Overview of Portals

The word portal is defined as a doorway, an entrance, or a gateway. Similarly, a web portal acts as an entrance or a gateway to content and applications that users most often access.

Portals provide the following benefits to the user:

Aggregation – The user can go to a single place for all content and applications.
Customization – The preferences for a user determine how the portal looks and feels.
Personalization – The user can get content that is specific to their interests and needs.
Organization – The user can arrange the content and applications to make better sense of the information.
Integration – The user can work with multiple applications and content sources in a unified fashion.

Portals typically include the following features and benefits:

Search – Enterprise and web-based search facilities
Content Management – Creation, management, and delivery of content
Content Repurposing – Including content from multiple disparate data sources

Portals optionally include the following features and benefits:

Workflow – Business process management
Single Sign-On – Allows users to log on once for all applications within the portal