Questions:

  1. How long have you had a portal?
  2. What constituents are being served?
  3. What are the high level functions of the portal? For example:
    1. Provide news/communications, perhaps targeted to students/faculty/staff, by campus, by school, etc.
    2. Display messages targeted to individuals based on their status, deadlines, etc.
    3. Use collaboration tools such as email, calendar, etc. (see new messages/appointments, perhaps create new information within the portal)
    4. See current information from core business systems, for example: my drop/add status from the student system, my upcoming paycheck from the payroll system, etc.
    5. Carry out tasks within the portal that post data back to core business systems, for example, drop a class, enroll in a benefits plan, etc.
    6. Provide quick links to frequently used web-based services
    7. Provide comprehensive links to web-based services (not limited to the portal, could be located in other applications), perhaps targeted to constituencies
  4. What frameworks are you using?
  5. How does the portal relate to other aspects of the university's web presence? For example:
    1. Relationship to the university home page
    2. Relationship to campus, school, department, and office web sites
    3. Relationship to web applications for ERPs (such as student system or HR system self service)
    4. Relationship to the university's LMS(s)
    5. Relationship to the university's presence in non-university sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  6. What is your intent for the portal as a "destination"? For example:
    1. We expect users to make it their browser home page
    2. We expect users to check for new content at least once a day? week? month?
    3. Once a user has access to the portal, we expect it to be their primary point of interaction with the university during their life cycle
    4. We expect users to visit the portal anytime they are trying to complete a university administrative task
    5. We expect that users will mainly visit the portal for a mandatory business process (for example, students recieve a registration email that links them to the portal)
    6. We offer users a persistent login to the portal so they can visit any time without logging in again
    7. Usage of the portal varies a lot among students/faculty/staff
  7. Is your portal, or some of its content or services, designed to be consumed other than as a web page? For example:
    1. As a mobile site (if so, how does the portal relate to the university's overall mobile strategy?)
    2. As RRS feeds
    3. As messages or alerts to twitter, IM, SMS, etc.
  8. Please provide a brief description of the current state of play
  9. Please describe the governance structure. For example:
    1. Who has overall responsibility for the content and services in the portal?
    2. Who decides how content and services are added? What process is followed? What standards are applied?
  10. Please provide a url to the portal -- if it is open to anonymous users
  11. Please provide a link to useful documentation about the portal strategy
  12. Please provide a link to any end user documentation that would help us understand what the portal does