Developing an Information Management Tool with Existing Technologies - Portal Structure
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1. User Profile
User profile is a feature of the portal application, which is used by portal users to control information kept about them in the Active Directory. By the use of the user profile feature, users can monitor their information that is retrieved from the Active Directory by using Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI) and modify them if necessary.
Modification can only be done on the areas that are allowed by the domain or enterprise administrators that are responsible from the Active Directory Services.
The User Profile feature also enables users to access the Active Directory from the portal application’s web-based interface and change their Windows 2000 domain logon password. This feature is also dependent on the domain or enterprise administrators’ permission.
2. User Page Layout
The user page layout feature of the portal application is utilized by the users to manage their service window layouts in their portal application’s main document window. With the help of this feature, users are able to add service windows of various types to their portal application’s main document window or remove them if they desire.
The user page layout feature works on a need-to-know basis so the users can only add service windows that they are allowed to use. Other service windows are not even visible to unauthorized users.
Every setting a user modifies with the user page layout window is kept on a client side XML DOM document and saved to the database server on each user session termination. The service windows that users are allowed to access are determined by the help of the Active Directory Service. Each user’s role is determined from the Active Directory Service on each user session start, and only the allowed service windows for that role are served to the users. In this way, users are not able to see the service windows that they are not supposed to see.
3. User Project Management
The portal application includes a project management application to handle users’ projects within the organization from a single location. With the help of the project management application, users are able to create projects, enter project details and project summary, and attach associated project documents of various types and upload them to a user folder on the file server to share with other users of the portal application.
Once a project is created, users are allowed to review and modify their projects as they wish. Using the projects/activities service window, users are also able to search through other users’ projects and view their project details and associated project documents, if they have adequate access rights.
Projects details created using the project management application feature of the portal application are stored on a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database so that other users can query this database and get information on other users’ projects. The associated files that are uploaded by users, however, are not stored in a database server. They are stored in a user folder on the file server for Microsoft Indexing Service to create a full text search catalog, but their association information with the projects is stored in the database.
In this way when the users of the portal application search for a keyword to find a specific project, the keyword is searched through both the database entries on the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and the full text search catalog of the uploaded files created by Microsoft Indexing Service. This retrieves the most relevant project information available to users who are performing the search by using the projects/activities service window.
4. External Applications
The portal application serves as a corporate single sign-on entry-point for all the applications within the organization. The authentication process of the portal is done by the help of Windows NT authentication, and the authorization is done by the help of Active Directory Services.
Once a user is authenticated through the Windows NT authentication process, their role is determined with the help of the Active Directory Service. The user is authorized to utilize the predefined services and other web based applications for that role.
Since the portal application determines the role of the portal users and authenticates them, there is no need for other applications to perform these tasks. In this way a central control is achieved regarding who is authorized to use which application. This also makes things easier for new application developers within the organization because they do not need to worry about authorization and authentication issues while developing their software.
5. Organization Structure
This feature of the portal application allows users to navigate through the organizational structure of the Active Directory Service by the use of Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI). Since the organizational structure already exists in the Active Directory Service, the portal application uses this organizational structure instead of creating a new redundant one, thus saving extra effort and system resources.
With the help of Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), users can move up and down the hierarchical organizational structure to locate departments and users within the departments. Users can also gain information about other users’ profiles in different departments by using this feature. Profile information includes address, phone number, computer name, etc.
This feature is also used in other services of the portal application. For example, a phone book was created by modifying this feature. In addition, conferencing service uses this feature to locate other users’ computer information to place calls.
The hierarchical organization structure information held in the Active Directory is so valuable that this feature of the portal application can be used in many other services within the portal application in the future.
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