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Archive - Edition 3: Portals
Leading Article
What is a Portal?
- Portals – The All-In-One Web Supersites: Features, Functions, Definitions, Taxonomy
- Creating New Work Paradigms for the Enterprise Portal
- The Posture of Portals
- Ingredients of Portals – An Overview
- Generic Portal Pages – What Do Most Portals Need?
What's in a Portal: MiniApps, Generic MiniApps
User-Centered Portal Design
- Portal Usability – Is There Such A Thing?
- Do Traditional Design Processes Apply to Portal Design?
- The Budget Manager Portal Revisited – Putting User-Centered Methods to Action
- Creating an Interaction Design
- Information Architecture for Web Portals
Graphic Design and Branding
"Real" Portal Projects
- City Portal
- The Web Master Portal – Roles and Scenarios
- Employee Self-Service and Life and Work Events – Two Ideas for a New User-Centric Perspective
Links & More
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Print version |
Related Links |
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Ingredients of Portals – An Overview |
Background Links |
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Portals – The All-In-One Web Supersites: Features, Functions, Definitions, Taxonomy |
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Generic Portal Pages – What Do Most Portals Need?
by Jörg Beringer, Carsten Lessmann, & Gerd Waloszek, SAP AG – May 21, 2001
Disclaimer: Please note that this edition was written in 2001. Therefore, statements in the articles, particularly those regarding SAP's products, product strategy, branding strategy, and organizational structure, may no longer be valid.
Any portal, be it an enterprise or Internet portal, is unique in its content and structure, but it also shares certain features with other portals. An enterprise portal, for example, is typically tailored to the roles of the enterprise's employees: it offers only the information and applications needed for these roles. On the other hand, many job descriptions comprise more than one role, and a portal for such a user has to offer a blend of several role-specific sub-portals. This blending results in some overlap, especially with respect to the more general components of the portal. In addition, every person, regardless of whether he or she is a manager, office clerk or service technician, is also an employee of a company. Being an employee, however, can also be regarded as a role, although a more general one. This leads us to conclude that portals have to offer content that is (1) role-specific, and content that is (2) independent of a role, or part of a generalized role, such as the employee role.
As the more generic content can be found in many portals, a reasonable question is, what the characteristics of generic portal pages are and how they can be classified according to these characteristics. Consequently, this could lead to criteria for helping portal designers to decide, which generic pages they should include in a specific portal.
This article sets out to present preliminary answers to these questions and proposes candidates for generic portal pages. Not that a portal has to include all these page types, but here is a list of possible candidates to consider when designing a portal. Note that there is quite a lot of overlap between the proposed page types, but it is far too early to present a clear-cut taxonomy of generic portal pages - portals are a very recent development and the dust still has to settle. However, we do offer a couple of general categories that we assign the pages to. We also indicate overlaps and relations between pages. Thus, the concrete user role and environment where the portal is used should provide enough criteria to choose the most suitable page types from the possible candidates.
Now let us take a look at the broad categories and the page types they include. We will conclude this discussion with a summary table, listing all categories and page types.
Entering a Portal
Trivial as it seems - but for many users it is not -, an employee's first contact with a portal is when he or she enters it. This may happen only once a day; other users may reenter the portal several times a day. There are several design choices for the Entering Page, depending on which aspects you want to cover with it. So, this is not trivial for portal designers.
Often, a LogOn Page is the first page a user sees when he or she enters a portal. It is used in Intranets, and sometimes for user authentication in the Internet too. For many users it is actually a nuisance. Therefore, it is a good idea to make the LogOn Page as "transient" as possible or to enrich it with useful information, such as a virus alert or other important system information. In other cases, it may be better to integrate the logon process into other pages, such as the Home Page or the Start my Day Page. Note, however, that the authentication fields are only needed at startup and may waste space that is urgently needed for other information.
Other pages that might welcome a user are the Start my Day and the Reception Page. These pages closely resemble each other: the Start my Day Page focuses on the primary tasks that a user has to perform when beginning his or her work. A master may, for example, first check whether his employees are present, or if there are technical problems with the machines. A Reception Page displays more general information, such as company news (which might also be presented on a separate page in a community area), weather forecast, or sports news.
The Home Page can also be used for entering the portal, but this page typically covers more aspects: it can also be a favorite page and an anchor page to which users return for reorienting themselves. In contrast to the LogOn Page, which is visited only once per session, a Home Page may be the "pivot" of a portal.
Organizing Information, Applications and Services
Portals are primarily organizing tools. They collect information in one place, and provide access to information, functions and services that are relevant to one person's work or personal interests. Access may include that users enter applications, change data, and return to the portal, which now reflects the changes made. There should not only be the one-way relation of "entering" something, as the term "portal" implies. The portal should ideally also a be "state indicator" - allowing feedback into the portal as well.
With respect to the myriad of information pieces, documents, mails, applications and service functions, a user may have to find his or her way through a portal's structure, wich is not a small task. It is also not a small task to design the structure of a portal. If the content is easily manageable, the portal can use simple structuring aids, such as one- or two-level hierarchies, which are typically presented as a list or tabstrip. A huge company Intranet, such as the SAPnet portal, on the other hand, needs further means to structure its content.
One approach to structuring larger content areas is to use pages with link lists, so-called Hallways. These pages offer access to the content via links sorted by categories, which may in themselves be structured hierarchically. Similar in function to a hallway is the Overview Page, which presents information about a certain content area as well as structured or unstructured links leading to the different section of that area.
Sitemaps and Search are further tools that help users to find and access a portal's content. Sitemaps typically display the complete structure of a portal or Website so that users can quickly navigate to the respective section or page. You can, however, offer a map on the page level only for smaller portals or Websites. Larger sites have far too many pages to be displayed in a map and may also change dynamically; no one really knows the actual structure of such a site. Search is a good complement to a sitemap, but can, of course, also be used alone. A sitemap can help to narrow down the search for larger sites. Search typically returns a list of relevant pages with links to the pages.
It would be cumbersome to repeatedly search for frequently-used pages, not to speak of remembering the URL of a page. Here, Favorite Pages (Best of) come in handy; they collect the users' often-used pages. The Web browsers offer a Favorites feature, too, by letting users set bookmarks. However, bookmarks are often collected in large unstructured lists, which are hard to browse through. The Home Page of a portal can also be regarded as Favorites Page, because it can be arranged to assemble the favorite or the mostly needed pieces of information (news, alerts, links, ...) and functionality (for example, start-of-the-day operations, ESS services, ..).
Services
Services are one of the three cornerstones of portals, the other two are information and applications. Users expect that they can perform certain activities from their portal, such as applying for a vacation or ordering office supplies. Therefore, employee self-service applications (ESS) are typical ingredients of portals; we include them in the table below under Services Page. Company news and other general information about the company are also services that users would expect in an enterprise portal. Other pages might include Bye-and-sell pages or Employee Corners where employees can offer or search for goods or services.
Other services include help for using the portal (1st use: Introduction/HowTo/Get started) and might also include information services, such as manuals for applications used in the portal, manuals for equipment used in the company, forms used in the company etc. A personal notepad (here called Support Page) for temporarily or permanently storing notes is also a welcome addition to a portal.
Community
Collaboration is one of the buzzwords when people talk about portals. Collaboration can have many facets, such as working jointly on documents, exchanging documents, being part of a workflow chain etc. Establishing communities and keeping them alive is another aspect of collaboration. A community is a group of people who share common interests and ideas. Portals are perfect places for communities within a company and on the Internet. Different types of community pages can serve as platforms for communities. We identified community pages that are more specific to members of certain roles, such as the Meeting Point, whereas the Team Place is tailored to the needs of the members of a specific team. Further page types support the direct communication between people, such as Message Boards, which are typically moderated, or Chat Rooms. The latter offer a more "anarchic" form of communication, yet may also prove as a valuable communication channel, for example, for developers working on a difficult problem.
Overview
The overview of generic portal pages below summarizes the preceding discussion and indicates relations between page types. There are:
- Similar pages: pages with a functional overlap
- Related pages: pages that either perform related functions, belong together, or complement each other
If a page type serves more than one global purpose, it is listed redundantly.
Entering a Portal |
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Page Type |
Description |
Similar/Related Pages |
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LogOn Page / Log Off Page |
A page for logging on; may display relevant system information, news etc. It may also be integrated into other pages, such as Start my Day, Reception Page, or Home Page. A page for logging off. It may display gimmicks such as a good-bye message or animation. It may also offer reminders. |
R: Start my Day, Reception Page |
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Start my Day |
A page that comes up as the first page when the user starts his/her work in the morning. |
S: Reception Page, Home Page R: LogOn/Off Page |
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Reception Page |
A page that comes up as the first page when the user enters the portal. |
S: Start my Day, Home Page R: LogOn/Off Page |
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Home Page |
The central page of a portal, which serves as an anchor point to which users may return and then move to other sections, or where they find important information and functionality. This page can fulfill many roles, entering is only one aspect. |
S: Best of/Favorites, Reception Page, Start my Day |
Organization/Structure |
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Page Type |
Description |
Similar/Related Pages |
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Home Page |
The central page of a portal which serves as an anchor point to which users may return when they "reorient" and move to other section or where they find important information and functionality. |
S: Best of/Favorites |
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Best of/Favorites
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A page that offers a selection of the most important/most often used MiniApps; it may either be pre-designed or personalized by the user. The MiniApps may also appear redundantly on other portal pages. |
S: Home Page |
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Overview Page |
A page that provides an overview of the respective portal section (info section) and/or a quick access to the functionality needed for the respective section/role/workset |
S: Hallway |
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Hallway |
A page that serves as a navigation "hallway" for a portal/Website or a part of it. Typically it is a more or less structured link list. |
S: Overview Page |
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Sitemap |
A page that provides an overview of a Portal or Website (text-based or graphical) and ideally also access to the pages or sections shown in the map. |
S: Search |
Service |
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Page Type |
Description |
Similar/Related Pages |
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1st use: Introduction/HowTo/Get started |
A page that offers online help for first-time users (text-based instructions/tutorials, videos, wizards etc.). |
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Search |
A page that offers search facilities. The search may affect different parts of the portal, specific data only, or the WWW. |
S: Sitemap |
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Sitemap |
A page that provides an overview of a Portal or Website (text-based or graphical) and ideally also access to the pages or sections shown in the map. |
S: Search |
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Support Page |
A page that provides a knowledge management area where users can store important information permanently or just temporarily for later use or as reminders. |
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Services Page |
A page that provides a personalized subset of the company Intranet & ESS (employee self-service); especially the ESS applications relate to the service aspect. |
R: Bye-and-Sell, Employee Corner |
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Bye-and-Sell, Employee Corner |
A page that supplies a forum for employees where they can offer or search for goods, announce group events, etc. This is more an employee-controlled forum (in contrast to the Services Page). |
R: Services Page |
Community |
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Page Type |
Description |
Similar/Related Pages |
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Meeting Point |
A role-specific home page that offers a community area for users having the same role. |
S: Team Place |
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Team Place |
A page that offers a community and collaboration area for team members . |
S: Meeting Point |
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Services Page |
A page that provides a personalized subset of the company Intranet & ESS (employee self-service); the Intranet pages may serve to establish a community of people sharing the same or related roles. |
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Company News |
A page that supplies news relevant to the company as well as to all employees or specific groups or roles (e.g. sales or service). |
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Message Board |
A message board for internal discussions, either company-wide or for special interest groups or roles. |
S: Chat Room |
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Chat Room |
A chat area for internal discussions, either company-wide or for special interest groups or roles. |
S: Message Board |
Final Word
Generic pages round portals up by offering elements that are beyond the pure role-specific or interest-based needs. Portal designers should know, which generic pages types are at their disposal to assure that they select the most suitable ones for their portals. The list presented here is by no means complete, but it is a first step towards a better understanding of what ingredients are needed for well-designed, people-centric portals.
