Portal Solution Software
Today the most commonly used portal software is supplied by Microsoft which includes Commerce Server, Content Management Server and the Sharepoint Portal Server, the latest version of the latter being Sharepoint Portal Server 2007. Contemporary can provide full consultancy and training on all of these popular products and have many years experience of successful portal projects.
Some Common Portal Projects
There are many uses of portals in today's business world, a list of the more common portal solutions being:-
- Line of Business Portals
They are in effect "mini portals" as they serve only one specific area of an organisation, offering access to one small area of the applications available.
- Corporate Intranet Portals
In many cases a corporate Intrenet portal is simply a gateway to other portals and websites operated by an organisation. This usefully includes access to corporate directories as well as of course all documents. A search facility is almost always included. It should be noted, however, that these "gateway" portals are being used more and more to improve collaboration.
- Corporate Extranets
Whilst an Intranet is concerned with the sharing and collaboration within an organisation, Extranets deal with extending this outside the company to suppliers and customers.
- Team or Divisional Portals
This type of portal is used by groups or communities who want to share specific content.
- Personal Portal
Where an individuals needs are very specific It may be necessary to create a special portal with access being granted to the required resources. Today with the advanced security / permission setting capabilities available, these types of portals are being integrated into corporate portals.
- Enterprise Portals
This is the king of portals as it acts as the central portal for an entire organisation or company. All other portals being accessed through the "Enterprise Portal".
Portal Integration
Whilst a portal offers many advantages to any organisation, it first has to be planned. The applications and data that it will be offering selected and then implemented. The process of integration into one portal is a complicated process and offers many chances to "get things wrong". Contemporary having planned and instigated many portals, of many different types can provide your organisation with all the support it needs, therefore ensuring that your portal integration project is a total success.
Deploying Applications via Portals
The ease by which applications can be deployed through a corporate portal, together with the ability to create workspaces, both personal and central, as well as sites and subsites offer great savings in the IT area, whilst providing users with exactly the access they require.
Permission Levels & Workflow Engines
In any business process the level of permission to access and alter data will vary from individual / team, which means that any IT enabled process must be able to mimic this requirement. There is also the need to be able to moderate the input of other individuals and to know who added or altered any information. Such processes today are often referred to as "workflow" processes. Where as the name suggests the job of work flows through an organisation, each area carrying out their allotted task. It is important however, that no one is able to alter that which they have no responsibility for and that senior persons can alter (via the moderation process) any item that is deemed to be incorrect.
Today's portal technologies allow all of the above, and therefore if your organisation is considering implementing workflow procedures, Contemporary with our years of experience can assist in all areas of planning and implementation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is a portal?
A: A portal is a word to describe an internet, intranet and an extranet and commonly people now use the word portal to describe all these technologies.
Q: What can a portal do?
A: A portal can do many things, most commonly in the organisation's that we work with it will be the single place for information resources, so if you want to find information or share information about anything in your organisation the portal will be the place to go.
Q: Can you give me an example of a portal project?
A: Yes, a portal project that we have been involved with over the past few years specifically was built and designed to address the requirements of this organisation, to cut bureaucracy, save ten thousand man hours a year and to improve communication around the organisation. So there were three main strategic objectives of the portal. The portal was designed and built and now handles a whole multitude of activities within that organisation. Content document management, sharing of information, accessing information for the users and pushing information to the outside world as well.
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