Groupware portlets for integrating a portal with groupware systems

• US 20080086527A1
• Filed: 10/06/2006
• Published: 04/10/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/06/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: BEA Systems Incorporated (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Greysman, Lev, Sposetti, Jeffrey Thomas
• Granted Patent: US 8,463,852 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/204
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/00 User-to-user messaging in packet-switching networks, transmitted according to store-and-forward or real-time protocols, e.g. e-mail
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/56 Provisioning of proxy services store-and-forward switching systems in data switching networks H04L12/54
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/567 Integrating service provisioning from a plurality of service providers

Abstract

A set of groupware portlets can be deployed on an enterprise portal in order to add groupware functionality thereon. The groupware portlets can provide an abstract user interface to groupware functionality provided by several collaboration servers and can also allow users to navigate to specific groupware functionality provided by a collaboration server. The portlets can connect to the various collaboration servers by implementing a personal messaging application programming interface. The interface can include a schema for defining groupware functionality and a set of providers for instantiating the connections to the various collaboration servers. The providers can be implementations of the schema that allow the groupware portlets to interact with the collaboration server. New schemas can be defined to extend existing schemas to enable more specific functionality provided by each collaboration server. The new schemas can be supported by the providers due to Java class inheritance.

Claims

1. A system for integrating groupware functionality into a portal, comprising:

a collaboration server that contains information and provides groupware functionality to one or more end users;

a groupware portlet deployable on the portal, the groupware portlet adapted to enable the users to access the groupware functionality on the collaboration server by providing an abstracted user interface that is common to the groupware functionality provided by one or more other collaboration servers; and

an application programming interface that enables the groupware portlet to access the collaboration server by defining a schema and implementing the schema with a provider associated with the collaboration server.

2. A system according to claim 1 wherein the schema includes an item class for representing entities on the collaboration server and a container class for storing one or more items or other containers.

3. A system according to claim 2 wherein the provider is an implementation of the classes in the schema that is specific to the collaboration server.

4. A system according to claim 3 wherein the provider implements a stub to create a connection to the collaboration server and to map method calls from the portlet as defined by the schema to the functionality provided by the collaboration server.

5. A system according to claim 1 wherein a new schema is implemented to extend the schema wherein the new schema exposes method calls that are more specific to the functionality in the collaboration server.

6. A system according to claim 5 wherein the abstracted user interface is further adapted to allow the user to access the specific functionality provided by the collaboration server as exposed by the new schema.

7. A system according to claim 1 wherein the groupware portlet makes WebDAV calls directly to the collaboration server in order to access the groupware functionality.

8. A system according to claim 1, further comprising:

an intermediary collaboration service computer that receives HTTP calls from the groupware portlets and translates the HTTP calls to specific interface calls on the collaboration server.

9. A system according to claim 1 wherein the schema and the provider comprise a Java application programming interface employed by the groupware portlets to access the collaboration server.

10. A system according to claim 1 wherein the provider can be dynamically replaced with a new provider in order for the portlet to gain access to a new collaboration server that is associated with the new provider.

11. A computer implemented method for integrating groupware functionality into a portal, the method comprising:

providing groupware functionality to one or more end users via a collaboration server of an enterprise;

deploying a groupware portlet on a portal server, the groupware portlet adapted to provide an abstracted user interface that is common to one or more other collaboration servers; and

accessing the groupware functionality on the collaboration server via the groupware portlet.

12. A method according to claim 11 wherein accessing the groupware functionality further includes implementing a schema for defining functionality on the collaboration server and a provider for instantiating a connection to the collaboration server.

13. A method according to claim 12 wherein the schema includes an item class for representing entities on the collaboration server and a container class for storing one or more items or other containers.

14. A method according to claim 13 wherein the provider is an implementation of the classes in the schema that is specific to the collaboration server.

15. A method according to claim 14 wherein the provider implements a stub to create a connection to the collaboration server and to map method calls from the portlet as defined by the schema to the functionality provided by the collaboration server.

16. A method according to claim 12 wherein a new schema is implemented to extend the schema and wherein the new schema exposes method calls that are more specific to the functionality in the collaboration server.

17. A method according to claim 16 wherein the abstracted user interface is further adapted to allow the user to access the specific functionality provided by the collaboration server as exposed by the new schema.

18. A method according to claim 11 wherein accessing the collaboration server further includes making WebDAV calls directly to the collaboration server by the groupware portlet in order to access the groupware functionality.

19. A method according to claim 11, further comprising:

receives HTTP calls from the groupware portlet to an intermediary collaboration service computer and translating the HTTP calls to specific interface calls on the collaboration server.

20. A computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon which when executed by one or more processors cause a system to:

provide groupware functionality to one or more end users via a collaboration server of an enterprise;

deploy a groupware portlet on a portal server, the groupware portlet adapted to provide an abstracted user interface that is common to one or more other collaboration servers; and

access the groupware functionality on the collaboration server via the groupware portlet.