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(This is the final feature list that is derived from the rough draft and brochure 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 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...)
  • Scalable for enterprise deployments and proven to scale up to at least 8 million users. Portal supports clustering and hosting 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), Internet2 Shibboleth, PubCookie, Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Novell eDirectory, JDBC

Person directory API allows the portal to consume user attribute information from multiple sources, including OpenLDAP, 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. Group membership can also be dynamically determined by applying logic to user attributes. uPortal also includes an exceptionally powerful authorization system used to 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. 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-specifc rich configuration screens. The portlet lifecycle can be automated or performed manually.

User Experience

uPortal 4 boasts an impressive feature set that allows institutions to create a rich, accessible user experience for faculty, students, and staff. 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.

  • Allow users to optionally subscribe to a pre-defined tab of content.
  • 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 offering 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-centric tools can disable caching and add debugging resources during the development lifecycle.

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 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.

Pre-configured Portlet Types

uPortal includes generic, reusable publishing types, allowing administrators to easily create user-subscribable content. These built-in portlet types include:

  • Web Proxy (with content clipping and authentication)
  • RSS
  • Simple Content Management (WYSIWYG editor)
  • Bookmarks
  • IFrames
  • SQL Graphing (for statistics and auditing)
  • Images
Optional Portlets

Jasig sponsored portlets are modularized using well-defined standard portlet APIs. They will run in any JSR-168 compliant portal and can be upgraded separately from the uPortal platform itself. Jasig portlets share a focus on performance, security, and integration, and all sponsored portlets make use of common Jasig libraries for browser-side caching of user interface resources and validation of user input. Currently available Jasig portlets include:

  • Announcements
  • Bookmarks
  • Calendar
  • Dictionary/Thesaurus
  • Email Preview
  • Facebook
  • Google Maps
  • LTI integration
  • Search 
  • Translation
  • Twitter
  • Weather

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
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