Portals and Content Management
Notes from the 2/24/2003 Conference Call
Participants
- Marina Arseniev, UCI
- Jon Bertsch, UCOP
- Rik Bhatia, LBL
- Richard Drake, UCSF
- John Kealy, UCSF
- Rich Kogut, UCM
- Carla Raffetto, UCOP
- Katya Sadovsky, UCI
- Heidi Schmidt, UCSF
- J. R. Schulden, UCB
- David Walker, UCOP
- Albert Wu, UCLA
Background
An RFP was issued last year to purchase portal and content management software
for most of the campuses and UCOP. Unfortunately, the evaluation process
did not end until after the start of the University's current fiscal problems,
so the planned funding for this project has not been allocated.
While that funding may be allocated in the future, the purpose of this
conference call is to start an evaluation process of open source and other
low-initial-cost portal and content management solutions. In particular,
the following issues will be addressed:
- An assessment of the minimal acceptability of these products for
the University (I.e., is it worth pursuing either of these any further?)
- An evaluation of the "quality" of these products, particularly in
comparison with the commercial products from the RFP
- An estimate of the four-year cost of using these products
uPortal and CuCMS
David Walker reviewed his summary of
how uPortal and CuCMS address UC's needs, as expressed in last year's
RFP. During the discussion, the following points were made:
- Marina Arseniev mentioned that the interoperability of portal and
content management systems was not highlighted in the RFP, but turns out to
be important. We will make sure we consider this issue in this evaluation.
- Both UCI and LBL would like a solution that is light-weight enough
for departments to run their own instances.
- Rich Kogut mentioned the difficulty of finding the right combination
of functionality and price in content management systems.
- Personalization and customization are often used inconsistently
with respect to portals. For the purpose of this group, we agreed
on the following definitions:
- Personalization is the process used by the system
administration to tailor a portal's user interface to a person, based on information
the portal knows about that person, such as that person's roles in the organization.
- Customization is the process used by people who use
a portal to tailor the portal's user interface to their preferences.
- The ability to "push" new channels to users is important (and not
a capability of the current release of uPortal).
- UCI is using uPortal in production for their enterprise portal. They
use a low-cost commercial product, eContent, for XML-based content management.
Action Items
- Marina Arseniev suggested that we exchange XML schemas for the content
we are developing. This will be good input to our evaluation process.
Also, in the long run, such a repository of schemas will facilitate
exchange of content in the future. For example, UCI would like
to provide the information in UC's At Your Service and UCI-specific
benefits information on the same presentation.
- Action: David Walker will collect schema information
on our web page (http://www.ucop.edu/irc/portal).
In the long run, though, we'll need to find a more appropriate place
to keep XML schemas.
- It was asked if an instance of uPortal could be made available to
this group.
- Action: David Walker said he would provide access
to instances of uPortal and CuCMS running on a PC under his desk if someone
could provide expertise on setting up logins. Katya Sadovsky was volunteered
to provide the expertise.
- It was asked if we would consider solutions other than uPortal and
CuCMS. Zope, for example, is in use at UCSF. The answer was
yes.
- Action: John Kealy will provide a list of candidate
content management systems. [Done.]
- David Walker asked if UCI could provide a list of issues with respect
to integration between portal and content management systems.
- Action: Katya Sadovsky will send a copy of a presentation
she gave to JA-SIG concerning these issues. [Done.]
David Walker - 2/28/2003