Developing an Information Management Tool with Existing Technologies - Portal Structure (cont'd)
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6. Services
The portal application includes a variety of services, which serve many different functions such as weather conditions, exchange rates, favorite links, etc. These services come in service windows which can be minimized, maximized, moved, added, or removed from the main portal application main document window according to user preferences with the help of Dynamic HTML effects.
Not all the service windows are available to all the users of the portal application. The availability of service windows is determined by the user’s role, which is determined from the Active Directory Services by the use of Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI).
Most of the service windows are used to serve certain kinds of information to interested users who are allowed to see that information such as weather condition, exchange rates, dictionary, etc. For favorite links, users provide this kind of necessary user-specific information.
The information that these services provide is stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and brought to users in service windows by the help of ActiveX Data Object (ADO) component of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC).
7. Search
The search feature of the portal application’s project management part helps its users to search and locate project information and associated project documents of portal application’s users. The search feature performs two different kind of search while searching for project details.
The first type of search method is the full text search, which is performed by using Microsoft Indexing Service. Microsoft Indexing Service is repeatedly indexing the folders where users upload their associated project documents, and a full text search catalog is being created. The keywords that the users provide to perform a search are searched from this catalog to see if they appear in a file that is uploaded as a part of user project. If they do, more information about these files are retrieved and presented to the user who is performing the search using the portal application’s project search service window.
The second type of search method is the database search, which is performed by using ActiveX Data Object (ADO) of the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC). By using ActiveX Data Objects, the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database is queried against these keywords that the users provide to see if these keywords match any user project details that are stored in the database server. If a matching result is found by any of the search methods, both in the Microsoft Indexing Service Catalog and Microsoft SQL Server database, then the results are merged and presented together as a single project.
8. Conferencing
The conferencing feature of the portal application helps user communicate with each other via different kinds of media such as audio, video, text, whiteboard, or combinations of these. The conferencing feature is a service window, and like all other service windows, the conferencing service window can be associated to certain roles so that its use can be limited to authorized users only. The video conferencing feature can be further limited to a small number of users in order to save crucial bandwidth.
The conferencing service window includes the Microsoft Netmeeting ActiveX Control object to perform these conferencing tasks for its users. The conferencing service window also uses Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and the Active Directory Service in combination with some scripting to create extra features and make conferencing easier.
Using the Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), a list of users who are allowed to use conferencing feature can be retrieved with their computer name information so the users can place a call simply by clicking their name on the list. In addition, a list of online users is kept on the database server so when retrieving the list of conferencing enabled users, the online users are marked so the user who wants to place a conference call is able to tell if the other user who is about to be called is available or not. Users of this service are also able to retrieve a list of online users so they can select who they want to call from a smaller list of users and call them simply by clicking their name from this list.
Since the conferencing service window uses the Microsoft Netmeeting ActiveX Control object to perform these tasks, it has to be configured correctly on users’ computers. It is also important that the computer information held on the Active Directory for each user is kept up to date in order for users to place calls to correct users’ computers.
9. Outlook Integration
The portal application has a number of service windows, which are used to add some of Microsoft Outlook’s features into the portal itself to make them more easily accessible to users on a single platform amongst other services. These service windows include services such as inbox, contacts, tasks, and calendar. Since these service windows are similar to the other service windows within the portal, users are able to add and remove them as they wish.
The portal application uses the Microsoft Outlook View Control ActiveX object to include Microsoft Outlook’s features in its service windows. Microsoft Outlook features such as inbox, contacts, tasks, and calendar are folders of the Microsoft Outlook, and each of these folders is included in different service windows as ActiveX Control objects. In this way, users are able to include or remove these features to their portal, one by one so that the features that are not needed do not take up any space on the portal application’s main window.
By using these service windows, users are able to perform most of the tasks that they could perform by using the Microsoft Outlook from a single point without needing to leave the portal application’s main window.
The use of Microsoft Outlook View Control ActiveX object is dependent on the Microsoft Outlook profile, which is located on the users’ computers. Therefore, in order for these service windows to work, Microsoft Outlook profile settings must be properly created and the user must logon to the computer with appropriate Microsoft Windows 2000 domain credentials.
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