Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
introduction
the system, and the solutions adopted to deal with
those problems.
The reminder of this paper is outlined as fol-
lows: In the Background section we explain which
the situation in the market is and we provide some
examples of some of the existing features and
what is innovative about our solution. The Main
section of the chapter has been divided in several
parts. First, we offer a description of the project,
giving also a list of web portal requirements. After
that, we explain the system architecture. Another
important part of the main section will be the web
portal software description, where we explain the
most important modules that we have developed
in our system to meet our objectives. Next, we
give our perspective about the problems we have
encountered and the solutions we found to deal
with them. At the end we explain the directions we
plan to follow in future research, and a conclusion
about this project.
Due to the great number of consulting companies
in the market, a consulting company has to offer
some innovative products if it wants to stand out.
To do so, INOVA specialized in the Innovation,
Optimization and Valorization of the projects that
their customers carry out.
The growth of the Internet, the rise of telecom-
munication, and advances in computer technology
have provided businesses with new opportunities.
At the same time, it poses new communication
challenges. In order to operate efficiently, a
business needs a way for its employees to share
information. No matter the size of the business, an
effective, easy to use information sharing solution
is critical to success.
This project was created with the idea of de-
veloping a framework (Figure 1) to improve and
increase the services INOVA offers to the general
public, to their customers, and to their own staff.
To do so, we pretended to computerize several
applications and utilities that the INOVA staff
had developed trough time, both to the general
public, and to their internal use.
INOVA staff realized that some of the applica-
tions they had developed through time as internal
utilities to be used by them, could be useful for
their clients and for the general public. In the
market did not exist any products that would give
those services to the users, or at least not in the
specific field they work with.
As a result, we created a web portal that would
give the INOVA employees and users in general
access to this application from anywhere (http://
www.inovaportal.com). We have followed the
standards to develop the portal, putting a special
care in maintaining a clear, simple and intuitive
user interface. As a result, it is accessible via
different navigators, even using text navigators
such as lynx.
In this paper we are describing the goals we
pursued, the solution adopted to achieve them, the
problems encountered during the development of
bAckground
There exist an extensive number of cases in
which an enterprise or an institution has decided
to improve the services they offer to the public
by developing a web portal. Internet offers a way
to distribute knowledge and share information.
To do so, a big part of them rely on a Web Con-
tent Management System to use as a base to the
development of their web portal. A web content
management system provides some tools that are
very useful.
They provide tools that allow manage the
content in the web portal easily, without the need
of extensive computer knowledge. They usually
utilize templates to display the content, and al-
low the separation of the content from the web
portal design.
In my opinion one of the most important rea-
sons to use a WCMS is that they usually provide
a granular permission system, which allows a big
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