There is no common agreement as to what a portal
is. Many point out that the word means doorway (often taken
to be a grand doorway such as that found at the main (west) door of
a cathedral), with the implication that a portal is simply a way of
accessing a number of services, but as Strauss has
stated “A Home Page Doth Not A Portal Make”. By
which he means that it is not enough to simply bring a number of
different channels or information sources together on a web page,
there is a need to provide some degree of integration and
customisation, He goes on to describe a portal as
a “Customized Personalized Adaptive Desktop” and it is
worth exploring what he means by each of these terms before looking
at some of the implications for how one might build a portal, and
equally how one can set about shifting the entire organisation from
where it is now to having a portal.
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Customised – The portal adapts to the user, and the
more it knows about the user the better it should be able to adapt
to their needs, whether the user is a member of teaching staff,
administrative staff, a researcher, a student or a prospective
student (or someone who occupies several of those roles – for
instance a post-graduate student who also teaches). It should
also be able to adapt to the type of hardware that the user is
currently using (PC on a LAN, PC on a dial-up line, Personal
Digital Assistant (PDA) or smart phone). This should be done
as the user logs into the portal.
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Personalised – Allows the user to change the
portal’s interface and behaviour to meet the user’s
needs and preferences. This would include the appearance
(colours, fonts, size), channels subscribed to and their location
on screen.
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Adaptive – Changes its behaviour depending on
context. Many people will have multiple roles, and will
present information or channels depending on activity. It
will also have an understanding of time and be able to support
workflows for example around marking exam papers.
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Desktop – It replaces the desktop environment, hiding
the operating system by providing access to all applications and
information that the user needs regardless of whether these are
local or networked.
