3. Introduction to Portals(Web Portal)
Web Portals are large multi-service web sites designed to be
comprehensive one-stop destinations for users.
AWeb Portal or public portal refers to a website or service that offers
a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search
engines and online shopping malls.
The initial function provided by portals such asYahoo, Lycos, Excite,
AltaVista and later Google was to indexWeb page content and make
this content available to users in a convenient form.
Web portals are organized gateways that help to structure the access to
information found on the Internet. Much more than a simple search
engine, the web portal usually includes customizable access to data
such as stock reports, local, regional, and national news, and email
services.
4. Introduction to Portals (Cont’d)
Most of the better known portals are commonly identified as
search engines, although they offer much more than simply the
ability to search the Internet. Examples of public web portals are
AOL(America Online), MSN(Microsoft Network) and
Yahoo! Etc..
Web portals , such asYahoo!, offer aggregated services including
e- mail, maps, news, photo sharing, and search to mobile users
via sites specially designed for mobile device users.
the top five search engines (Google,Yahoo, MSN,AOL, and
Ask.com)
5. Functions of Portals
The ideal portal relies on following functionality areas:
1) Search and navigation
2) Personalization
3) Notification
4) Task management and workflow
5) Collaboration and groupware
6. Functions of Portals
1) Search and navigation
This functionality forms the premise for many of the successful
public web portals which mean that a successful portal ought to
support its users in an economical hunt for contents.
A portal should:
Automatically gift its users with the knowledge applicable to the user’s
role
The additional data to the user and / or enable the user to customize the
voluntarily provided by the knowledge web portals
allow the user to go looking for data that wasn’t previously known to be
relevant to the user’s role however which can be accessible through the
portal
7. Functions of Portals
2) Provide Personalization
Personalization is important to provide data that apply to portal users each
user gets only the knowledge that is specifically tailored to their desires or.
The allocation should be based primarily on user roles moreover that the
user preferences.There are many ways to customize:
• Customization of navigation
E.g. Shortcuts to specific data principally called bookmarks or
favorites
• Personalization of data/content
E.g. That stocks do i need to examine in my stock ticker
• customize the layout
E.g. What is the data that appear on the screen in any form or color
or size.
8. Functions of Portals
3) Provide Notification
Notification (push technology) is observed as a system during
which a user receives data automatically from a network server.
Thus the user has the chance to subscribe to active data sources
(such as news feeds and periodically updated reports) and rise to
be alerted when documents are updated.
4) ProvideTask Management andWorkflow
Web portals that provide management task easier for users to
participate in and / or management of business processes
formally described.
Example: – for the application of digital
9. Functions of Portals
5) Provide Collaboration and Groupware
Knowledge management and groupware ensure that the required data is
stored in the right place at the right track.This means that by bringing the
right people together with the appropriate data. Groupware collaboration
software helps less formal work tools.
The automation of the workflow teamwork and increase the value delivered
by the many types of web portals specialized for example the following:
• increase the attractiveness of e-commerce to the gates of the
consumer
• Allows for informal contacts between suppliers and customers in the
business sector and e-commerce portals to business
Supply chain web portals are obsessed with collaboration support so as to
assist suppliers and their customers manage their relationships. Moreover
collaboration support could be a key demand for information portals.
10. Types of portals
There are following types of portals:
1. Vertical Portals
2. Horizontal Portals or Functional Portals
3. Enterprise Portals
4. Knowledge Portals
5. Corporate Portals
11. Types of portals (Cont’d)
1. Vertical Portals
These are web portals which focus only on one specific
industry(provides access to information about a particular area such
as cars, insurance, etc.), domain or vertical.Vertical portals
provide tools, information, articles, research and statistics
on the specific industry or vertical.As the web has become a
standard tool for business.
There are infinite possibilities for establishing special vertical portals on
the market.The numerous solutions can be divided into 2 major groups
that partially overlap:
Corporate Portals: Providing access to personal information and
choose the company
Commerce Portals:
support business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce
12. Types of portals (Cont’d)
2. Horizontal Portals or Functional Portals
These are web portals which focus on a wide array of interests and
topics.
They focus on general audience and try to present
something for everybody. Horizontal portals try act as an entry
point of a web surfer into the internet, providing content on the topic
of interest and guiding towards the right direction to fetch more related
resources and information.
Classic examples of horizontal portals are yahoo.com, msn.com
etc which provide visitors with information and on a wide area of
topics.
13. Types of portals (Cont’d)
3. Enterprise Portals
These are portals developed and maintained for use by
members of the intranet or the enterprise network. In today’s
demanding business enterprise the key to productivity of the employees
depends on access to timely information and resources.
The most common implementation of enterprise portals focus on
providing employees with this information on a regularly
updated manner along with document management system,
availability of applications on demand, online training courses and web
casts etc along with communication in the form of emails, messaging,
web meetings etc.
14. Types of portals (Cont’d)
4. Knowledge Portals
Knowledge portals increase the effectiveness of
knowledge workers by providing easy access to
information that is necessary or helpful to them in one or
more specific roles.
Knowledge portals are not simple intranet portals since the
former are supposed to provide extra functionality such as
collaboration services, sophisticated information discovery
services and a knowledge map.
Provide additional functionality in the past and employment
services and cooperation in the field of information and
knowledge to identify the card.
15. Types of portals (Cont’d)
5. Corporate Portals
A corporate portal provides personalized access to an appropriate range of
information about a particular company.
Corporate portals have become one of the hottest new technologies of the
Internet. Initially called intranet portals - corporate portals existing for the
benefit of the company’s own employees, this set of technologies has
developed to assist and provide access to a company’s business
partners (suppliers, customers) as well.
As opposed to public web portals, corporate portals aim at providing a
virtual workplace for each individual using. Rather than offering
access to consumer goods, services, and information, corporate portals are
designed to give each individual using them access to all of the
information, business applications, and services needed to perform
their jobs.
16. Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages:
Flexible content and layout
Easy to use design interface
Powerful collaboration tools
Powerful back end with Discovery Server
Easy for users to customize personal places
Based on open portal standards
Scales to enterprise
Real-time personalization
Single sign-on using authentication proxy
17. Advantages and Disadvantages (Cont’d)
Disadvantages:
Somewhat complex to set up
Requires some work to integrate existing back-end databases
