eight steps to deploying an enterprise portal - part five

Eight Steps to Deploying an Enterprise Portal – Part Five

Intelligent Business Strategies

Springfield House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,

Cheshire, SK9 5BG

01625 520700

February, 2006

Mike Ferguson

© Intelligent Business Strategies Ltd 1

Part Five – Eight Steps to Deploying an Enterprise Portal By Mike Ferguson

Managing Director, Intelligent Business Strategies

In this month’s article in EI magazine, we will continue to look as eight steps to deploying

an enterprise portal outlined below.

1. Develop the portal business case, and plan for portal implementation

2. Understand user functionality and content requirements

3. Define a portal architecture, and select, install and integrate portal products

4. Develop the portal taxonomy and categorisation scheme

5. Design and customise the portal user interface

6. Develop the security and single sign-on architecture

7. Develop, implement and integrate information, collaboration and applications with

the portal

8. Personalise and prototype to create multiple role-based portals, train users, and

deploy portal technology in a phased manner

Having covered steps 5 and 6 in my last article, this month we will focus on steps 7.

Step 7 – Develop, implement and integrate information, collaboration tools and

applications with the portal

This step involves integration of information, collaboration tools and applications with the

portal. Looking first at information, this can mean unstructured information such as office

documents, images and digital media information such as video and audio. It could also

mean semi-structured information such as information that is tagged in some way. This

could include XML or HTML web pages. Finally it could also include structured data stored

in a DBMS for example. Figure 1 shows that information can reside in multiple places

including:

Content stores that ship with the portal

3rd

party document and/or web content management systems

File systems e.g. office documents

DBMSs

External web sites and syndicated content feeds

The point here is that these are not mutually exclusive alternatives. In fact most of my clients

have all of these and so face the challenge of integrating all of them with a portal server. A

recent survey of Fortune 1000 companies showed that it can be even more complicated by

highlighting the fact that, these companies have on average, more than six content

repositories in their organisations. So the challenge may not just be the integration of one

content management system with the portal, but having to integrate several.

Lets look at each of these. Examples of a portal content store include BEA AquaLogic

Content Server, CA CleverPath and Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services.


Portals and Content Management Systems

portalportal

DBMSDBMSserverserver

corporate firewall

portalportal

external user

portalportalcontentcontent

storestore

internal user

CMSCMSserverserver

syndicatedsyndicatedinformationinformation File File

serverserver

informationinformation

information

information

Figure 1

Portal content stores are increasingly managing much more than just web content. They can

also often manage documents and digital media as well. Typically these either come with

the portal server or as a separately chargeable add-on component that integrates with the

portal. Pre-built portlets provide the user interface to the portal content store with portlets for

managing content and for viewing it. Increasingly also this content store integrates with

popular Office suites such as IBM Workplace and Microsoft Office via web services so as to

provide a desktop rich client user interface as well as a portlet user interface to the content.

Figure 2 shows a screenshot of BEA AquaLogic Interaction Content Server where the user

interface is simply a series of portlets presented in BEA AquaLogic Interaction Portal.

If you have a 3rd

party document or content management system such as EMC Documentum,

Interwoven, Stellant etc. then when you buy the portal product you need to integrate the 3rd

party product with the portal. To do you should expect either the portal vendor or the 3rd

party content management system vendor to supply you with:

Pre-built portlets (preferably built to WSRP and JSR168 industry standards) to

manage and view content in that system via the portal

Pre-built crawlers to discover the content in the 3rd

party CMS to include in search

indexes for the search engine

Pre-built crawlers to discover the content in the 3rd

party CMS to update the portal

taxonomy with references to that content.


Portal Content Store Example - BEA AquaLogic Interaction Content Server

Figure 2

Note that the portal taxonomy is not the same as the CMS system’s own taxonomy. Bear in

mind that the portal may be referencing content scattered across multiple file systems,

internal and external web sites and several CMSs. For this reason, even if the content in the

CMS is well organised, it needs to be clustered in the same categories as related content

stored elsewhere inside or outside the enterprise. If the CMS vendor does not have any pre-

built portlets then at the very least they should give you APIs so that some kind of

integration is possible. Figure 3 shows EMC Documentum integrated into the BEA

AquaLogic Portal using pre-built portlets. Note the taxonomy portlet on the bottom left of

the screen providing a view of how the content is viewed in the Documentum system. A

documentum crawler is also available. Note that web pages themselves can be quickly

integrated into a portal using a technique known as web-clipping. Another name for this is

HTML scraping. Examples portal products on the market that provide support for web

clipping include Oracle 10g AS Portal with the OnmiPortlet, IBM WebSphere Portal Server

and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Portal Server. Figure 4 shows an example of this in

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server. Web clipping is attractive because it is cheap

and quick to do. However it is often best suited to static web pages as opposed to dynamic

web pages.

Business intelligence can also be integrated into the portal using pre-built portlets that the BI

vendor (e.g. Business Objects, Cognos, SAS, Hyperion, etc.) will typically provide you with.

In this way users can see reports in portal portlets, drill on data and slice and dice it from

within the portlets etc.


BEA AquaLogic Interaction Portal and

Documentum

Figure 3

Web Clipping – Supported By Several Portal Vendors

Clip part of a web page to

appear in a portlet

E.g. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle

Figure 4

It is also possible to make use of Enterprise Information Integration (EII) tools to integrate

information residing in multiple locations into a portal. Popular products that can do this

include Vamosa and Kapow RoboSuite. These are other EII products on the market but

these two in particular specialise in real-time (and batch) integration of unstructured content

from multiple sources. With EII, federated queries that integrate and re-purpose unstructured


content can be created, saved and published as web services. These can then be invoked by

proxy portlets via WSRP to trigger on-demand integration of information when a user opens

the portal page. This is shown in Figure 5.

Portal Portlets Can Invoke Data Integration Services On

Demand To Render Integrated Content Into Portlets

Data

integration

server

web

contentFile RDBMS

Msg

queue

email

UDDI registry

Publish data

integration queries

as web services

Create proxy portlets to invoke remote data

integration web services (WSRP)

SOAP

XML

Service oriented information integration

Web service API

web

svc

AP

I

Document/Content

Management System

Note that there is NO concept of a

process here

WS API

BI

System

Figure 5

With respect to information in file systems, crawlers can automatically discover this to

include it in search engine indexes and also as referenced items in portal taxonomies.

Individual items of information can also be ‘open’ in a portlet on a portal page so that the

item can be viewed. The user can therefore navigate the portal taxonomy or search for the

content via a search engine (See Figure 6). Also RSS feeds and other syndicated content can

be integrated into the portal directly off the internet via pre-built portlets.


Navigating/Browsing vs. Searching Content

portaldirectorymetadata

Search uses an index(es)

Navigate/Browse uses the taxonomy

ContentIndex(es)

Figure 6

Integrating Collaboration Tools Into the Portal

In addition to information, it is often the case that many companies want to integrate

collaboration tools into the portal. Today when we talk about collaboration tools most people

think about email or instant messaging. However the market has changed to the point where

single vendors are offering a whole suite of collaboration tools. This includes EMC

Documentun eRoom, IBM WebSphere Collaboration Services, Microsoft Exchange,

LiveMeeting and LiveCommunications Server and Oracle 10g Collaboration Suite.

Collaboration suites today include tools like:

Email

Expertise locaters and trackers

Content meeting points where experts congregate and collaborate

Presence awareness and availability management

Shared calendar information

Conference room management and moderated chat

Net meetings and live threaded discussions

Co-editing of documents

Instant messaging for real time polling, alerting, chat & response

Collaboration tools are useful for all sorts of reasons. Net meetings can reduce travel costs

for example and facilitate the sharing and discussion of business intelligence to make

decisions. They help us locate expertise and collaborate with experts who may be in other

locations. It is also possible to collaborate with partners over marketing initiatives and with

suppliers on just in time delivery of inventory and to resolve logistical problems. The

confusing thing about collaboration tools is how they are brought to market. For example

you can buy and use them as “stand alone” collaboration tools where users log on and make

use of a tool specific user interface. An example here might be Microsoft Outlook email.


Also Rich Office clients are now embedded collaboration tools. For example it is possible to

enter into a threaded discussion from within Microsoft Word or IBM Workplace. In addition

to this, collaboration tooling can be embedded directly inside applications like CRM

applications and BI performance management applications. Finally you can buy a suite pf

collaboration tools with portal products whereby they appear as portlets in the portal user

interface. Users therefore make use of the tools directly via the portal. This allows

administrators to make use of portal personalisation to select the collaboration tools they

need for specific users and for specific process tasks.

However with all these options available it is often the case that companies can get

themselves into collaboration chaos by having any and all of these. The problem here can be:

Lack of integration and sharing of collaboration tools

Potential duplication of collaboration tools across multiple applications

Collaboration content (e.g. threaded discussions, emails etc.) scattered widely across

multiple systems so that it is not easy to find knowledge buried in this content

So what can you do about the collaboration chaos problem? Ideally the architecture you

would seek is shown in Figure 7 whereby common collaboration tools are shared by the

portal, office applications and other operational and BI applications. Also it is desirable that

the collaborations themselves (e.g. emails, instant messages, threaded discussion content

etc.) should be stored in an enterprise content management system and crawled to include

this content in search indexes and the taxonomy.

It is a good idea to do the following to maximise the benefit of collaboration tools in your

organisation and to create common collaboration services that can be integrated with a

portal.

Upgrade collaboration tools to versions with web service APIs (collaboration

services)

Upgrade collaboration tools to a version that stores collaborations in an ECMS

Integrate collaboration content for all to share

• E.g. Collaboration content stored in an Enterprise Content Management

System

• Implement EII to integrate content


Shared Collaboration Services

Common Collaboration Services

(email, IM, chat, project management,presence awareness, shared calendar,..)

ECMS Services

emailannotations web chat

Doc libsweb content Digital

mediaInstant Msgs

BI/CPM tools/

services

Service bus

operational

Apps/ services

Enterprise Portal

Business process

managementcomposite service

Enterprise content

Management system

(can be virtual)

Office

applications

WebDav, xQuery, JSR170

Figure 7

Integrate common collaborative tools with portals and portal workspaces

• Create collaborative workspaces via the portal to give authorised

communities access to shared workspaces e.g. Team workspaces, Project

workspaces etc.

• Crawl collaborative content sources for categorisation and building search

indexes

• Facilitate search across collaborative and other content

Upgrade to Office “rich clients” that integrate with the portal or directly with

collaborative services

Build composite applications that integrate collaborative services and other services

• Reference collaborations from within application data structures to relate data

Integrate collaborative services into business processes

Push application and BI vendors to leverage common collaboration services


chatPresence

awarenessIM

Co

-editingemail

Live-

meeting

People

finder

Project

Mgm’t

Portal

Collaboration tools

Integrating Collaboration Tools With Portals

Figure 8

There are a number of benefits to integrating collaborative tools into a portal including:

Portals offer security and personalization with collaboration

A portal user can see if other users are online (via a portlet) and access collaboration

tools via portlets to interact with each other

Portal users can take actions on documents or user names that appear in a portlet

Shared workspaces (e.g. team workspaces, project workspaces) can be saved and

reused by other portal users to really take advantage of the knowledge captured in

collaborations

Collaboration can be introduced into existing business processes in a specific context

by integrating collaboration portlets with other application and information portlets

into process task portal pages

In next month’s article I will look at completing step 7 by discussing how applications and

processes can be integrated with portals user interface. In addition I will also cover

personalisation to round off this series of articles

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mike Ferguson is Managing Director of Intelligent Business Strategies Limited, a

leading information technology analyst and consulting company. He is also a partner in

iBonD. As an analyst and consultant he specialises in enterprise business intelligence,

enterprise business integration, and enterprise portals. He can be contacted at +44

1625 520700 or e-mail at [email protected]

eight steps to deploying an enterprise portal - part five

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