By now, many of the Portal newbie would have got a little idea about what Portal actually is (if you have already done some goggling around) In this second weblog of the Portal Demystified series, we will go and delve into the answers for some of the basic Portal questions I posed in my last weblog. We shall cover some of them in this weblog and continue with rest in my next weblog. So, lets start and start seeing things from ground zero… 1) What are Portals? Or what is an Enterprise Portal? We can define Portals as specialized web-based interfaces that provide single point of access to multiple backend applications, single unified view of information and collaborative services. This is just one way of defining Portal but we will see and understand some more as we go along and start understanding things little better. Let me explain some of these things in detail: a) What do I mean by Single Point of Access to Multiple Backend Applications & Single Unified View of the Information? Lets split this into two parts… Single Access to Multiple Backend Applications Imagine that you work for an organization, which has multiple specialized applications, needed by you to perform your day-to-day activities. For example, lets say your organization has different functional applications such as HR application (Leave Data, Appraisals etc), Finance application (For payroll, reimbursements etc), Travel Management Application (For Travel requests etc), Email Application, Group Discussions etc etc. Infact for a big organization this list of applications can be really long. Now imagine, if you have to remember the URLs, userid/password for each application. Will that be easy or desirable for you? I hear most of you saying a loud “NO”. That’s where the real value of Portal comes. Portal provides a specialized web based interface, which provides access to multiple backend applications from a single page. Having said that, I must add that there is lot more to it than just providing a single entry point. If you have HTML experience, you must be wondering I can provide interface to multiple backend applications using HTML Frames, so what’s special with Portals and Why Portals? And the answer is that Portal comes with concept of presenting Secure, Role based Personalized Content, Single Sign On with Multiple Backend applications, Unification of information and lots more…. If you are not clear with few of these buzzwords like Role based Personalization, SSO etc then don’t worry; you will understand those things in a while…. Single Unified View of the Information Another important aspect of a Portal is that regardless of where the information resides (which application) or in what format, Portal aggregates all of the information in a way that is pleasing and relevant to the user. For example, if you are a decision maker and you need access to information available with different applications for your decision-making, Portal has the capability to collect this information from different source and present it for you in one view, which makes your job easy. You actually don’t have to run around and access different systems to look for information. As an end user, you will get access all the information you need without even realizing where they come from. There are several real life scenarios where Portals have really contributed considerably by providing single unified view of information. b) What do we mean by Collaborative Services? Collaboration refers abstractly to all processes wherein people communicate and work together. Tools and Services, which enable this, are referred to as Collaborative Service. Portal offers great deal of services in this field too. Some of the Collaborative services, which may be offered by Portal, are 1) Document Sharing 2) Discussion Forums 3) Web Conferencing 4) Chat etc etc…. However, I would like to state that these services offered may differ from vendor to vendor (Portal Product Vendor) We will discuss more on Collaboration Services in detail in my later weblogs. There are lot more aspects to Portal and the following diagram depicts in summary "What Portal is" and "What it is Not"… 
2) What are fundamental characteristics of Portal? As discussed in earlier section there are various fundamental characteristics of Portals, which makes it a popular technology now. Some of them are: a)Unification of Information from Different Systems – This same as discussed above. Portal enables end users to get a single unified view of information gathered from different backend systems. For example, in an organization a user information (name, organizational unit details, contact details, password etc) may be stored in a consolidated Identity Management system such as Active Directory (AD), HR related information may reside in SAP or any other ERP system. Now your Portal view may have information about your personal data, your leave details or your salary details etc etc. Although, we have different sources of information (depending on type of information) user still gets to everything in a unified view. b) Targeted and Personalized information – Portal provides role based personalized information. This means that Portal provides mechanism where the information shown to the end user can be personalized based on their role. For example, if a user has Administrative Role associated with it’s profile, he/she may get Admin View of the application. If he has additional roles, then all views associated with those roles are actually available for the user Personalization is possible at two levels: One at Portal Administrator level where Content Admin associates different views to different roles. There is another level of Personalization possible at user level too. That means if user doesn’t want to see some data associated with this role, he may have access to Personalize your view. I have seen many people getting confused with Personalization and Customization. There is a small difference between two: Personalization – It involves choosing what content needs to be displayed Customization - It involves choosing look and feel, navigation etc c) Single Sign On – Now as discussed earlier, Portal provides single point of access to multiple backend application. Now each back end application may have it’s own authentication mechanism and authentication data (userid/password). Now SSO plays an important role here. When you login to Portal, you authenticate yourself once. Now if you have several multiple backend application accessible through Portal, SSO capabilities allows users to skip entering the authentication credentials again. That means, once you are authenticated by Portal, you get access to all the backend applications if SSO is established between Portal and Backend applications. d) Easy & Multi Device Accessibility – This means Portal Technology allows content to be accessible through multiple tools and devices such as Browser, Mobile Phones, PDAs etc etc. e) Content Management - Portal even allows Content Management capabilities. Extent and features vary from Portal to Portal. Infact Some Portals actually integrate with different 3rd Party Specialized Content Management tools. f) Improved Organizational efficiency (process and transactional) – Now if you have started realizing the capabilities of Portal, its actually self implied that Portal provides Organizational efficiencies both from process and transaction view. Imagine, if you have access to all the information you need on a single window, won’t you work more efficiently? 3) How are Portals different from other Websites? Here are some of the points, which makes Portal different from other Websites. Hopefully you now understand things better based on the discussion so far:
2) What are fundamental characteristics of Portal? As discussed in earlier section there are various fundamental characteristics of Portals, which makes it a popular technology now. Some of them are: a)Unification of Information from Different Systems – This same as discussed above. Portal enables end users to get a single unified view of information gathered from different backend systems. For example, in an organization a user information (name, organizational unit details, contact details, password etc) may be stored in a consolidated Identity Management system such as Active Directory (AD), HR related information may reside in SAP or any other ERP system. Now your Portal view may have information about your personal data, your leave details or your salary details etc etc. Although, we have different sources of information (depending on type of information) user still gets to everything in a unified view. b) Targeted and Personalized information – Portal provides role based personalized information. This means that Portal provides mechanism where the information shown to the end user can be personalized based on their role. For example, if a user has Administrative Role associated with it’s profile, he/she may get Admin View of the application. If he has additional roles, then all views associated with those roles are actually available for the user Personalization is possible at two levels: One at Portal Administrator level where Content Admin associates different views to different roles. There is another level of Personalization possible at user level too. That means if user doesn’t want to see some data associated with this role, he may have access to Personalize your view. I have seen many people getting confused with Personalization and Customization. There is a small difference between two: Personalization – It involves choosing what content needs to be displayed Customization - It involves choosing look and feel, navigation etc c) Single Sign On – Now as discussed earlier, Portal provides single point of access to multiple backend application. Now each back end application may have it’s own authentication mechanism and authentication data (userid/password). Now SSO plays an important role here. When you login to Portal, you authenticate yourself once. Now if you have several multiple backend application accessible through Portal, SSO capabilities allows users to skip entering the authentication credentials again. That means, once you are authenticated by Portal, you get access to all the backend applications if SSO is established between Portal and Backend applications. d) Easy & Multi Device Accessibility – This means Portal Technology allows content to be accessible through multiple tools and devices such as Browser, Mobile Phones, PDAs etc etc. e) Content Management - Portal even allows Content Management capabilities. Extent and features vary from Portal to Portal. Infact Some Portals actually integrate with different 3rd Party Specialized Content Management tools. f) Improved Organizational efficiency (process and transactional) – Now if you have started realizing the capabilities of Portal, its actually self implied that Portal provides Organizational efficiencies both from process and transaction view. Imagine, if you have access to all the information you need on a single window, won’t you work more efficiently? 3) How are Portals different from other Websites? Here are some of the points, which makes Portal different from other Websites. Hopefully you now understand things better based on the discussion so far: - A single point of access to all resources associated with the Portal domain
- Personalized & Better User experience
- Federated access to hundreds of data types and repositories, both aggregated and categorized
- Collaboration and user integration capabilities
- Integration with applications and workflow systems
- Improved Reusability, Maintainability, Extensibility and Scalability
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