Opportunities to Shape uPortal Development

Many opportunities exist to become involved in shaping the direction of the uPortal Framework. The first steps are documenting our vision, requirements, understanding of problems to be addressed, and how they fit into the bigger picture of uPortal development. Several avenues are available for contributing to the direction.

Vision Statements

Institutional and individual visions for an enterprise portal framework by and for higher education. Visions address the needs individual institutions are solveing and roles we see portals playing (e.g a customizable, personalizable user platform, service delivery mechanism, etc.) Individual perspectives are then regularly discussed, and combined to come up with an overall vision for the platform.

This is the simplest way to voice your priorities and ensure they are visible for considerationg for future portal development.

To contribute an individual vision statement:

Visit: http://www.ja-sig.org/wiki/display/UPR/Vision .
If you have not yet created a JA-SIG wiki account, do so.
Log in to the JA-SIG wiki.
Click on the "Add Page" link to create a new page for your vision statement.
Save your vision statement with a name like "MY_INSTITUTION_NAME Vision"
Label you vision document with "vision" to have it appear in the list on the institutional page

To discuss evolving the Community Vision Statement:

Document your individual vision (see above)
Join the jasig-dev@lists.unm.edu mailing list
Create a post with the subject line containing: Proposed Vision - SUMMARY_HERE
In your email provide a link to the document detailing your individual vision for a portal deployment, and a brief description of how you would like to see the community vision evolve to enable this particular role.
After community discussion and consensus has emerged, changes (if appropriate) should be made to the community vision document to reflect the new understanding

Requirements

High-level descriptions of essential framework functionality. They detail what capabilities the framework must possess to be able to fulfill our vision for a portal. Requirements should be more focused on needs (the what) and less focused on implementation (the how)

Requirements are a good starting point for organizing community resources to implement common needs. Once we begin documenting the requirements, they serve as a natural point for discussion and collaboration.

Contributing Requirements

Review the Requirements Library for existing/similar requirements
Create a new wiki page using the "Requirements" template detailing your requirements including:
- title
- description
- audience
- category
- priority
- resources able to contribute
optional Provide use-cases (below) describing individual scenarios for utilizing the requirement
Join the jasig-dev@lists.unm.edu mailing list
Create a post with the subject line containing: Proposed Requirement - SUMMARY_HERE
In your email provide a link to the document detailing your high-level requirement for a portal deployment, and a summary of the goals you would like to accomplish.
As community discussion and consensus emerges, changes should be made to the requirements document (and appropriate use-cases) to reflect modifications & feedback
Work with the Framework Coordinator & Release Engineers to work towards implementation in an upcoming uPortal release

Use Cases

Portal Framework use-cases are meant to be specific, detailed descriptions of how a particular aspect of a feature should work. Use cases should include a description of the flow of a user's interaction with the system & other systems. Use cases are intended to describe the to a programmer/implementor the way a feature would be used and should work.

Use cases are particularly appropriate to propose modifications or extensions to existing behavior, and to ease collaboration between multiple parties. They are also a good way to flesh out proposed features and how they would function in detail.

Contributing Use Cases

Review the Requirements Library for requirements fulfilled by the use-case
Create a new wiki page using the "Use-Case" template describing the use case as a child page of the appropriate requirement
Include actors, states, success conditions
Join the jasig-dev@lists.unm.edu mailing list
Create a post with the subject line containing: Proposed Use Case - SUMMARY_HERE
In your email provide a link to the document detailing your high-level requirement for a portal deployment, and a brief description of how you would like to see the community vision evolve to enable this particular role.
As community discussion and consensus emerge, changes should be made to the use-case document to reflect modifications & feedback
Work with the Framework Coordinator & Release Engineers to work towards implementation in an upcoming uPortal release

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