Personalizing your content
Personalization allows a portal or Web site to choose which content should appear for a particular user. For example, a site using Personalization might show different news articles to managers than to regular employees, or different information to valued customers.
You can define content through a number of applications, including IBM Lotus WCM. Personalization automatically detects the content definition from these applications. Definitions of database or LDAP content types can also be made through a Personalization wizard included with Rational Application Developer.
Once you define the content type, attributes of the content are exposed to the rule author. The rule author can use these attributes to make conditions which define if and when certain content is displayed, or even if certain actions like database updates and triggered e-mails may occur.
Benefits of Personalization
The Personalization component selects content for users based on information in their profiles and on business logic. With Personalization facilities, subject matter experts can select content that is suited to the needs and interests of each site visitor. These Web-based tools help companies quickly and leverage content that is created by business and subject matter experts.
Personalization classifies site visitors into segments and then targets relevant content to each segment. Business experts create the rules for classifying users and selecting content, using Web-based tools.
Personalization has built in capabilities for the IBM Java Content Repository. This means that personalization rules can be used in your WCM solutions.
Personalization includes a recommendation engine that provides collaborative filtering capabilities. Collaborative filtering uses statistical techniques to identify groups of users with similar interests or behaviors. Inferences can be made about what a particular user might be interested in, based on the interests of the other members of the group.
Campaign management tools are also included with Personalization. Campaigns are sets of business rules that work together to accomplish a business objective. For example, a HR manager might want to run a campaign to encourage employees to enroll in a stock purchase plan or sign up for some other new benefit which has just become available to employees. The HR manager would define a set of rules that are shown to accomplish this business objective. Campaigns have start and stop dates and times and can be email and Web-page based. Several campaigns can run simultaneously and can be prioritized.
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