

Support Mobile Devices• By 2015, Web technologies, including HTML and

JavaScript, will be the dominant platform for mobile application development (including mobile Web and wrapped-hybrid approaches).

• Second, PC applications and data often can't — or shouldn't — be moved wholesale to mobile devices. IT cannot look at mobile applications in isolation; it must figure out how they will work with already-installed companion applications that run on the desktop or servers.

Roadmap• Items for consideration for the portal roadmap

• Creating a more cohesive strategy for myBYU & the BYU Mobile app• Improved user experience by providing key (missing) content

(PeopleSoft, Learning Suite, MyFinancial Center, etc.)• Improved search and navigation taxonomy strategy that is available to

any BYU application with the portal leading the way.• Improved collaboration tools strategy (aggregation) that is available to

any BYU application with the portal leading the way. (calendaring, notifications, tasks, chats, social media, etc.)

• A cohesive strategy on social media that is available to any BYU application with the portal leading the way

• Comprehensive marketing campaign (to each audience) for portal and key portal content

• Improved (simplified) UI in all devices• Improved tablet support• Create a strategy for integrating unstructured content

MYBYU (UPORTAL)

Gartner Defines Open Source• While many influential commercial software providers

offer portal platforms, open-source products have emerged in step with the maturing of the portal platform market.

• Open-source portal products have made headway in virtually every industry, but adoption is growing fastest in the higher education and government verticals. Higher education organizations have turned to open-source portal frameworks to serve their staff, students and extended communities. Balking at the high cost of commercial portal software, they often rely on the academic community for support, services and best-practices advice.

People like it • Most used apps on campus?

Site RankVisits Last30 days*

CAS 1 2,658,299 BYU Home Page 2 1,423,471 myBYU 3 1,038,236 C Framework 4 627,355 AIM Menus 5 316,787 Continuing Ed. 6 441,831 HBLL 7 369,211 MyMap 8 264,814 MyFinancial Center 9 118,814 BYU Mobile App 10 69,993 BYU Bookstore 11 38,753 SAS 12 37,486 Learning Suite ? ?

*January 8, 2013-February 7, 2013

Performs well (High availability)• Only 2 Outages in the last 16 months which occurred

within the first 10 days of the 9/2011 release

• Was also impacted by the storage outages.

Works in multiple devices• Is Web 2.0/HTML5

• Currently supports the mobile web browser

• Native App (now available, prototype coming soon)

• Auto tablet aware (coming winter 2013) (Can create a skin for tablet now)

Content, content, content• Do not have the resource devoted to creating content

• Lack of priority• EITL?, Core?, Edge?

• vs. other services

• No one developing content• Edge (Performance graphs)• Core (Jasig community)• Campus

• ASG, SAS

• Java Framework & Platform is at risk

Debunking Perceptions• Not well promoted outside of Core Services

• Webmasters, CSR, departments

• Invalid Perceptions Preventing Greater Success • Open Source• “The Portal is Dead”? Is the portal relevant?

• Chicken or the egg?

• Campus wants only niche applications?• Is it complete or polished?• Does it include relevant content?• Not Mobile?• Ego?• “People have to use it”• “People don’t use it” (calendar, announcements)• Lack of a unified definition, strategy, and understanding of portals

myBYU 2013 Roadmap

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Upgrade to 4.0.7 & 4.0.8                                                                                              Finalize Themes                                                                            Stage/production environment                                                                            System/Portlet Analytics                                                                            Upgraded E-mail portlets                                                                            System Testing                                                                          Courses Portlet                                                                        PeopleSoft Suite of portlets                                                                        Add in additional themes                                                                      Improved Mobile Web View                                                                        Student Life Suite of portlets                                                                          Directory Lookup portlet                                                                              Mobile native app prototype                                                                      Other Portlets*                                                                    Upgrade to 4.1                                                                                              

*Learning Suite, Signature Card, My Financial Center, Linking, Mapping

v3 Release Candidate 1 v3 Release Candidate 2 v3 Release Candidate 3

End of Slide Show

Why uPortal?

Why do myBYU at all?

How did we get here?• Route-Y

• myBYU 2.x

• myBYU 3.x (My BYU My Way)

Forrest Gump “Life is like a box of chocolates”

Why uPortal?1. Commercial

2. Write our own

3. Collaborate

Who uses uPortal?• Local

• SUU• University of Utah

• National• Boston University• Columbia University• Cornell University• Duke• Kansas State• Rutgers• Texas Tech• University of Southern California• Virginia Tech• University of Wisconsin

• Worldwide• Chinese University of Hong Kong• Edinburgh University• ESUP-Portail• Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich• Universidad Publica de Navarra• Memorial University of Newfoundland

Mark Twain: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

• uPortal and Portlet Incubation projects • 55 Active Projects• Over 100 new Features• 400K commits in last year• Over 50+ developers

• BYU total: 56 K• Java: 44 K• C: 22 K

What is our investment in uPortal

Value

Future