Portals and CMS – Why You Need Them Both
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
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
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”
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”
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
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)
The content life cycle
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
√ x
√ √
The most desirable features of a CMS
1. Template-based self-service authoring for non-technical content providers (‘frictionless publishing’)
2. Roles-based security
3. Workflow management - submit, review, approve, archive
4. Integration with existing data/databases and user authentication systems
5. Metadata management
6. Flexible output - write once, publish many times
(IWMW, 2000)
The Prospectus in 5 BC(Before Cms)
Fax
Fag packet
Annotated copy of last year’s
Word
Departments
Word
Admissions
PageMaker
Marketing
Printer
Third party Webmaster
Web pages
Fourth party
The Prospectus in 5 AC(After Cms)
Browser Web pages
Printer
Departments Admissions Marketing Web Team
Browser
Browser
Browser
Browser
Standard
Text-to-speech
CD-ROM
CMS Robot
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
Portal
Managed Learning Environment (MLE)
Portal = MLE = VLE + CMS
Virtual LearningEnvironment (VLE)
eTools
Student Information System
DigitalLibrary
Content Management System (CMS)
eStrategy = an institutional understanding of these relationships?
What is 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
A portal:
Examples of portals
• Law Intranet• Blackboard• Amazon• Tesco• LSE for You
TABS
CHANNELS or PORTLETS
The benchmark? LSE For You
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
Modules (=“channels”) already implemented
The benchmark? LSE For YouRoom Booking Teaching Timetable
The benchmark? LSE For YouAddress Maintenance Tuition Fees
What is a portal architecture? Why bother?
Webified
PIMS
IRIS
BOFINS
BORIS
Coda
Dolphin
Before (i.e. now) …..
Pseudo-webified
Desk-toppedInvisible
Lots of stovepipes of variable length …
User confusion?
What is a portal architecture?Aggregation
Webified
PIMS
IRIS
BOFINS
BORIS
Coda
Dolphin
After …..
Pseudo-webified
Desk-topped
Extending, bending and merging the stovepipes …
PORTALISED
Portalframework Portal
??
Happy User
What is a portal architecture?Personalisation= “stickiness”After …..
Portalframework Portal
Casual visitorProspective student
HoDStaff
Student
Show Room http://www.bris.ac.ukBack Office https://www.bris.ac.uk
Multiple views depending on user and/or device
Prospective employee
Ahem …. don’t some CMS do …
• Aggregation (a.k.a. syndication)?
• Personalisation?
• And other bits of a portal framework?
• Conversant, Frontier (News/magazine type)• Vignette, Broadvision (E-business/e-commerce type)• Zope + CMF (Framework type)
Yes ….
Which is why you need to be clear about the join between the CMS and the portal
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!
The “back office” – student1
University of BristolSearch MyBristol Library Tools Publish
News and EventsTimetable
Progress FileTranscript
Filestore
Courses
Exams
Bookmarks
STUDENTph0044
My debt
My homeaddress
My termaddress
EDIT
EDIT
PAY
The “back office” - staff
University of BristolSearch MyBristol Library Tools Publish
News and EventsTimetable
Filestore
Courses
BOFINS
Bookmarks
STAFF
My parking
My homeaddress
My nextof kin
EDIT
EDIT
PAY
Porpoise
The “back office” – student2
University of BristolSearch MyBristol Library Tools Publish
The “back office” – a customisable Webtop
University of BristolSearch MyBristol Library Tools Publish
Publish Office file:
We got 15 five-stars!
wyziwyg
zlave
View of CMS and other content repositories to which
you have write access TTW editing into CMS
Tools to automagically upload, convert and publish
Office files
The portal is fundamentally
content-free – the CMS holds the
content
What makes a good portal framework?
• Interoperable (open standards)
• Agnostic
• Secure
• Flexible (incl. “skins”)
• Stable, scaleable, supportable
• Future proof
Candidate portal frameworks?
• Blackboard Level 2 • Blackboard Level 3 - Now BB Learning System
£32k/annum + <= £60k consultancy for set-up?• Zope • Long list of payware options • Short list
– Oracle Portal ?– uPortal ?
Demo
• Is there time?
• If not, and you’d like see it, then back here @ 17:30
Oracle Portal demo
• Glasgow Caledonian
uPortal demo
• Delaware
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!
uPortal demo
• Bristol out of the box
• Bristol prototype
What is a portal architecture?
Servlet container
Portal framework
XML/XSLT
Content Applicationserver
“Browsers”
Authenticationservice
PIMS, etc
Database
File system
Message store
News store
RSS feeds
Anything XML
CMS(Zope)
Views depending on user and/or device
WAP
Disabled
Applicant
Portal channel
The portal is fundamentally
content-free – the CMS holds the
content
LoadsaX’s to get our heads round
• XML
• XSLT
• XHTML
XMLXSLT
Applicationor Data XHTML
Browser
Printer
WAP
uPortal
We all need a Sebastian Rahtz!
Some reflections
• CMSPortal
• Siloware vs. Glueware
• Senior managers
• Who’s the CTO?
• IWMW 2003
• Putting lipstick on bulldogs
CMSPortal
How we’d like things to be ….
SIS
PortalframeworkDigital
Library
CMS
DNERAgnostic, open
standards compliant – plugs and sockets
… but how it often is
SIS
Portalframework
DigitalLibrary
CMS
DNER
Siloware
just sockets – “do it our
way”
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?
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
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?
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
From Desktop to WebtopAn Information Systems Strategy?
Operationalprocessing
Maintrix
CARB
PIMS
Dolphin
Coda
User
Aleph
Envision
Sports
stellar
DataHub
Corporateinformation
eclipse
DataHaven
Informationdeployment
fsb
WebApplication
server
IRIS
VIOLET
Many readers,some writers
Multiple views,depending on role
Show Room http://www.bris.ac.ukBack Office https://www.bris.ac.uk
HEROProspective employee
The Portal
Prospective studentCasual visitor
HESA
HoDStaff
Student