Intranet portal

Overview

An intranet portal site is designed to allow information to be quickly disseminated to employees, to make common internal business processes more efficient and to provide a sense of community within an organization.

The site provides access to:

• news about what is happening within the organization.
• alerts containing information that employees should be aware of and potentially action.
• forms for working with various internal processes such as leave, purchases, and travel.
• a policies and procedures library with online versions of all policy and procedure documentation.
• organizational communities with collaborative features like blogs and forums.
• a search system to enable employees to find content.

The intranet portal also has a personalized home page that is dynamically built using has a set of rules that retrieve content based on the current user's role, department, and location. By appropriately tagging the content, and then matching this content with the current user, the content that is displayed can appropriate for the user.

A number of components are used together to make this intranet portal work:

• WebSphere Portal is used to provide a platform for the integration of content and applications that form the intranet portal.
• The overall theme and top-level navigation of the intranet is also managed using WebSphere Portal.
• WCM provides the micro-level layout of the content within the portal, and is also used to directly build the news, alerts and communities content.
• The forms are online applications built using the Forms/Lists system, being pulled into the site using Web Content Manager
• Policies and Procedures are document libraries managed using IBM FileNet Content Manager.
• A custom feed producer would be written to allow the Web Content Integrator to consume a feed from IBM FileNet Content Manager and Web Content Manager would be used to present the documents in a website.
• Personalization is used associate content with users, dynamically generating the content that is displayed in the personalized home page
• A third-party discussion system is used to deliver collaborative forums in the communities section of the site using a custom portlet.
• Community areas could also be based on Lotus Quickr team rooms
• WebSphere Portal search is used with the Web Content Manager categorization to provide both a simple text search and a more advanced category-based search.

The size of an intranet portal tends to scale with the size of the organization. A large organization has more information to disseminate, more business processes, more communities of employees. This means that the content and the user population tend to grow at the same rate.

Related :

• Design and setting up a portal site
• Road map to building a web content system
• IBM Web Content Integrator
• Personalization
• Lotus Quickr
• FileNet Content Manager

E-business site

Overview

An e-business site is an externally facing site designed to market a company's products and services to consumers and allow them to purchase these items online. The focus of the site is on helping a consumers match their needs to the appropriate product or service and maximizing their purchases.

The site provides:

• press releases about the latest news relating the company's products and services.

• a promotions area with information about products and services including sales, special package deals, and discounts.

• a products and services catalog area with the entire catalog displayed as a searchable taxonomy.

• a shopping area where users can see:
  • a searchable list of available products and services available for purchase online.
  • a summary of the items they are intending to purchase.
  • an area to calculate tax, shipping and other costs.
  • an area to purchase these items online using mail order, or using a follow-up call from a salesperson.
  • an area to track orders they have already initiated.

• articles where the organization can help customers using articles discussing their products and services.

• a support area with technical documentation, contact numbers, support request forms, FAQs, and downloads.

• a service for subscribing to a newsletter where the user is sent a regular update highlighting new promotions, products or articles.

The home page of the site is used to highlight the latest promotions, and to give a strong sense of the brand of the organization. Throughout the site, collaborative filtering is used to help suggest products and services to consumers based on their purchasing and navigational activity. A discussion system may also be used to allow users to build a community where they can comment on and rate various products and services.

A number of components are used together to build the e-business site:

• WebSphere Portal is used to provide a platform for the integration of content and applications that form the e-business site.

• The overall theme and top-level navigation of the intranet is also managed using WebSphere Portal.

• WCM provides the micro-level layout of the content within the site, and is also used to directly build the press releases, FAQs, articles, and promotional content.

• The catalog and shopping areas are being run using WebSphere Commerce.

• Personalization is used to suggest products to users based on collaborative filtering, and to email the newsletter.

• A third-party discussion system is used to deliver collaborative forums in the communities section of the site using a custom portlet.

An e-business site can generate a large amount of traffic with a relatively small amount of content.

Related :

• Design and setting up a portal site
• Road map to building a web content system
• Personalization
• IBM WebSphere Commerce

Brochureware site

Overview

A brochureware site is an externally facing site that acts as an organization's presence on the World Wide Web. The overriding focus is on representing the organization's brand to its potential customers.

This type of site is relatively static and does not need the aggregation capabilities of WebSphere Portal and is instead delivered using both the servlet delivery and pre-rendering features of Web Content Manager. The site is also designed to be easily indexed by search engines like Google.

This site would include:

• information about the organization including its ethics, goals, mission, and history.
• a news area where the organization can talk about what they are doing now and into the future.
• a contact area with lists of locations, phone numbers, and online contact forms where users may submit queries, ask for follow-up calls.
• a job opportunities area where an organization can advertise positions
• a partners area where partners of the organization are listed with information about them and their relationship with the organization, and links to partner websites and partner contact details
• information about the organization's products and services including case studies and testimonials

The components in this site are limited with Web Content Manager providing all the presentation, navigation, and content.

A brochureware site can generate a large amount of traffic with a relatively small amount of content.

Related: Road map to building a web content system

E-library site

Overview

An online library site is dedicated to providing access to a large amount of content. The prime example is a news site, where new content is created throughout the day, every day of the week and is published online and then archived as it becomes out of date. Other examples include journals, analyst reports, and software libraries.

Users would typically have to register for these sites, and may then be sent e-mails on a regular basis summarizing the latest content. On a news site the latest news may be free, but users may have to pay for access to archived content. On other types of "library" sites, you may have to pay for access to any of the content.

A number of components are used together to deliver an e-library site:

• WebSphere Portal is used to provide a platform for the integration of content and applications that form the e-business site.
• The overall theme and top-level navigation of the intranet is also managed using WebSphere Portal.
• WCM provides the micro-level layout of the content within the site, and is also used to directly build content.
• For e-libraries where the content is presented as documents, then IBM FileNet Content Manager would be used to store and manage the documents.
• A custom feed producer would be written to allow the Web Content Integrator to consume a feed from IBM FileNet Content Manager and Web Content Manager would be used to present the documents in a website.

An e-library site may have a large audience and a large amount of content.

Related :

• Design and setting up a portal site
• Road map to building a web content system
• IBM Web Content Integrator
• FileNet Content Manager

Partner site

Overview

The audience for a partner site are the partners of an organization. The site provides information and applications that are not applicable to the broader audience of consumers. A partner site would typically require a login but would not use an automated registration system. The business partners would be known to the company and given a login to access the partner site.

A partner site may include the following areas:

• a news area focused on partners. Larger organizations working in multiple areas of business could personalize the news area to suit each partner.
• a promotions area detailing special deals for partners.
• online services, providing useful tools and resources for partners to use, such as calculators, forms, and catalogs.
• a billing area where partners can see the current bill status for services contracted from the organization.
• a community area where partners may post information about themselves, and also interact to help each other and receive help from the organization.

A number of components are used together to deliver a partner site:

• WebSphere Portal is used to provide a platform for the integration of content and applications that form the intranet portal.
• The overall theme and top-level navigation of the intranet is also managed using WebSphere Portal.
• WCM provides the micro-level layout of the content within the portal, and is also used to directly build the news and promotions content.
• Various IBM products plus third-party applications are used to build and deploy the online services area.
• The catalog and billing services in the site is run using WebSphere Commerce.
• A third-party discussion system is used to deliver collaborative forums in the communities section of the site using a custom portlet.
• Personalization is being used to filter content throughout the site to ensure that the appropriate content and inline services are reaching the appropriate partners.

A partner site is likely to have a limited audience but a large amount of content.

Related:

• Design and setting up a portal site
• Road map to building a web content system
• Personalization
• IBM WebSphere Commerce

Parent: Overview