[The next text is intended for you to copy and create your own document with your preferred HTML editor. When you find text like this, it is intended to provide you indications on what to make in this specific section. Obviously, it should not be left in the final review document delivered by you.]
[Provide a small introduction to put your readers in the context for the review. This is a nice place for a small description of the portal and maybe for your motivations on why are you making this review.]
The functionalities provided by the portal are reviewed here. It will enable you to evaluate the portal support for all your key functional requirements.
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Out of the box Home Page | The portal should be preloaded with a useful home page, which is easily changed to show the business symbols and name, with simple navigation to the portal main areas. Also, is it sexy / dull / ugly? | ||
| Available presentation templates | Does the portal comes pre-loaded with presentation templates, easy to apply and check the results? Does the presentation really changes between templates, demonstrating flexibility of choice? | ||
| Personalization of interface and access to applications | How much does the platform support the customization of each user's environment within the portal? How easy and flexible is this configuration? Is it possible to easily change the user's settings for accessing the portlets? Is it automated and integrated in the portal? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of integrations | How many, disregarding the quality | ||
| Quality and ease of use of the integrations | Now, try some of the integrations and check if its quality match a production use. Check also if these integrations are easily configurable. Are the integrations portlet based or a simple link to the specific application's web interface? | ||
| Key integrations for SMB | Check if the integrations available for the portal include key
integrations for a SMB environment. Integration with Microsoft tools, like
Active Directory and Exchange; with free software, like linux and sendmail,
etc. (This item may be different for each country, since the business management applications , i.e., SMB ERP, are many times specific of the country / industry.) |
||
| Key integrations for big enterprises | What integrations are available for big enterprises? Integration with applications of ERP and CRM vendors like SAP, Siebel and Oracle. Platforms from vendors, like IBM, Sun and Microsoft. | ||
| Integration with existing authentication applications | Does the portal support a third part authentication solution, already deployed in the enterprise? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Secure access from outside of the firewall | What is the use of the portal if you can't have access to it from outside of the enterprise intranet? Does the platform support roaming users? Is this support based on standard technologies and secure enough? | ||
| Secure sign in and options for authentication | Are the available methods for user sign in secure (e.g., un-encrypted passwords on the wire)? Is it possible to make the sign in flexible for different kinds of users: employees based on smart card and PKI key; partners based on usual password; big shot executives based on iris, etc? | ||
| Single sign on | When there are integrations, is it possible for the user to have single
sign on into the portal and its integrated enterprise applications? Is this
solution flexible and functional enough? Remember there are lots of
applications, some of them exist long before web come alive!
[This is a big issue for security in order to avoid the use of well known user / passwords for custom applications. It also increases productivity since the employees don't loose so much time recovering access to forgotten passwords (a situation that is a big security hole in today's enterprises).] |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How many access solutions are possible | Known different access are smartphone / handheld, WAP and normal workstation from outside the enterprise. | ||
| Quality of the available access | What is the quality of the universal access solutions? | ||
| Security | You may login from the outside, but, is it safe? At least HTTP S and other kind of secure connections should be available. |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workflow integration | It isn't enough in many cases to provide an integration of existing software into the portal, but, the portal platform must support the integration of several applications into a well defined workflow. Is this supported? Is it possible to configure the integration through the portal interface? | ||
| Process configuration | Almost all organizations today have well defined processes which contain workflow requirements, but, also require configuration of responsible parties and restrictions or control points. Does the portal workflow engine supports this kind of configuration? | ||
| Changeability | It isn't only needed to support workflow integration and process configuration. All this must also be manageable and support evolution with elegance. |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic support for publishing documentation | Is there the support for publishing documents and organizing them? Is it easy to find information and retrieving it? | ||
| Content Management System | Is one included in the package? Or does the portal includes integration with a CMS from a 3rd party (in this case it is better if this is free)? It must support things like authorship, access control, search, support for revision and version control. | ||
| Knowledge management system | This might be integrated with the CMS, but, it is something more. Instead of simple document repository, probably organized on project or business unit, knowledge is much more appropriately organized by topic and communities. Experts should be listed, FAQs available and probably forums where questions related to the topics are posted. Best practices system and other information organization themes are a plus. |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailing lists | This is a must for collaboration. Either the portal supports by having mailing lists built-in, or a good integration with existing mailing lists products. Obviously support for archiving is needed with seaming less search integration. A plus would be access restrictions. | ||
| Wiki, forums and other popular web tools | What is included? With what quality? Is the integration decent, e.g., is it possible for the user to receive updates by e-mail? | ||
| Freedom | From what I know of enterprise environments, many times there are too many restrictions for users to create, change and add. To foster collaboration these tools must be easy to configure, administer by the users. Do you think that the collaboration tools fit the freedom tag? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| User interface editor | Many of the commercial portals support a WYSIWYG editor integrated within the portal. This is a very elegant solution, but, the most important thing is if one exists, how good does it fit the task? It is possible that the persons that will configure the layout, colors, fonts, etc are a mixture of portal experts and designers. Does it provide good means for experimentation? Are things consistent after the changes, or the whole portal must be tested after each layout change? | ||
| Layout configuration flexibility | Some persons prefer a left bar with all menus, others like frames, etc. It is important that the portal supports all these possibilities with elegance and consistency. Is it possible to have parts of the portal with a very different layout from the main page? | ||
| Browser compatibility | OK, you've configured the perfect layout, font and colors. Now, if you try your not so preferred browser and things get wild you're sanity might become endangered! Check how good is the portal support for several browsers. Mainly the mainstream ones. | ||
| Existing styles and custom code integration | Is this possible? How much twisting do you need to get that great javascript tree view into the portal? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
Since the portal is going to be deployed in an enterprise, it must be evaluated in what regards important economic factors. The total cost of ownership and customer flexibility aspects of the portal solution are evaluated here.
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Its java, but, how well does it behave in several OSs? Does it contains components which only run in linux or windows? | ||
| Application Servers | Is it Application Server independent? How much testing was put into it? | ||
| Database and Resource Tier | Its very important to have several supported DBs. Is there some hidden dependency in the resource tier? What framework is used to support data access? Is the migration of data between different DBs thought about? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| JSR 168 compliance | JSR 168 – the Java Portlet Standard is central for java portals. This is a must and automatic integration with portlets which implement the standard is expected. | ||
| WSRP compliance | Oasis Web Services for Remote Portals is the equivalent to JSR, but, based on Web Services. This is also very important, since much of the "world does not speak java". | ||
| Generic orientation to standards | Are the technological solutions to the several aspects based on open standards? Aspects such as mobility and security should follow the standards found in those areas. | ||
| Generic use of Web standards | How good is the portal in what relates to its generated HTML, CSS or xHTML? [I don't know if this is needed... Maybe remove.] |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of use and learning curve | This is central for organizations to have their day to day administration tasks made by non-expert IT personnel. The interface should be the portal interface. Also, certain tasks like adding users should be possible to accomplish by the HR responsible, so, the interface must allow errors by the user without bringing the whole system down. | ||
| Different administration levels | You want HR to have the possibility to add users, but, not the possibility to shutdown the portal or mess with users private data. So, the administration of the portal should provide different roles for managing the portal. Premium for what you can't do you can't see approach. | ||
| Flexibility and fine grain management | Here, we may want to have a different interface, which is not so easy to use (probably intended for experts), but, provides all possible twisting of the portal. I like to think of the JBoss' JMX console as the model, but, it could be also the Mozilla configuration page. | ||
| Programmatical interface | Here again JBoss JMX comes to mind. Is there a programming interface that allows automation of management and administration tasks? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
"Now we got these nice guys on our door with this very nice portal solution, but, they say that you have to fix a box in the office where they put the software! Since we outsource all this IT stuff to NoITHeaven, how does they offer fits in our strategic decision?!"
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is the portal suitable for Hosting | Almost all organizations now have web sites. If not related to IT, they usually prefer to have a Hosting partner. It should be possible for their enterprise portal to be Hosted in the same way the web site is. Are the portal requirements too specific, such that aren't found in regular Hosting sites? [Look how nicely you will be rewarded by the Multiplatform aspect now!] | ||
| Application Service Provider model support | How about if you want to follow the path that now some are successfully going for ERP and CRM solutions? Is the portal platform suitable for such a model? | ||
| Division of roles | I see the best fit as if the portal allows the both possibilities above and also integration with expert service providers that may customize and offer integration solutions for the portal. Is this flexibility in place already? If not, could it be possible? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extensibility | The portal should be very flexible on what regards the possibilities to extend it. It should be built in a way that make customizations very easy, being the base for this adding a new in-house built portlet. Note that licensing issues may be relevant here, since many shops want to keep their developments closed (pity of them ;-). | ||
| Integration and extensibility developer's documentation | How much, how complete, how up-to-date is it? Cookbooks for most common tasks should exist. | ||
| Ease to integrate | Well, I would say that a decent java web oriented developer should find the task of creating a new integration fun. Developer docs and tutorials should be available for this. Also, is the task too specific, or are the used technologies common for common developers. | ||
| XML Data sources and Web services integration | The portal framework should have a decent support to integrate data sources such as this. Something like a base portlet available for specialization by integrators. |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| User manual | The user manual: does one exist, what quality related to aspects such as completeness, up-to-date content, quality of writing, etc. What formats does it come in? E.g., PDF and HTML are mandatory, I think. | ||
| Context sensitive help | A good help system must include this. All built in parts of the portal should provide this and a premium for a portal infrastructure that enables integrations to have it too. |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
This is a central issue, since many of the possible decision takers aren't confidant to jump into these solutions alone. If they see that the portal is already used with success by others they'll have more confidence to try it.
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| How many publicized deployments | These should be public and provable deployments. | ||
| Quality | Quality deployments come in two ways: big companies which names will catch attention from other executives and excellent adopters where the deployment was a perfect fit and innovations resulted from the deployment (these last examples are good for technologists). | ||
| Show able portfolio | Many times it isn't enough to have deployments, you need also to show it. A big plus if reports of past deployments with service and maintenance follow ups are available. |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
Since the review is on a open source development project, it is very important to know what is its environment.
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project ownership | Is it based on a specific company with interest in having all core developers as employees? Is write access to CVS too restricted to developers of this company? | ||
| Decision process and discussions | Is the decision process open and made around the developers mailing list? Everyones invited or are the core developers only interested in each other's opinions? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Users mailing list | Response time, friendliness to dummies, effectiveness of the replies. | ||
| Professional services availability | Are they available, where, by what companies? | ||
| Issues (aka bugs) handling | How fast and effective is issue handling? How supportive are developers in finding work around and fixing important bugs? | ||
| Partnerships | Does the project foster partnership with other open source projects to which it is dependent? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build procedure | Project build should be based on Ant. Use of Maven is also a plus. Non-core tasks such as building documentation, running tests and release work and style-check should also be part of the Ant build file. | ||
| Roadmap | Does the project has a plan for at least medium term? Are features categorized and followed using an issue tracking system? | ||
| Issue tracking system | Is one used? How seriously? | ||
| Project leadership | Is it strong and sensitive to needs of developers and users? Is the project too much dependent on one or two persons? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Architectural overview | Does it have one? Is architecture part of the design decisions? Component, layer and service oriented? | ||
| Frameworks | Is the portal built on top of existing frameworks? Which are these and what is the momentum around them? | ||
| Organization (or structure), separation of concerns and dependencies | The code structure should be clear. Packages as the architectural organization primitives for the project should follow the overall architectural description. Dependencies should be well known and should not be in the wild! |
[See description above. This may be left out.]
| Description | Grade | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developer's cookbook | Does one exist? What is its quality? | ||
| Developers mailing list | Is it archived? Is the content valuable to track past decisions, such as a release being halted by a high priority bug? | ||
| Project Web site | Is it updated consistently with the state of the project? Does it contain valuable resources for developers, mainly a developers area? |
[See description above. This may be left out.]