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. Features include:
- JSR-268 (Portlet 2.0) and Spring 3.0 support
- Extensible rendering pipeline with improved performance and caching
- 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 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), Internet2 Shibboleth, PubCookie, Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Novell eDirectory, and JDBC.
The 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-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. 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. 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 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. For a complete list of available portlets see http://www.jasig.org/portlets