University of Wisconsin-Madison

How uPortal Makes Our Life Easier

Our goal is to provide one-stop shopping, give users a central point to access institutional services. We provide some general useage tools like newsfeeds, PIM (Email, Todo), and weather information, but not to the breadth of Google, or Yahoo!, and mostly when value can be delivered from customizing the tool to fit Rutgers users (e.g. Rutgers Weather Reports). Building on uPortal enabled easy integration with existing authentication, user stores, and allowed us to concentrate on features & availability work without having to build an entire platform to deliver services.

For Students

When students visit the site they are presented with a static launch page which shows system announcements & links directly into various features of the portal. Clicking on Login redirects them to CAS, after signing in, they are redirected to the portal.

After logging in, students have a relatively simple layout that initially consists of five tabs: "Everyday", "Academics", "Libraries", "Campus Life" and "myTab." Other services are offered in addition to the default content, but a majority (~65% of our users) have not customized their layout. Everyday gives them access to email (modified UBC_Webmail), Personal profile, Featured events, and other content. Additionally, a shortcut bar at the top of the page provides access to frequently accessed content like email, directory, feedback, etc. Email is our most highly used feature, in addition to peak usages at semester end for checking of grades & transcripts.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive with hundreds of students taking the opportunity to submit feedback messages through the included "Feedback" channel.

For Faculty & Staff

Framework Enhancements

We have made some modifications to the base uPortal framework: