UW Enterprise Portal Evaluation

Report to Sponsors18 February 2010

Project Goal“Evaluate and make a recommendation on a portal platform that could be used for all University populations and to propose a high-level implementation plan that would include research administration as an early pilot.”

Jen’s comment: nothing for student to pilot too?

Project Organization

Project Planning/Leads

Application Integration

Community Expectations

Infrastructure Portal Core User Interface Mobility

Drivers / Needs

• Improve the research administration and compliance experience

• Integrate administrative systems and applications

• Integrate more UW information and services – leverage the community

• Provide experience based on UW role(s)Jen’s comment: Does everyone believe main driver for enterprise portal is research? When we talk about the other items, it isn’t specific to a group (ie., research) but actually to functionality. Should it relate to groups too? Questioning because the top bullet is different context than the other bullets and making sure this is how we want it presented.)

An Enterprise Portal

• An integration platform that securely provides a central point for accessing, personalizing, and configuring information and applications appropriate to your role in the University.

• A standards-based integration and/or presentation platform.

High Level Requirements

• Consume identities and roles and groups

• Tailor presentation based on roles

• Easy to publish content• User discovery and choice• User layout control• Provide themes• Display current data,

refresh on changes

• Unified notification system

• Admin forcing of some content

• Two factor authentication

• Display personalization• Customizable

authentication levels

Candidate Platforms

• Considered open source, widely used solutions in higher education with good support for standards and agnostic on database and app server.

• Candidates included:– uPortal

• Benefits: supports out of box 3-tier authentication.• Challenges: documentation, mobile integration, overall a less evolved and

mature product compared to Liferay.

– Liferay• Benefits: documentation, standard coding style, better LDAP support, strong

admin UI, more customizable, JSR-286 portlet standard, strong CMS integration.

• Challenges: mobile integration, lack of out of box 3-tier authentication support.

James’s comment – Added a few of the key benefit/challenges for each candidate – Not sure these need to be added in the presentation? TMI for sponsors?? Laregely duplicates Liferay info on next slide..

Platform Recommendation

• Liferay• Good documentation, more LDAP support,

advanced UI for admins, support for development tools, clearly identified API, support for JSR-286 portlet standard, full-text search, Office/Sharepoint integration, integrated components

• Will require some custom work to integrate Shibboleth.

Long-Term Recommendation: Establish an Enterprise Portal Program

• Develop the foundation to support a long-term, sustainable enterprise portal program.

• Position the UW to evolve its application and information aggregation strategies.

Elements of a Successful Program

• Executive sponsorship and management support• Community participation and governance• Appropriate resource mix and allocation• Processes for quality assurance, deploying new

content, and content evaluation• Data driven decisions on organization and content• User interface and technical standards• Ongoing technology renewal

Community Governance

• Resolve ambiguity• Manage short and long term goals• Mitigate conflict

Jen’s Comment: (Are there other key responsibilities for governance? Where does the management support piece I added fall…probably not governance? Be good to tie this back to the elements of success in previous slide)

(in consistency with this slide, think we should add slides for the other two main focus areas with next steps – communication plan and portal planning. And maybe provide more context, or this may be enough with the following slide)

Proposed Structure

UW Tech Governance

Portal Working Group

UX Standards Tech Standards

Ongoing Resources (in addition to community participation)

• 1 FTE Program Manager• 2 FTE Software Engineers• 1 FTE User Experience Designer• 0.25 FTE Quality Assurance Engineer• 0.25 Database Administrator• .25 - .50 FTE Support (student hourly)• .2 FTE Identity and Access Management

engineering

Recommended Next Steps1. Perform Proof-of-concept IAM Integration

– TIMELINE: 2-3 weeks (40-80 hours)– RESOURCES: Software engineer, IAM engineer, test & development infrastructure

2. Complete foundation Setting and Discovery – TIMELINE: 3-6 months– RESOURCES: Program manager, UX designer, database administrator, QA engineer

• Implement Governance Model• Implement Communication Plan• Portal Infrastructure Planning and Development

3. Plan for Initial Release– TIMELINE: Unknown at this point– RESOURCES: Additional software engineer, support, production infrastructure, training

• Develop a migration strategy for current MyUW content • Decide on new content to include• Implement production system• Develop a change management and communications strategy

Discussion

• Questions about platform or evaluation criteria?

• What resources are required when?• OK to proceed with next steps?• Who is the portal service manager/owner?

Resources

• Project Report:https://wiki.cac.washington.edu/display/portal/Report+Draft

• Project Web Site:https://wiki.cac.washington.edu/display/portal/Home

• Liferay Portal: http://www.liferay.com/

Acknowledgements

Rupert Berk, Leman Chung, Dan Comden, David Cox, Jelena Curless, Jennifer Dobbelaere, Nathan Dors, Frank Fujimoto, Janice Granberg, Brad Greer, Alisa Hata, Chris Heiland, Gina Hills, Marcus Hirsch, Bob Hurt, Bob Jamieson, Jim Kresl, Jim Laney, Tom Lewis, Fang Lin, Ping Lo, Jim Loter, Erik Lundberg, Mark McNair, Todd Mildon, RL (Bob) Morgan, David Morton, Clara Nic Mhathuna, Paul Prestin, Gary Prohaska, Ammy Phuwanartnurak, Oren Sreebny, Mike Seibel, Scott Stephenson, Paul Schurr, Dan Trippel, Ann Testroet, Darcy Van Patten, Jennifer Ward, David Wall, James Werle, Charles Wesley, Sean Vaughan, Bill Yock