So the first thing to notice after you log on – as the administrator in my case – is the upper right area in the default theme.

It shows that we are looking at a published site as the screen shot shows.  Next to that is an Edit Mode link.  To make changes to the site, we need to jump into edit mode by clicking the link.

When in Edit mode, we see an expanded window at the top of our page, which lets us work on that page of our site.  You can see a screen shot below:

From this window, you can edit the page properties, add content, change the layout etc.  I wanted to create a project in which to store my changes, so I clicked the Create button in the middle under the Project heading.  I left the name of my project as the default, which is my user id followed by today’s date.   Portal created the project and the Edit mode window changed to show the following information circled in red.  First it displayed the list of project contents, and since this was a new project, the list was empty.  In the upper right corner, the page showed me the name of the project in which I was working.

So I have my project created and I began to make changes.  I wanted to add a sibling page to the Welcome page that I’m currently viewing.  A sibling page appears at the same level as my welcome page, so it was a top-level tab in the portal.  To create a page, I clicked on the More button in the upper right corner and chose New Sibling Page.

Portal displayed the new page dialog, where I entered the new page name and friendly URL for the page.  You can also choose a page template at this time, although I just picked the basic empty page.

Portal then created my page and returned to the Edit mode window, which is shown below.  Notice a few items I’ve circled in the Edit mode window.

• First, the page was created as a “Draft”.  This means the page can be sent through a workflow to be published. I did not set up a workflow, so the workflow stage is shown as none.
• Second, the project list now contains one item – the page I just created.
• Finally, a new tab appeared in my navigation with parentheses around the name.  This is a visual indicator that the page is not yet published.  While I’m in edit mode, its pretty obvious that my page has not been published.  But if I were in View mode, the parentheses are a nice reminder to me.

So now I have created a blank page.  I then clicked on the Content tab at the top of the Edit mode window and dragged a Blog portlet to my new page.

To save my page, I clicked the Save Draft button in the Edit mode window.

Lets recap what’s been done so far.  First, I jumped into Edit mode, then created a new project.  In that project I added a new sibling page and dragged a blog portlet to that page.  I saved a draft version of my page.

On to the publishing process.  First, I published my page.  I found Workflow Publish under the More button.

Since I did not have a workflow set up, the page went immediately to the publish stage.  You might think that my effort was complete and the page was available on my published site.  Not true.  Because I had created a project for my changes, my published page won’t be merged into my published site until I publish the project.   Note, you can create a page outside of a project and it will publish immediately.

I clicked the Manage link next to the Project Content heading in the Edit mode window.  Up popped the Manage Project dialog.  In that dialog, I’ve circled two key parts.  At the bottom was the list of items in the project.  This showed the page I created and that its status was Publish Pending.  It was pending because the project had not yet been published.  At the top of the screen was a Publish Project button.  I clicked that button to publish my project.  If I had set up a workflow for the project, it would have been sent through an approval process.

Finally, my project and page was published.  You can see the final page below.  Notice how the parentheses are gone from the tab and the upper right corner indicates I’m viewing a published site.

I did encounter a couple of errors when I went through the process.  The errors were from me not picking the correct theme profile when I created my page.  I’ll explain the errors and theme profiles in my next post.

• IBM Connections
• IBM Sametime Advanced
• IBM Sametime SUT Lite
• Lotus Quickr
• FileNet

There are some nice videos on the capabilities which really start to see some of the Project Northstar coming to fruition.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now, there is nothing that you couldn’t do before but the vision here is clearly defined and you will likely see some pricing that will enable the enterprise to get this done faster and cheaper.  The only downside of this is the fact that there isn’t one deployment manager to make the package install easier.  They all sit on different WAS versions, data store versions vary by all the applications so from an install and administration standpoint it will be a heavy lifting process but those who have the vision, this is a great way to cohesively achieve a vision and fast ROI.

• Browser based – using HTML 5, CSS and Javascript
• Hybrid Web – consists of web code executed in a native app – the Worklight Shell, which makes your app downloadable
• Hybrid Native – uses the downloadable app and native language on the device to go beyond the browser capabilities
• Native App – a pure native app that integrates with backend services

Portions of Worklight are based on the open source PhoneGap tooling which is very popular for creating native applications.

The picture here comes from one of Perficient’s Mobility presentations and shows a generic MEAP platform. The idea is that the MEAP system enables integration across disparate systems and delivers that integration to a variety of mobile devices.

In the MEAP space, there are several competitors, including Antenna Software, IBM Worklight, Kony, Vervio and others.

IBM Worklight has four main components:

• Studio – this is the IDE developers use to create Worklight applications.  It is Eclipse-based.
• Server – this is a highly scalable, Java-based server which acts as a gateway between enterprise apps, external services and the corporate infrastructure.
• Device Runtime Components – these are client-side APIs that expose device specific capabilities to your mobile application.
• Console – this is a web-based application that allows you to manage and monitor the platform.

IBM is working hard to deliver Worklight solutions across its platforms.   I commented recently on the use of Worklight with WebSphere Portal.  You can see a demo of Worklight delivering an IBM Cast Iron solution here.  I’m looking forward to diving into Worklight to help our client’s take advantage of this new technology.

So I restarted the install. Never mind that I didn’t have enough memory (RAM, not mine).  I accepted the defaults and entered an ID and password for my portal/websphere administrator.  The fixpacks started to download and as I mentioned before, our network seemed slow, so I closed out my remote connection and decided to check back at a later time to see if the install worked.

Ok, the install finished.  Installation manager wanted to know if I wanted to install a profile or run portal. Since I had not read the documentation too thoroughly, I assumed that a WebSphere profile was created, so I chose to just start Portal.  It seemed that Portal was already started, so I simply opened the browser and navigated to  the correct portal page:  http://____:10039/wps/portal.  In the screen shot you can see the initial portal screen loaded.

I checked the logs and didn’t see any major issues there.  Overall, the installation went very smoothly.  Except for the initial worries about disk space, operating system and memory requirements, I went through the rest of the process without a hitch.

So I’m going to start playing with Portal 8 and see how it goes.

First, the download is bigger than in previous versions.  In previous versions, I downloaded 6 images for a total of around 4gb.  With this version, I had to download 10 images (2 for IBM Installation Manager, 3 for WebSphere, and 5 for Portal Enable) that took up almost 7gb.  I uncompressed all the files into one directory as required, which I called Portal8.

I was installing this on a VMWare server running Windows 2003, which I previously used.  That server had 20gb allocated to it. Well, with Windows taking several gb and the downloaded images expanding to over 8gb, I was under the recommended available disk size for the installation (8gb).  As you’ll see in reading the rest of this port, at this point I should have gone back and checked the system requirements closer.  But I was too excited to start the installation, and unfortunately it takes longer to request a change to VM disk space than I was willing to wait.  I knew that I could run the install from a network drive, but our network seemed really slow for these VMs.

To try to get enough disk space for the install, I decided to install just IBM Installation Manager (IIM) first (146mb on disk), then remove the IIM installation software, which included zip files for all the supported operating systems. On a side note, it would be nice to not have to download all that extra software for Linux, Solaris, zOS, etc. when all I want is a Windows version!  I ended up deleting just enough to get me the available space I needed.

After installing IIM, I had to point to the repository configurations for WebSphere, Portal, and Enable using IIM’s preferences dialog.  Each repository configuration is in a file in the main directory for these components.

I started the installation through IIM, selected WAS, Portal, and Portal Enable to install, and then selected the WAS fixpacks to install from a list IIM presented to me. Funny thing is, IIM showed me fixpacks for all operating systems, not just the one I was running.

Once I deciphered what was targeted for Windows, I clicked next and encountered my first real problem.  I got this message: “A supported operating system was not detected.”

I immediately went to the info center to look at the system requirements.  Sure enough, Windows 2003 is no longer supported.  Windows 7, Windows 2008, and Windows Vista Enterprise are the only versions supported in WebSphere Portal 8.   I guess I should have read the requirements more closely!  (Yes, I’m laughing at me too.)

So its back to square one.  I’ll request an updated VM from my IT people.  This time, I’ll get more disk space along with the correct operating system.  I’ll also make sure they add more memory as the Info Center says that 4GB is now the minimum amount.

Just so you don’t get stuck in this same situation, I’ve summarized the new requirements here.

For the update to this post, where I actually installed Portal 8, see Part 2!

And you can search for people looking or offering items on a map – super cool.

Then you get offers and can respond inline in the application – no more emails and the like from craigslist.

If you haven’t tried Zaarly out – I would highly suggest it.  Great option for offering and I will use it A LOT.

IBM has put a lot of time and money into improving WebSphere Portal over the past 10 years and v8 continues that trend.  The following updates are major enhancements to the new version:

• Better integration with IBM Web Content Management:  WCM is truly becoming a integrated part of WebSphere Portal.  New features include Managed Pages where Portal Pages are tied directly to WCM site areas.  The new version creates WCM site areas and content when a new portal page is created.  Portal pages can be included with WCM projects so they can go through approval workflows and get published through the syndication process.
• A new optimized theme.  Portal themes have been undergoing constant changes in the past versions.  I’m hoping that this latest version is really optimized.
• New Community Pages that integrate IBM Connections more closely into WebSphere Portal.  When creating a community page, you can specify which Connections community is associated with that page and both Connections and WCM will understand that context.
• OpenID authentication which lets you use external systems like Facebook to authenticate users.
• Web analytics overlays allow you to see usage analytics right on your pages without having to generate reports.
• New installation process using IBM’s Installation Manager.  This feature promises easier and faster installs of the portal servers.

You can see all the new features on this page: What’s new in IBM WebSphere Portal V8.  Thanks to Kenio Carvalho for pointing me to the official IBM Announcement Letter which tells us that you will be able to download the new version starting May 4.

Mobile is a hot topic in the portal world. However, mobilizing portal presents significant challenges.  Screen size is an issue because most portals aggregate multiple content and applications into a single page.  With our mobile device we want to integrate its features into our portal, such as the camera or GPS.   Providing full functionality to mobile devices takes lots of planning and new technologies.

Worklight is a product that provides a hybrid approach to mobile applications.  Hybrid is where you still run your application on the web server, but through HTML5 you can access some of the native features of the device.  This hybrid approach can be a huge benefit to portals because you don’t have to duplicate all its functionality in a native application.

IBM’s Web Experience Factory can use Worklight to quickly develop mobile portal applications that can take advantage of this hybrid model.  Over on the IBM Web Experience Factory blog, Jonathan Booth has posted some screen shots of a hybrid real estate portal.  In this example, he accesses the portal through his mobile phone and sees a nice mobile interface.  Using his phone’s camera, he can take a picture of a property and load it to portal.  

The original real estate sample that Jonathan shows was built using PhoneGap.  Now we can use Worklight and Web Experience Factory to rapidly build the same application.

In the study, Forrester interviewed four actual customers and built a ‘composite’ company on which to develop the TEI.  The resulting composite company was modelled as a large state-based health services provider with greater than $7B in revenue and 3.5M customers.

As you might expect, the study concludes that there is a big ROI of 96% from the examined solution.  This translates into a payback of less than one year.  Benefits come from a variety of both hard and soft sources:

• Call Center
• Online appointments
• Online bill payment
• Paper mail
• Online sales
• Improved document management
• Customer retention
• IT cost avoidance

You can read the study for full details.  It is well presented and supported by solid calculations that take into account all potential costs and benefits.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This system is based on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and provides very dynamic insight into your Healthcare data.  It is designed for physicians, nurses, hospitals, MCOs, IDMs, ACOs, HIEs, etc.; so it covers a broad range of end users.  The flexible archtecture lets you start small and grow the system as you need it or you can start large and get larger.

At the heart of the system is the ability to pull data from a variety of systems and then using a robust rules engine to present data in an intelligent way.  Unlike some other business intelligence systems that focus on data from their own systems, Perficient’s HealthBI system pulls data from a wide range of systems, including McKesson, GE, EPIC, AllScripts and more.

In terms of measures, the rules engines provides over 600 key performance indicators (KPIs).  These KPIs cover the broad range of measures, including meaningful use, accountable care, operations, finance, JCO, etc.  The system has been ONC certified for Meaningful Use measures and reports for stages 1, 2 and 3.

Using SharePoint’s analytics capabilities, Health BI presents reports and dashboards to see trends over time, by physician, healthcare plans, locations, etc.  You can drill down into the data shown to see underlying data and potentially identify root causes of problems.

Role-based access and security are important parts of any portal and the Health BI portal is no different.  Users have role-based access to the system, so nurses have different views than administrators who have different views than physicians.

I encourage you to look at this innovative healthcare portal and explore the many capabilities demanded in the marketplace today.