# Deployment Guide

# Planning Portal Structure and Content

This chapter describes portal structure and content at a high level.

The purpose of this chapter is to help you develop a plan to assign administrative responsibility for managing portal structure and content.

At the end of this chapter, you should be able to scope the effort involved in deploying the initial administrative objects and content. You should also be ready to assign administrative responsibility for the initial deployment.

Before you proceed, print Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet. You can use the worksheet to record your decisions and assignments.

This chapter includes the following topics to help you scope and assign tasks for your deployment effort

.

Task | Topic
--- | ---
Decide whether you want to implement a single portal with multiple experience definitions or to create a federation of multiple portals. | Single Portals and Federated Portals
Determine different types of audiences for which you want to support custom views so that you can implement corresponding, appropriate Experience Definitions. | Experience Definitions
Determine the content types and content sources you want to make accessible through the Knowledge Directory. | Knowledge Directory
Determine the types of communities you want to include in your initial deployment. | Communities
Determine the types of portlets you want to include in your initial deployment. | Portlets
Decide how you plan to incorporate collaboration features into your deployment. | Collaboration
Determine your preferences for customizing Search behavior. | Search

The Administrator Guide provides detailed procedures for implementing these objects.

## Single Portals and Federated Portals

First, decide whether you plan to deploy one portal with multiple Experience Definitions or multiple, federated portals. Figure 3-1 and Figure 3-2 illustrate the difference in deployments of a single portal, in which a single instance of ALI manages various service requests from users; and a federated portal, in which multiple ALI instances manage various service requests from separate portals.

Figure 3-1 Single Portal with Multiple Experience Definitions

Figure 3-2 Federated Portal

In the past, an enterprise might have used a federated model for any of the following reasons:

- Different technology: many applications offer portal interfaces
- Different sponsors: many business units want autonomy because they are comfortable with different platforms or devoted to separate brands
- Different audiences: audiences with deep functional needs or with different security—consumers, employees, partners
- Different project schedules: business unit frustration

Consider the many benefits of having only one portal:

- Users have different experiences but are managed in one place
- IT can more easily scale the portal
- It is easy to distribute enterprise-wide communications
- It is easy to instigate enterprise-wide business processes
- Common content management system

If you are starting with multiple portals, there are several ways to take advantage of what you have already done:

- Leverage the ALI Web services architecture and common portal standards (JSR-168, WSRP) to integrate services from other portals. The ALUI can integrate applications written in any modern programming language.
- Leverage your existing authentication service or single sign-on to synchronize users and user privileges across multiple portals or sites.
- Leverage Federated Search services to connect to search engines for multiple content portals.
- Leverage customizable navigation features to link to other portals.

For more information on the business cases in which single portals or federated portals are appropriate, visit the Product Center.

In Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet, record your decision.

## Experience Definitions

Next, determine how many different Experience Definitions you plan to deploy.

Experience Definitions allow you to display different branding and features to different audiences.

Experience Definitions control the overall look, feel, and access features for a group of users—the header and footer; the navigation scheme; the default page displayed at login; access to My Pages, communities, and the Knowledge Directory; and any mandatory links displayed in the navigation.

For example, you might create an Experience Definition for a particular customer that includes the customer's logo and company colors and that includes access to My Communities and the Knowledge Directory, but not to My Pages or Administration.

Experience Definitions are applied according to rules you configure with the Experience Rules Manager. For example, you can create rules that sort users from a particular customer IP address into an Experience Definition you have configured for such customers.

For information on configuring Experience Definitions and Experience Rules, see the Administrator Guide.

Figure 3-3 illustrates the correspondence between various audiences and Experience Definitions. For example, if you have three divisions in your company that should have somewhat different access, you might create Experience Definitions A, B, and C. Similarly, if you have four customers, you might want them to view customized support sites F, G, H, and I. You might create definition J for guests from trusted domains and definition K for guests from non-trusted domains.

Figure 3-3 Supporting Various Audiences with Experience Definitions

In Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet, identify the Experience Definitions you want to implement and assign a leader to be responsible for their implementation.

BEA provides the following resources to prepare the leader for this assignment.

Resource | Description
--- | ---
Consulting Services | Get advice from the experts.
Education Services | Take classes from the experts.
Knowledge Base | Register and log into the Support Center. Search the Knowledge Base for "Experience Definition" topics.
Administrator Guide and Online Help | Learn how to implement the Experience Definition and Experience Rule portal objects.

## Knowledge Directory

Next, determine the types of content you plan to make available through the portal Knowledge Directory.

Content might be located in multiple systems: file repositories, ERP systems, databases and so on. ALUI pulls content into the portal through various mechanisms, including Content Services, searches, portlets, Publisher, and Collaboration. In the portal, content is discoverable through the Knowledge Directory and through Search indexes.

All common file types can be full-text indexed, but ALI has extra capabilities to extract metadata from the following types of file repositories.

Repository | Deployment Considerations
--- | ---
Windows Files | The most common source of information is files located on a Microsoft Windows network. A Content Service (CS) attempts to import content from each document it finds. The CS starts crawling at one file folder of any UNC-compatible directory (\\<computer_name>\<folder_name>\<subfolder_name>) and continue crawling into subfolders. Things to consider about Windows network system files include: Is there information in a secure folder that will require authentication to access? What domain and user name can be used to gain access? Do you want to import Windows security information with the document or rely on ALI security?
Web | Content Services start crawling at a single Web page and continue to follow links to connected pages. You can control the content that enters your Knowledge Directory by using filters and special CS options. The important questions to ask about Web information are: Is there a proxy server? What is the configuration of the proxy server? What is the target site security?
Lotus Notes | If you use Lotus Notes, you can pull application records and documents directly into the Knowledge Directory. Considerations include: Which databases do you want to start with? Do you want to import security?
Microsoft Exchange | E-mail is everywhere and is a critical source of information that most people need to do their jobs. However, in most organizations, e-mail information stays with the user. With ALI, however, you can crawl information from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes and have it be searchable from the portal. Considerations to think about include: Are there public folders set up on the mail system? What type of access will be required?
Documentum | If you store documents in Documentum, then you can pull them directory into the Knowledge Directory. Considerations to think about include: Which docbases do you want to start with? Do you want to import security?
Custom | If you have documents or records in other systems, you can use the IDK to develop a Java or .NET Content Service to pull the documents from these systems into the Knowledge Directory. For information on developing custom applications with the IDK, visit the http://dev2dev.bea.com.

In Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet, identify the content types you want to support and assign a leader to be responsible for implementation of each.

BEA provides the following resources to prepare the leader for this assignment.

Resource | Description
--- | ---
Consulting Services | Get advice from the experts.
Education Services | Take classes from the experts. To learn how to integrate content, enroll in the series of classes developed for Content Managers.
Knowledge Base | Register and log into the Support Center. Search the Knowledge Base for content-related topics, such as "Knowledge Directory", "Content Services", "Exchange", "Windows Files", and the like.
Administrator Guide and Online Help | Learn how to implement a Knowledge Directory taxonomy, content types, content filters, and Content Services objects.

## Communities

Next, consider the numbers and types of Communities you plan to include initially in your deployment.

Communities are pages shared between the members of a group to collaborate and communicate on a particular project or on departmental goals.

Communities provide the following benefits to users:

- Consistent user experience and navigation
- Systematic knowledge capture and sharing
- Location of and interaction with experts
- Shortened learning curve and time-to-contribution

Here are a few ideas for how to use communities:

- Business Unit Resource Center (Line of Business Communities)

  Audience | Business unit or department Customers of that business unit or department
  What to put in it | Community documents, links, calendar Metrics Expert finder Q&A
  Success indicators | Strong departmental or group identity Existing intranet as content source Motivated community owner
  Pitfalls to avoid | Static page that people visit and forget
  Suggested AquaLogic Interaction tools | Portlet Framework - Microsoft Excel Publisher

- Interactive Workspace (Collaborative Communities)

  Audience | Ad hoc or established project workgroups
  What to put in it | Project task list Document management and archive Project calendar Threaded discussions Project metrics
  Success indicators | Members spread out Project has specific objectives and milestones Project has outgrown e-mail and file-shares
  Pitfalls to avoid | Dustbin of history: old projects, communities that do not go away Ghost town: two or three people are probably not enough
  Suggested AquaLogic Interaction tools | Collaboration Studio Portlet Framework - Microsoft Excel

- Customer or Partner Management Site (Sales and Service-Oriented Communities)

  Audience | Customers or partners
  What to put in it | Key customer or partner resources: documents, calendar Self-service access to CRM or PRM system Feedback mechanism Customer-to-customer or partner-to-partner: facilitate community
  Success indicators | Portal-only access for critical information Responsiveness to customer/partner feedback
  Pitfalls to avoid | No human input
  Suggested AquaLogic Interaction tools | Collaboration Studio Portlet Framework - Microsoft Excel

- Dashboards (Analytic Communities)

  Audience | Management
  What to put in it | Performance metrics Financial documents
  Success indicators | Support to enforce consistent data formatting Portal-only access for critical information Culture of accountability based on metrics
  Pitfalls to avoid | Make sure the dashboards have fresh data Make sure security works appropriately
  Suggested AquaLogic Interaction tools | Portlet Framework - Microsoft Excel Integration Services for SAP and PeopleSoft

- Business Process Applications (Process Communities)

  Audience | Users involved in process
  What to put in it | Published content Data from multiple systems Workflow Metrics
  Success indicators | Simple navigation, consistent branding a priority Unified search criteria Looking to utilize reusable components, common foundation
  Pitfalls to avoid | If you do not have a process, the software will not do it for you
  Suggested AquaLogic Interaction tools | Publisher Collaboration Process Search Studio Portlet Framework - Microsoft Excel

On Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet, identify the types of communities you want to include initially in your deployment and assign a leader to be responsible for implementation of each.

BEA provides the following resources to prepare the leader for this assignment.

Resource | Description
--- | ---
Consulting Services | Get advice from the experts.
Education Services | Take classes from the experts. To learn how to develop community content, enroll in the series of classes developed for Community Managers.
Knowledge Base | Register and log into the Support Center. Search the Knowledge Base for community-related topics, such as "Community", "Subcommunities", and the like.
Administrator Guide | Learn how to implement and manage Community objects and related portal objects, such as Community Templates and Subcommunities.

## Portlets

Next, consider the numbers and types of portlets, as well as tools you might use to develop additional portlets.

Portlets are applications that are embedded in a portal and can be interactive or merely informational. They are able to communicate preferences with the portal and communicate with other portlets.

There are several components involved in a portlet. A portlet must be based on a web service. The web service controls the bulk of the portlet settings, for example, the URL and cache settings. The portlet controls the name, width, type, and administrative preferences (if available). You can also create portlet templates allowing you to create multiple instances of the same portlet, with each instance looking different or displaying different information based on the administrative preferences set in that instance.

BEA provides pre-packaged portlets to support integration with commonly requested applications or services. For a complete list of pre-packaged portlets, see Components of AquaLogic User Interaction. For a description of these products, visit the Product Center.

You can also create your own portlets using Studio or Publisher. For a description of these products, visit the Product Center.

You can also develop portlets using the IDK. For information, visit the ALUI Developer Center http://dev2dev.bea.com/aluserinteraction/.

There are many reasons you might want to build your own portlets:

- You can simplify the user experience by avoiding separate logins for each service, avoiding the complexity of exposing users to a complete application, or you can customize and condense application experiences.
- You can Web-enable proprietary systems to avoid Web site sprawl, avoid security and user interface costs, and provide Internet access through the ALI gateway.
- You can draw users to a broad experience like quality and safety checks or benefits enrollment.

Consider the following questions when deciding which portlets to build first:

- What do people want?
- What is a difficult or time-consuming to do?
- What do people use regularly?
- What is important to people's jobs?
- What drives the business?
- Which systems are proprietary?

Here are some ideas for portlets:

E-mail Pager Calendar ERP access Yellow pages Sales analysis Sales support | Invoice lookup Time and expense Work order status Employee directory Executive dashboard Simplified navigation | WYSIWYG publishing Time zone calculators Process-based portlets Project artifact dashboard Business initiatives calendar Conference room scheduling

In Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet, identify the types of portlets you want to initially include in your deployment and assign a leader to be responsible for implementation of each.

BEA provides the following resources to prepare the leader for this assignment.

Resource | Description
--- | ---
Consulting Services | Get advice from the experts.
Education Services | Take classes from the experts. To learn how to develop portlets, enroll in the series of classes developed for Content Managers or Portal Developers.
Knowledge Base | Register and log into the Support Center. Search the Knowledge Base for portlet-related topics, such as "portlet", "+mail +portlet", and the like.
Administrator Guide and Online Help | Learn how to implement and manage portlet objects and related portal objects, such as Portlet Templates and Web Services.
Development Documentation | You can also develop portlets using the IDK. For information, visit http://dev2dev.bea.com/aluserinteraction/.

## Collaboration

Next, consider requirements for incorporating collaboration features in your site.

This section describes the following topics for Content Managers to consider:

- Incorporating AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration
- Incorporating AquaLogic Interaction Process

### Incorporating AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration

This section describes how you can deploy Collaboration to support applications with a focus on producing documents, transferring knowledge to a large external audience, or simply organizing a small team around a common goal. It includes the following examples:

- Example: Sales Process Automation
- Example: Customer Support
- Example: Finance Application
- Example: E-learning Application

#### Example: Sales Process Automation

Suppose each account manager at a given organization manages several prospective clients. A sales process automation application powered by AquaLogic User Interaction would enable account managers to create Web properties for each prospective client in their portfolio. Each of these Web applications would have a Collaboration project as part of the application template. The project itself would be based on a Collaboration project template that was region specific. For example, there might be two project templates, one for United States sales and one for International. The template would then create a project with all of the appropriate legal contracts, product schedules, marketing documentation, and support contracts automatically preloaded.

Account managers would simply have to enter a new prospect's account name and e-mail address into the portal. The Web property would be automatically created and Collaboration would send a notification directly to the client. The account managers would also subscribe to the Collaboration project as a whole so that they would be notified when clients begin to interact. This online property would then be available to the prospective client from anywhere in the world. Clients could share documents, upload an RFP, assign various tasks to their account managers, post discussion questions on topics of concern, or schedule meeting events through the Collaboration project available in this application.

Not only would this application increase contact and communication between sales representatives and prospective clients, but it would serve to minimize unnecessary work-load on the sales representatives. Managing prospective clients becomes much easier with Collaboration notifications. Each time a client poses a question or uploads a new document, the sales representatives are instantly notified. In addition, because Collaboration is fully integrated into the portal, sales representatives can easily invite other employees with valid expertise into the Collaboration project.

#### Example: Customer Support

Most organizations today have some sort of support Web site. Collaboration can be used in this support context to improve response rate, decrease incident resolution time, and give customers an inside look into how their issues are being solved.

Assume that a customer can log in to an external support Web site and file incident reports for problems they are experiencing with a product. For each new incident that is filed, a Collaboration project is created and the relevant support engineer is notified. The engineer and the customer can then enter a discussion through the Discussions portion of the Collaboration project. Collaboration will keep track of all the messages that go back and forth and in the end will provide a clear record of the incident resolution. If this particular incident becomes common, the support engineer might forward the discussion information to the entire group so that everyone is immediately aware of the resolution.

The Collaboration project thus becomes the hub for every incident that Customer Support deals with. Each incident can be populated with the appropriate tasks and documents that are necessary to solve the customer's issue. The customer then has a real-time outlook into exactly what is being done to resolve the issue.

#### Example: Finance Application

At the end of each quarter, the accounting departments of most organizations run through a number of tasks and produce several documents detailing the organization's financial performance. Many customers have created a Finance Dashboard that incorporates Collaboration to automate the process of closing their books.

Normally the heart of these applications is a Collaboration project template which outlines all of the necessary tasks, documents, and dates that must be met to close the books. Each quarter a new project is created from this template and all of the necessary data is loaded up and all of the relevant employees are automatically assigned their tasks for the quarter. In addition, notifications are set up so that employees know when their particular tasks should start, when they are due, and which of their tasks are overdue. Employees come to the Collaboration project to examine their tasks, post questions or concerns, and check-in relevant documentation. The head of the finance department then has a consistent outlook onto the close process and is able to communicate results more quickly and accurately to the executive team.

Once the close process is complete, the project is archived and stored as a record. In the event of an audit, the finance department can easily pull up all of the actions that were performed each quarter by simply restoring old Collaboration projects.

#### Example: E-learning Application

A number of customers in the education field use Collaboration as an online classroom. Normally each class has an associated Collaboration project where the instructor posts a syllabus, assignments, and answers student questions. A similar application can be applied to e-learning in the corporate environment.

### Incorporating AquaLogic Interaction Process

Process builds upon AquaLogic User Interaction to allow people to rapidly build and deploy applications which automate business processes in their enterprise.

Process is a set of business tools that provides the ability to design, activate, and deploy business processes into a live environment. The platform lets users quickly combine dissimilar applications into integrated business processes. Users can then modify these processes in realtime, enabling business to react dynamically to changing market conditions.

Process is used to create and manage departmental and enterprise business processes and workflows. Common examples of these processes include purchase order requisitions, performance reviews, travel authorizations, and work order requests. All businesses have tens or hundreds of processes that can potentially be automated with Process. These processes generally involve human participants viewing and entering data through a Web browser and a flow of data through a dynamic sequence of steps encompassing both humans and systems.

For more information on Process, visit http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13174_01/alui/index.html.

## Search

Next, consider requirements for incorporating search features in your site.

Search allows users to quickly and efficiently find a wide variety of information from sources across the enterprise, both inside and outside the Portal and related Publisher and Collaboration products. Search works with the ALI Directories and Web Services infrastructure to help employees do their jobs. Salespeople can find contract resources needed to close deals; marketing executives can find in-progress design documents for new products; customer service representatives can find resources stored in a variety of CRM, file, and Web repositories.

There are a number of possible sources of searchable content, and it is important to understand the options for providing that content to end-users:

- Knowledge Directory: The core of the ALUI knowledge management infrastructure is the Knowledge Directory—a hierarchy of folders that contain links to files of various formats, stored in different types of repositories. Files can be crawled into the Directory or manually submitted, and can be filtered into the folder hierarchy (also known as a taxonomy) in order to provide an entry point to high-quality, organized content. In addition to the out-of-the-box functionality, virtually any repository can be made searchable through the creation of Content Services. All items in the Knowledge Directory can be searchable.
- Collaboration: The project workspaces provided by Collaboration contain documents, threaded discussions, announcements, and task lists contributed and managed by distributed teams. All items in Collaboration can be searchable.
- Publisher: The form-based data entry and file management provided by Publisher allows specialized content submitted by users to be published and surfaced in the portal through portlets. All published content items associated with portlets can be searchable.
- Portal Administrative Objects: Users, web services, portlets, Content Services—all the objects that make up the administrative infrastructure of a portal are searchable. End-users can search for users (to view profile and expertise information), communities (to visit or join), and portlets (to add to a My Page). Administrators (who need to create and manipulate all types of objects) can search for a wider variety of items and have more advanced options in their search results.
- Non-portal Searchable Content: Legacy search engines and repositories with pre-existing search or query functionality can often contain valuable sources of content that for various reasons cannot be crawled into the portal or managed through Collaboration or Publisher. With search web services, any repository that can respond to queries can be extended with a web services adapter so that it can be searched from the portal. Results from a number of disparate search providers (both inside the enterprise and on the internet) can be aggregated in this way.

The Search administrator is responsible for creating and scheduling the initial search index jobs as well as update jobs. The Search administrator is also responsible for customizing search "Best Bets" and the search thesaurus.

On Portal Content Responsibilities Worksheet, assign a leader to be responsible for implementing Search.

BEA provides the following resources to prepare the leader for this assignment.

Resource | Description
--- | ---
Consulting Services | Get advice from the experts.
Education Services | Take classes from the experts. To learn how content is discoverable in the portal, enroll in the series of classes developed for Content Managers.
Knowledge Base | Register and log into the Support Center. Search the Knowledge Base for search-related topics, such as "Search", "Best Bets", "thesaurus", and the like.
Administrator Guide | Learn how to set up and maintain the Search index, as well as how to configure Search features, such as Best Bets and the thesaurus.

## Developing and Integrating Custom Applications

ALI offers integration packages for commonly used applications. If ALI does not offer an integration package for an application you use, you can use the AquaLogic Interaction Development Kit (IDK) to develop integration packages for existing applications, packaged or custom, or to develop new applications to meet the needs of a dynamic enterprise.

This section provides the following examples of applications you can develop with the IDK:

- Example: Access and Personalization
- Example: Searching for Data and Documents
- Example: Customer Branded Support Site

For complete information on the IDK and more examples of custom-developed applications, see http://dev2dev.bea.com/aluserinteraction/.

### Example: Access and Personalization

Suppose your customer accounts are set up in a CRM system such as Siebel. As new accounts are added to Siebel, you need to provide customers access to the portal and certain communities on the portal.

You can set up an authentication web service to enable the portal to periodically connect to the Siebel system, query for customer users, and provision accounts for them on the portal. In addition, this authentication web service can also be configured to accept the username and password at login and authenticate the user against Siebel. This eliminates the need for creating portal accounts manually. Also, since access is based on the back-end system, the moment the customer account is suspended on Siebel, access on the portal is also automatically denied.

You can also set up a profile web service in conjunction with the authentication web service to tap into each customer's profile information on Siebel and augment the portal user profile. This profile information can be used to add the customer user to the appropriate groups that will drive personalization. This profile information might be the basis for providing access to relevant communities; for example, a company that sells wines could provide their distributor with access to the appropriate community depending on their geographical address, a portlet that lists all the special events could be personalized based on the user profile information that tracks geography.

### Example: Searching for Data and Documents

Suppose that you want to provide a way for customers to look at the status of their orders and these orders are stored in a Lawson ERP system (it could be in any ERP system, packaged or homegrown). One solution is to develop a custom search web service that, given keywords such as start and end dates, pulls in a set of sales orders and associated status information. The search web service would use the customer user credentials and information for identification purposes and return only those sales orders corresponding to that customer. This search could be conducted from the Federated Search page or, alternatively, set up as a portlet inside a community.

Suppose that you want to be able to provide the customer with access to all the contracts that they have signed with your company and that these contracts are stored in an Windows file server. You can use the Content Service -Windows Files to crawl these documents into the Knowledge Directory, and the customer can browse the Knowledge Directory to find the contracts. Alternatively, you can create a content snapshot portlet that provides them with links to the Knowledge Directory that correspond to the contracts that pertain to them.

What if instead of just finished contracts, you need to keep various versions of contracts that are being negotiated between your sales representative and the customer. Use a Collaboration project to store these documents. Collaboration projects are appropriate for work in progress. When the document is finished, it can be stored in a document repository.

### Example: Customer Branded Support Site

You can choose to give each customer a personalized experience replete with custom branding. You can create a Experience Definition that includes the customer's own branding. As soon as the customer logs in to the portal, they are directed to their branded Experience Definition. You can build custom navigation using the IDK Pluggable Navigation, replacing the portal's regular navigation. The look of a Experience Definition can be completely different from that of the parent portal.

Suppose that whenever a user from a particular customer site logs on, you want to be notified. Using the IDK Portal Event Interface (PEI), you can write custom code that gets triggered upon the customer logging in and notifies you via e-mail.