(This is the final feature list that is derived from the rough draft feature list)
uPortal Platform Features
Core Framework
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, including:
- JSR-268 (Portlet 2.0) and Spring 3.0 support
- New extensible rendering pipeline with improved performance and caching
- Updated base skin and JavaScript standardization
- Improved internationalization support
- REST APIs exposing read-access to uPortal users, groups, and permissions
- User subscription to pre-formatted tabs
- Support for multiple international languages (English, French, etc...)
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)
- Internet2 Shibboleth
- PubCookie
- Active Directory
- OpenLDAP
- Novell eDirectory
- JDBC
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, and custom databases. Other permissions and group features include:
- Grouper Integration out of the box
- Creation of groups based on user attributes
- Powerful authorization system used to define and check user permissions
- Supports permission access to constituent layouts and content
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:
- Drag and drop layout customization
- Keyboard interactions
- Distributed content managed by user attributes and group permissions
- Subscribable information allowing users access to pre-configured content
User Experience
uPortal 4 boasts an impressive feature set that allows institutions to create a rich, accessible 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.
Interface Customization
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.
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, and portlet rendering times. uPortal can even be customized to allow additional logging events.
Portlet Development and Deployment
Successful enterprise portals 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