MyUW had a great 2016. This post summarizes some highlights.
Edits:
- adjusted to reflect the new name
uPortal app frameworkand new repository location for what was previously known asuw-frame - adjusted to reflect the new name
uPortal homeand new repository location for what was previously known asAngularJS-portal
Open source software products
MyUW develops several free and open source products in the course of delivering MyUW.
uPortal home
MyUW shipped 20 releases of uPortal home in 2016. uPortal home is an alternative front end for uPortal.
Progress included:
- fixed accessibility bugs
- proved out multi-tenant support (as implemented in MyUW, this software serves each of the University of Wisconsin campuses)
- proved out unauthenticated experience support (this software delivers the public.my.wisc.edu experience)
- adopted Material Design
- redesigned search and header
- enhanced notifications and announcements
- detected and proactively handled expired sessions
- added more and better widget templates (search with links, RSS)
- eased adoption via overlay
- documented
uPortal app framework
MyUW shipped 22 releases of uPortal app framework in 2016, from version 2.0.1 to 3.0.3. uPortal app framework is the framework in which we develop uPortal home. uPortal app framework is also the framework in which we and other groups in the University of Wisconsin develop applications for inclusion in the portal. Writing a frame-based app is conceptually an alternative to writing a Java Portlet.
- adopted Material Design
- improved theme support
- handled session timeouts proactively
- cleaned up the way uPortal app framework is adopted in frame-based apps
- sourced dependencies from CDNs
microservices
The MyUW team shipped eight releases of a growing slate of supporting microservices in 2016.
We also participated directly in the development or release engineering of four Apereo WebProxy Portlet releases in 2016.
MyUW services
We develop these and other software products in order to operate them in the MyUW portal.
MyUW delivered around 10,000,000 user sessions in the course of serving UW-Madison and the entire University of Wisconsin system in 2016.
MyUW eases discovery of and navigation to other systems. In 2016, users followed a link in MyUW out to something outside MyUW more than 8,000,000 times.
Besides helping users navigate to other applications, MyUW helps users understand what they need to do and where they might need to navigate. MyUW presented its full notifications experience (not just the indicator that the user has a notification) around 100,000 times in 2016.
Not all MyUW content relevant to all users can fit on default home pages, so MyUW supports users searching and browsing the available content. MyUW presented the directory of applications around 100,000 times and provided search results in around 100,000 user sessions in 2016.
Once you’ve searched or browsed to something interesting, you can add it to your home page. Users modified their home pages almost one hundred thousand times in 2016, including adding the new Wiscard Balance widget almost 6,000 times.
Looking forward
Let’s do more to serve the portal needs of higher education and the University of Wisconsin in 2017.
PS: Other ways to consume this content:
- on Apereo website (Alas, no hyperlinks).
- in January 2017 newsletter as posted to announcements email list (Alas, no hyperlinks).
- in January 2017 newsletter as posted in a Word doc (Alas, no hyperlinks).