Chapter 5 Web Management Tools and Web Portals

1. Chapter 5Web Management Tools and Web Portals

2. Portal: a location on the web that acts as launching point for searching for and retrieving information • Main objective • Reducing complexity for reaching needed information

3. Introduction • Information on the internet can become more quickly via portal • Portal is a tool that • Achieve communication goals • capture information wherever it exist • User Interface that make information available • Portal containing knowledge management • Content management • Personalization

4. Introduction • Content management • Referred as content management system (CMS) • System used to manage the content of a web site • Personalization • Software system that allows an internet site to provide the user with a web page the reflects the interest, needs, and action of the users

5. Portals:The Basics • Portal • A web page that offers links to other websites • Can be broad or narrow • Does the portal provide a wide range of resources or a specific set of materials? • For example, while some portals archive information on every subject area in all formats, others focus on a specific content area or type of resource such as science videos, historical information, or lesson plans • Specific or general

6. What is a Portal • A portal is - a web site (Internet, www, html on TC/IP) - an entry point to other web resources - virtual workplaces where enterprises meet… • employees (B2E portals: intranet/extranet) • customers & providers (B2C, B2B) • vertical portals (vortals) • enterprise portals (EP) • corporate portals (CP) • They can be all these things together!

7. Portals • Some sites that started as search engine sites grew into portals • Portals offer a variety of other services including email and chats • Portals are also “doorways” to other Web sites • Unlike ISPs, portals do not provided connections to the Internet

8. Portals:The Basics Portals are considered to be virtual workplaces that: • Promote knowledge sharing among different categories of end users • Provide access to stored structured data • Data warehousing, database, transactional systems • Organize unstructured data • Electronic documents, lessoned learned

9. The Basics (cont’d) Portals are tools that could ( adv ): • Simplify access to data stored in various application systems • Facilitate collaboration among employees • Assist the company in reaching its customers

10. The Basics (cont’d) Web portals • Allow producers and users of knowledge to interact • Web portals provide two kinds of interfaces: • The knowledge producer interface • The knowledge consumer interface

11. The Basics (cont’d) Portal disadvantages • Difficulty integrating with other applications • The need for additional investment in technology • The difficulty of retaining skilled staff

12. EVOLUTION OF PORTALS • According to subject Portal can be • Horizontal Portal • Electronic exchange that focuses on many subject ( yahoo, MSN) • Focus on many subjects (public portal) • Categorize personal interest into group • Vertical Portal • Focus on specific subjects (webMD)

13. EVOLUTION OF PORTALS • Also Portal can be • Internet public portal • Enterprise Portal • Belongs to a specific company and organization • Deals with information with this company

14. EVOLUTION OF PORTALS • Search engines • Employ simple search technology for locating information on the web • Navigation sites • Search engine • Categorize personal interest into group (news, sport,…) • Portals evolved to include advanced search capabilities and taxonomies

15. Evolution of the Portal Concept

16. EVOLUTION OF PORTALS • Enterprise Information Portals are tools that should: • associated with large organizations • Simplify access to data stored in various application systems • Facilitate collaboration among employees • Assist the company in reaching its customers

17. Knowledge Portal • A webpage or a facility that offers a single , uniform point from which all of an enterprises data sources can be accessed • Less on information content • More on improving knowledge worker productivity • Provide verity of information on various topics and can be customized to meet user individual needs on line

18. Knowledge Portal • Two Type of interface • The knowledge producer interface • Allows the knowledge worker to gather, analyze, and collaborate with peers to generate new knowledge • The knowledge consumer interface • Customization

19. Enterprise Knowledge Portal • Distinguish knowledge from information’ • Provide facility for producing Knowledge from data and information • Provide basis for making decisions

20. Information & Knowledge Data processing Information inferring Knowledge

21. Knowledge Portals Versus Information Portals Enterprise Information Portals • Use both “push” and “pull” technologies to transmit information to users through a standardized Web-based interface • Integrate disparate applications into a single system • Have the ability to access both external and internal sources of data Enterprise Web Portals • Are goal-directed toward knowledge production, knowledge acquisition, knowledge transmission, and knowledge management • Are focused on enterprise businessprocesses • Provide, produce, and manage information about the validity of the information they supply • Include all EIPsfunctionalities

22. Key characteristics • User-customizable message on the web page • Directory search • Knowledge channels • Powerful search engine • Acquisition Knowledge center • Officer career announcement • Calendar and FAQs

23. A Portal has a number of keycomponents • Registration • The ability for a user to sign onto the portal and have the ability to access all resources from one login • Searching • The ability to traverse internal and external data sources and present back to the user a simple view of findings • Personalization • The ability for the user to manage the layout of the desktop and to provide a profile to contain areas of interest • Alerting • The ability to integrate with common services (e.g. e-mail) to notify the user of immediate changes and actions • Content Management • The ability to manage content directly on the portal • Integration • The ability to connect to legacy and enterprise applications

24. Summary • Many websites are not portals themselves, but often become an element of a portal. • a major starting point for web users • portals are defined as "user-driven" and "customizable" interfaces to web resources • Some people refer to their favorite portal as their home on the web

25. Search Engines • Software agent whose task is to find information by looking at keywords or by following a certain guidelines or rules

26. Search Engines • Search engines are vary in • Database size • Navigation format • Collection methods

27. Search Engines • Engines can collect website data by employing • Crawler • Human editor • Paid subscriber

28. Search Engines • Crawlers • Computer automated program that search the internet for web links • Links added to DB and categorized by keyword and relevancy for future • Human editor • Employ web surfing to find links to added to DB • But it categorized by human analysis • Paid subscriber • Add web site to their DB with understanding that he will paid for each Website

29. Search Engines • Most important attributes in the success of Search engine is a way of ranking pages • Is the algorithm assumes that the more links a page has the better it is • The search is determined by • Content ( keyword) • Links ( ranking)

30. Business Challenges • To optimize the performance of operational processes in order to reduce costs and enhance quality • Companies need to commercialize their products at the lowest price possible

31. Portals and Business Transformation • The explosion of key business information captured in electronic documents • Many organization losing grip on information as they transform into new system and process upgrade • The speed by which the quantity and kinds of content is growing

32. Portals and Business Transformation • Challenges (Organization): • Shorter time to market • Knowledge worker turnover • Organization that do not tap into their employee mind and take advantage of the knowledge within will fall behind quickly • More demanding customers and investors

33. Why Organizations Launch Web Programs

34. Market Potential • Knowledge portal is a key tool for supporting the knowledge workplace • 85% of organization plan to invest in portal during next 5 years • Portal can provide easier, unified access to business information and better communication among customer and employee

35. The Benefits of Web Portals Productivity Locating Documents Collaboration Better Decisions Quality of Data Sharing Knowledge Identifying Experts E-mail Traffic Bandwidth Use Time in Meetings Phone Calls Response Times Redundant Efforts Operating Costs Time to market

36. Web Portals Components • Content management • Business intelligence • Data warehouses and data mining • Data management

37. Web Portal Technologies • Main goal of a portal is to provide a single point of access to all information sources • portal must contain the following functionality • Gathering • Categorization • Distribution • Collaboration • Publish • Personalization • Search/navigate

38. Web Portal Technologies • Gathering • Documents created by knowledge workers are stored in variety of location( files, database, …) • Data and document needed to be captured in a common repository

39. Capture & Gather • Documents are typically written in multiple formats and stored in multiple places. • E.g.: • file systems on individual workstations • file systems on intranet servers • web sites (http servers) • file repositories (ftp servers) • Other DM Systems (like Lotus Notes) • So they need to be collected, hence standardized, and registered to be further manage

40. Capture & Gather • The process of capturing a document is called Crawling and it is often performed by “simple” softbots (software robots) or agents. • They start from a given URL (Uniform Resource Locator), i.e. a specific document – and recursively follow all the links in each document. • At this step the system must cope with access and security issues (broken links, restricted area, crypted sources, etc..).

41. Capture & Gather • Gathering requires a first-level analysis. This is performed by a content analyzer. Its task is to extract data and meta-data and put them in a standard format (like XML). • Multiple-formats issues are coped with. • Data is intrinsic at the document (ie the textual content); meta-data (creation date, author, confidentiality, etc..) is an extrinsic feature.

42. Capture & Gather

43. Web Portal Technologies • Categorization • Organize information on the repository in meaningful ways for navigation and searching • Portal should support categorization at all levels ( customer , employee,…) and in various dimension ( process, product,..)

44. Web Portal Technologies • Distribution • Portal should help individuals acquire knowledge • Through active ( search ) or passive (push) mechanisms • Support distribution of structured and unstructured information

45. Web Portal Technologies • Collaboration • Achieve through messaging, work flow, discussion DB • This functionality expands the role of portal from passive information provider to an interface for all types of an organizational interface

46. Web Portal Technologies • Publish • Publish information to all types of users • Personalization • Necessary for successful portal • Allow individuals to enhance their productivity • Search/navigate • Provides tools for identifying and accessing specific information

47. Portal Features and Benefits

48. Collaborations • Is a fundamental starting point for e-business transformation • goal is to support information sharing

49. Types of Collaborations • Asynchronous collaboration • is human-to-human interactions via computer • sub-systems having no time or space constraints. • Queries, responses, or access occur anytime and anyplace • Synchronous collaboration • is computer-based, human-to-human interaction that occurs immediately (within 5 seconds). • It can use audio, video, or data technologies

50. Requirements for successful collaborations tools • E-mail system that support collaborative services (shared calendars, task lists,..) • Web browser for browsing and presenting the documents to the users • Simple search functionality • Collaboration services • Web services for providing the access layer to documented knowledge • Indexing services for full-text search of documents • Well organized central storage location (server, database)