(This is the final feature list that is derived from the rough draft feature list)
uPortal Platform Features
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uPortal's flexible,enterprise-grade APIs allow adopters to cleanly extend the portal to meet local requirements and integrate with other campus services. A modular architecture maintains a separation between portal and portlet code, resulting in a lightweight deployment with separately upgradeable components. uPortal 4 brings many enhancements to the platform's core framework, includingFeatures include:
- JSR-268 (Portlet 2.0) and Spring 3.0 support
- New extensible Extensible rendering pipeline with improved performance and caching
- Updated base skin and JavaScript standardization
- Improved internationalization Internationalization support
- REST APIs exposing read-access to uPortal users, groups, and permissions
- Flexible theme and skin customization with a modern default skin included
- User subscription to pre-formatted tabs
- Proven scalability up to at least 8 million users.
- Support for multiple international languages (English, French, etc...)clustering and the hosting of multiple portals from a single installation.
- Support for many popular databases, including Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Microsoft SQL Server
Authentication
uPortal supports a variety of the most popular authentication systems making integration to your campus authentication source a simple task. Out of the box support for accessing your campus systems through single sign-on (SSO) frameworks are also included. uPortal even provides a security API allowing creation of custom authentication implementation.
Ready support for popular authentication sources include: Jasig Central Authentication Service (CAS)
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, Internet2 Shibboleth
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, PubCookie
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, Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Novell eDirectory, and JDBC.
The Person Directory API allows the portal to consume user attribute information from multiple sources, including OpenLDAP
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, Microsoft Active directory, and custom databases.
Security and Privacy
uPortal ensures security by following current best practices to guard against SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. User attributes and data from remote sources are not copied into the uPortal database, protecting the privacy of uPortal users and preventing the proliferation of sensitive data across campus databases.
Groups and Permissions
uPortal uses a highly performant and extensible Group API allowing the portal to consume and combine group data from multiple sources, including LDAP, Active Directory, Grouper, and custom databases. Other permissions and group features include:
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Group membership can also be dynamically determined by applying logic to user attributes. uPortal also includes an exceptionally powerful authorization system used to
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determine user's layout, content, and allowed actions.
Portal Administration
Updates to portal administration in uPortal 4 make it simpler than ever to create, assign, and manage groups, permissions, and content.
Portal administration features include:
- Sophisticated groups and permissions administration portlets
- Delegated permissions for user, group, and content management
- Portlet publishing workflows (creation, approval, publishing, and expiration)
- Dashboards for managing users
Flexible Layouts
uPortal's sophisticated layout management merges administrator-defined content with user customization. Portal tabs may be both administrator-managed and user-editable using the following features:
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Many of these functions can be delegated. Updated user management portlet provides an integrated dashboard for viewing, managing, and impersonating users. You can easily publish portlets and use portlet-specific rich configuration screens. The portlet life-cycle can be automated or performed manually.
User Experience
uPortal 4 boasts an impressive feature set that allows institutions to create a rich, accessible (WCAG-2.0 AA compliant) user experience for faculty, students, and staff, including:
- Unified customization interface for adding content and selecting skins and layouts
- Drag and drop layout reordering
- Updated skins
- Aggregation, compression, and caching user interface resources for improved browser performance
- Compliance with the WCAG-2.0 AA standard (accessibility features include a table-free layout, keyboard interactions, valid markup, and ARIA roles)
- Enhanced flyout menus with simplified CSS
Mobile Access
uPortal offers web-based and native app experiences for a wide variety of mobile devices.
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. A sophisticated layout management merges administrator-defined content with user-customized content. Users can optionally subscribe to a pre-defined tab of content. Users can customize their layout through drag and drop rearranging, changing their skin, add/delete/move tabs, and easily find and add new content. Advanced search features and enhanced fly-out menus make navigation easy.
Mobile Access
uPortal comes delivered offering a mobile-friendly theme and skin that is optimized for smart phones. The new uMobile project is a 100% free and open source that provides a native app for iPhone and Android devices that will further enhance the portal experience. For more information, see <link to uMobile>
Branding
Higher education institutions can brand their uPortal instance through highly customizable themes and skins. Each layer of uPortal's rendering pipeline provides flexibility for institutional customization. The user manual and inline documentation guide developers, while developer-centrix tools can disable caching and add debugging resources during the development lifecycle.
Security and Privacy
uPortal ensures security by following current best practices to guard against SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. User attributes and data from remote sources are not copied into the uPortal database, protecting the privacy of uPortal users and preventing the proliferation of sensitive data across campus databases.
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Web designers can easily customize the skin without any Java/uPortal expertise.
Statistics and Auditing
uPortal includes a database-persistent event logger capable of tracking large amounts of information about portal usage. Activities that are supported out of the box include user sessions, portlet interactions, layout customizations, portlet rendering times, and more. uPortal flexibility also allows campuses to configure additional logging events.
Portlet Development and Deployment
Successful enterprise portals portlets deliver compelling integrations with campus services, combing diverse IT resources to create a unified, personalized user experience. uPortal delivers content through pre-configured portlet types and optional portlets.
Community Resources and Support
In addition to robust functionality and advanced technology, many community resources are available through the Jasig community of expert portal developers and enthusiasts.
Benefits of leveraging the Jasig community include:
- Free access to all maintenance releases and bug fixes
- Free access to all security notifications
- Free portal administration manual
- Free access to portal and portlet user and development email lists
- Free access to community calls, demonstrations, and roadmaps
- Paid support, custom development, and training available from Jasig commercial partners
uPortal Content and Portlets
Reusable Built-in Portlet Types
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For a complete list of available portlets see http://www.jasig.org/portlets