Presentation of UF Portal Plans

Published: June 15th, 2000

Category: Memos

UF Portal Development Team

We’re pleased to announce the development of the University of Florida web portal. Through the common efforts of the CIO’s office, NERDC, OIR, and CIRCA, we expect that the first version of the portal will be available in the fall of 2000.

What’s a portal? A portal is a web site that aggregates a variety of web content and services and makes them easier to find. Sites like Yahoo (my yahoo.com) or AltaVista are portals for the entire Internet. Some portal sites at other universities are:

my.ucla.edu
onestop.umn.edu

The University of Florida portal will be the front door to web-based services that are specifically of interest to our students, faculty, and staff. The UF portal will be a customizable web page that you can use as the starting point for many of your daily Internet activities. Some of the standard services available through the portal will include:

  • Web-based access to GatorLink email
  • Web-based access to other common Internet services, like news groups or chat rooms
  • Calendaring systems that combine your personal schedule with events at the university
  • Tools that help instructors communicate with their students
  • Common administrative tools used by faculty and staff
  • Official UF announcements

Portal services won’t be limited to centrally-developed web pages. There will be guides for making “portal-compatible” applications so that other campus organizations can make specialized services available within the portal context.

The key to the UF portal will be your GatorLink username and password. After a single initial log in, you will have access to all other portal services.

The UF portal project is just beginning, so no services are available yet, but we need to know your thoughts and opinions about web-based services needed at the university. There will be a presentation on July 6th, 2000 to discuss the implementation plans and hear your feedback. The presentation will be held in 349 JWRU at 2 p.m.

Please send a representative the meeting to help in planning for your portal requirements. For further information, contact:

Sue Legg, Director
Office of Instructional Resources
smlegg@ufl.edu

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