Building the Student Portal at Nottingham
updated: Nov 2002
The release milestones are separated into two distinct threads. There is a need to show, and give access to the portal for user feedback, and project dissemination purposes. This may use early prototypes, demo usernames and alternative infrastructure strategies. There is a parallel thread based on the production release that will be used for extensive testing purposes and will incorporate the code and infrastructure that is intended for that release.
The prototype portal will be a local installation of uPortal with just two student users representing different departments. It aims to provide a target for developers to work towards, and so gain skills at infrastructure, channel writing, and interface. It will provide a baseline for estimating timescales for more complex channel developments. It will contain at least two channels that retrieve information from local databases, and render that into the portal. There are no particular requirements for robustness or performance, beyond what is easily achievable. The prototype portal will be of a sufficient standard to show to members of the Steering Group, and help them determine the characteristics of the developing portal, in terms of scope, functionality and content. Most channels will be included at stimulus for discussion, and a '"smoke 'n mirrors" approach is OK.
This portal represents a growing stability and closer correspondence to the emerging vision. The primary purpose is for demonstration, but it will be mounted on a dedicated platform, and be always available. There will be a mix of functional channels, and mock-ups. Links to databases will usually be live, though probably to copies of the database, rather than production server.
This portal is one which has sufficient guest usernames and is sufficiently robust, to allow for hands on experience by end-users. Many channels are still mocked-up, but will behave gracefully. It's purpose is to elicit early feedback about the user interface, usability and channel functionality by independent users, with or without a member of the project team. This portal also allows external access to the portal, for guest users,and a link will be made available from Ja-Sig and advertised on portals@jiscmail. Multiple guest usernames allowed, but all share a single default layout, and map to single generic user data.
The pre-production portal contains all infrastructure and those channels intended for the October release in a functional state, but is only available to willing volunteer users. Extensive load testing will be performed with the assistance of IBS. This represents the local code repository for developers.
The first production rollout for a significant number of users (say 1000). Expected to provide a robust & reliable service. The selection of channels will have been influenced by what was possible to achieve and test in a limited timescale, rather than aiming for implementation of the full portal vision.
At least 75% of the University population now has access to the portal, and the channels cover at least 75% of the desirable services.
Users and services offered are maximized as close to 100% as is feasible.
http://www.eis.nottingham.ac.uk/compass/
eis
