Articles

Leading Article

• Portals – The Information, Functionality and Services I Need at My Fingertips

What is a Portal?

The articles in this section explain what a portal is and present some ingredients of portals.

• 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

MiniApps, also called iViews, are the typical building blocks of portals. There are MiniApps that are specific to a certain portal, and there are MiniApps that can be used in many portals - the so-called generic MiniApps. This article covers the generic MiniApps.

• Generic MiniApps (iViews)

Graphic Design and Branding

Graphic design and branding are the key to tailoring portals to the customers' needs. They give portals an "individual" touch and make them aesthetically pleasing. Here, we offer an article that compares portal design to Web design.

• Portal Design vs. Web Design

Previous Editions: Edition 3 (published May 21, 2001) • See the Disclaimer Below

Portals – The Information, Functionality and Services I Need at My Fingertips

In this third edition of the SAP Design Guild experts discuss enterprise portals – their role, design and ingredients. Portals have become the new concept for integrating massive amounts of information and functionality in a Web-based user interface. They aim at combining flexibility and structure in order to offer both aspects in one package tailored to the needs of employees.

As people collaborate and participate in business processes through enterprise portals, the necessary information, application, and services – regardless of where they are located – have to be presented in ways that are easy to use. Therefore, portals are not just huge shopping baskets full of things that might be useful. They are customized and personalized to user roles and tasks: tailor-made and people-centric solutions.

This edition offers six sections, each reflecting the topic "portals" from a different point of view. For your convenience, the sections and articles are introduced in short.

Read more on "Portals – The Information, Functionality and Services I Need at My Fingertips"

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.

Articles

User-Centered Portal Design

Portals are – like any software – built for users. However, portals are more than just a piece of software to be used in an electronic workplace - they are the workplace for the users. Naturally, it makes more than sense to include the prospective users of portals in the design process. Two of the articles in this section discuss user-centered design in more detail. Further articles cover more general usability issues, as well as a new approach to structuring information called information architecture.

• 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

"Real" Portal Projects

In this section, we present "real" portal projects such as the City Portal and the Webmaster Portal. A third article presents portal components, such as self-service and life/work event Web applications, which are useful additions to many portals.

• 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

Read also the article on the Budget Manager Portal in this edition.