ROLE TAILORED PORTAL SOLUTION INTEGRATING NEAR REAL-TIME METRICS, BUSINESS LOGIC, ONLINE COLLABORATION, AND WEB 2.0 CONTENT

• US 20090113310A1
• Filed: 10/26/2007
• Published: 04/30/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/26/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: K.Mizra LLC
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bruce, Edwin J., Salcido, Jason A., Flores, Romelia H., Appleyard, James P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,185,827 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/742
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: Y02P 90/845 Inventory and reporting systems for greenhouse gases [GHG]

Abstract

The disclosed solution provides a tailored user experience available through a Web portal that addresses the multiple-view, multiple-data needs of operations, supervisory, policy making, and executive personnel of an organization. These various roles can all be concerned with measurement/assessment of an organization'"'"'s compliance with performance targets, for which real-time, near real-time or other metrics are gathered. The metrics can be presented in a role tailored fashion to the portal users in near real-time along with federation of analysis and trend calculation output. Business logic can be applied to the federated data and near real-time metrics to automatically effectuate actions and/or to suggest responses when received metrics exceed previously established boundaries. Collaboration tools and Web 2.0 information sharing technologies can be integrated in the portal to facilitate rapid coordinated responses and to share information across the organization.

Claims

1. A metrics driven method for presenting data within a portal comprising:

logging a user into an organization portal;

determining an organization role for the user;

graphically presenting within a metrics portlet of the organization portal, near real-time or other metrics tailored for the determined organization role;

providing online collaboration capabilities through a collaboration portlet of the organization portal, which are tailored for the determined organization role; and

permitting data sharing among organization users through a Web 2.0 portlet of the organization portal, which is tailored for the determined organization role.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a user selection to drill down the metrics portlet; and

responsive to the user selection presenting metric specific information at a lower level than originally presented within the metrics portlet, wherein the lower level metrics are tailored for the determined organization role.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

detecting that the near real-time metrics exceeds a previously established boundary condition;

triggering an out-of-bounds event;

programmatically determining a set of users of the organization portal which are to be apprised of an occurrence of the out-of-bounds event;

constructing role specific alert messages for each user in the determined set; and

presenting within user specific versions of the organization portal the constructed alert messages.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

searching a Web data repository for items specific to the out-of-bounds event, wherein said search software is triggered by an occurrence of the out-of-bounds event; and

altering content of the Web 2.0 portlet to include items from the Web data repository that result from the searching step.

5. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

determining relationships among the users in the determined set to determine collaborations among users that are potentially beneficial for resolving the out of bounds event; and

altering content of the collaboration portlet to include collaboration items in accordance with the determined relationships.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the organization portal is served by a portal server, wherein the portal server is part of a service oriented architecture (SOA), wherein the near real-time metrics are conveyed from a resource, to a middleware service provider, to a service gateway, and then to the portal server.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said steps of claim 1 are performed by at least one machine in accordance with at least one computer program stored in a computer readable media, said computer programming having a plurality of code sections that are executable by the at least one machine.

8. A portal server comprising:

a plurality of role specific programmatically implemented customizations for providing role tailored portals to a set of authorized users of an organization;

fetching software configured to obtain near real-time metrics from at least one back-end resource;

metric software configured to graphically indicate values of the near real-time metrics within a portlet of a served organization Web portal;

collaboration software configured to conduct online collaboration communications responsive to a user selection from within a portlet of the served Web portal; and

Web 2.0 software configured to grant access to a shared organization resource from within a portlet of the served Web portal.

9. The portal server of claim 8, wherein different roles supported by said role specific programmatically implemented customizations comprise operations, supervisory, policy making, and executive roles, each role having different data needs that are expressed within said served Web portal in a role specific manner.

10. The portal server of claim 8, wherein the fetching software, the metric software, the collaboration software, and the Web 2.0 software are implemented as Web services.

11. The portal server of claim 8, wherein the portal server is part of a service oriented architecture (SOA), wherein the near real-time metrics are conveyed from a resource, to a middleware service provider, to a service gateway, and then to the portal server.

12. The portal server of claim 8, further comprising:

software configured to detect when obtained near real-time metrics have exceeded a previously established boundary, which triggers an out-of-bounds event; and

software configured to present an alert within a portal of the served Web portal responsive to an occurrence of the out-of-bounds event.

13. The portal server of claim 12, further comprising:

search software configured to search a Web 2.0 data repository for items specific to the out-of-bounds event, wherein said search software is triggered by an occurrence of the out-of-bounds event, wherein said Web 2.0 software alters content of a portlet of the served Web page to include results produced by the search software.

14. The portal server of claim 12, further comprising:

contact querying software configured to search an organization directory for a set of personnel associated with responding to the out-of-bounds event, wherein said collaboration software alters content of a portlet served of the served Web portal to include results produced by the contact querying software.

15. A Web portal comprising a plurality of portlets, said portlets comprising:

at least one metrics portlet configured to present near real-time metrics relative to a set of previously established boundaries and value targets that are significant to an organization;

at least one Web 2.0 portlet configured to share information among organization associated users, said shared information comprising searchable content repositories of user provided and updated information designed to provide insight required to make tactical and strategic decisions to achieve the value targets and to maintain the near real-time metrics within safe operational ranges relative to the set of previously established boundaries; and

at least one collaboration portlet configured facilitate communications among organization associated users to permit said users to rapidly respond to deviations in the real-time metrics relative to a desired range of values and to adjust organization assets to restore the real-time metrics to values within the desired range as rapidly as possible, wherein said Web portal provides a roles based, tailored user experience for ensuring compliance with the previously established boundaries for the near real-time metrics.

16. The Web portal of claim 15, further comprising:

at least one alert portlet configured to automatically present a notification to a set of the organization associated users whenever the near real-time metrics exceed the set of previously established boundaries, wherein said set of organization associated users are indicated within a data store to be individuals responsible for taking corrective actions in regard to a situation indicated by the notification, wherein when the notification is presented, the collaboration portlet automatically presents communication specific items for each of said indicated set of organization associated users, and wherein when the notification is presented, the Web 2.0 portlet automatically presents documents from the content repository related to the indicated situation and relevant as determined by a set of programmatic rules to a role of the user of the Web portal.

17. The Web portal of claim 15, further comprising:

at least one historical measurement and trend analysis portlet configured to present historic information related to the near real-time metrics and to present forecast information related to the near real-time metrics.

18. The Web portal of claim 15, wherein said Web portal is served by a portal server, wherein said portal server utilizes a plurality of services to communicate content from a set of back-end resources to a portal server.

19. The Web portal of claim 15, wherein different roles supported by said Web portal comprise operations, supervisory, policy making, and executive roles, each role having different data needs that are expressed within said Web portal in a role specific manner.

20. The Web portal of claim 15, further comprising:

a software program that fires an out-of-bounds event when the near real-time metrics exceed the previously established boundaries, wherein an automated programmatic action altering content in the Web 2.0 portlet and the collaboration portlet is triggered by a detection of the out-of-bounds event, wherein the content altering is designed to facilitate a resolution of the out-of-bounds event.