Academus 2.0

Packed with enhancements and improvements, get more usability, stability, and functionality with Academus 2.0, all at an affordable price that's easy on the budget.

Usable

Academus 2.0 is a milestone improvement in the user experience. The user interaction layer (theme) and visual design (skins) were re-designed from the ground-up with focus on usability, accessibility, Web standards compliance, and flexibility in presentation configuration. The result is a visually stunning and elegant user experience that can be easily custom-tailored to your institution's brand.

Stable

Significant engineering attention was applied for the Academus 2.0 release to improve the quality of the logging output and the robustness of the Academus product. This coupled with improvements achieved by upgrading the underlying uPortal core results in a more supportable, more stable product.

Affordable

With so many enhancements, you might think that the upgrade to Academus 2.0 particularly pricy to reflect the high value of the transition. Not so! Unicon Professional Services can affordably and efficiently upgrade an Academus 1.5 instance to Academus 2.0. Upgrading does not incur additional licensing costs – you pay only for the valuable service of expert assistance in installing the new software, upgrading configuration, porting forward branding, and training to set you on the way to harvesting the value of the upgrade.

Functionality Introduced in Academus 2.0

Notification Portlet

A Notification Portlet has been added to facilitate sending notifications within the portal to portal users and other recipients. The Portlet has been integrated with notifications from the Personal Calendar, Groupware Calendar, Groupware Roster and Survey channels. The Portlet also enables the composition of notifications with attachments and email options along with the priority status of the notification/mail.

Blogging Portlet

A Blogging Portlet has been added that supports the ability to publish multiple blog instances – each instance in its own channel. Access is controlled through Academus and Admin users are able to single sign-on (SSO) to the administration console. With the appropriate privileges a user can add, modify and delete blog categories and entries and also add and delete files. Also supports management features to set up and update blog properties.

Permission Portlet

A Permissions Portlet has been added to manage group and user permissions in the Notifications Portlet, Briefcase Portlet (optional in migration), Blogger Portlet and Academus Web Content Management Portlet. In the Briefcase Portlet, administrator can set up permissions for Groups/users to view, edit, delete, and share folders. In Notifications Portlet permissions can be set to Compose, Attach, Delete, Save, Import, Export and Message viewing. In the Blogger Portlet permissions can be set to edit categories and entries, file upload and properties editing. In WCP Portlet permission can be set to view to provide access to WebContent editor.

SSO Gateway Portlet

Academus 2.0 can be configured to support different 3rd party applications integrated and published through Portlet including multiple instances of the applications. This new SSO Gateway kit will allow for streamlined integration with third-party applications. System administrators are able to apply SSO to applications through Academus quickly by editing a single configuration file.

Single Sign-On configuration and certification for number Gateway Portlets have been included as part of the Academus 2.0 release these include:

Academus WCM

A Content Management Solution has been integrated that allows multiple instances of published content to be accessed within their own channel(s) in Academus. A link within the WebContent channel provides authorized users the ability to SSO from the Academus Portal to the Academus Web Content Management system. Users have the ability to display a "page" of content authored in the Academus WCM to a Portlet published in Academus. A refresh button within the corresponding Academus Portlet is available to display updates made to a "page" – following a "Publish" action – without republishing the Portlet in Academus or restarting the portal. Contact your Unicon Account Manager for more information on licensing the Academus WCM solution.

Live Text

A single sign-on tool for Live Text has been integrated with Academus providing users with privileges to LiveText the ability to click on a link to that application in the Gateway Portlet and be signed in. The SSO Link can be configured to launch the target application in a new browser window or in the channel as an inline frame. The SSO provides error handling for the scenario when a user clicks a link in the Gateway Portlet but has not been granted privileges to LiveText. Contact your Unicon Account Manager for more information on licensing the LiveText portfolio solution.

Sakai

A single sign-on tool for Sakai has been integrated with Academus providing users with privileges to Sakai the ability to click on a link to that application in the Gateway Portlet and be signed in. The SSO Link can be configured to launch the target application in a new browser window or in the channel as an inline frame. The SSO provides error handling for the scenario when a user clicks a link in the Gateway Portlet but has not been granted privileges to Sakai. Contact your Unicon Account Manager for more information on Unicon’s support and deployment service offerings for the SAKAI learning management system.

Additional Browser Support

Academus has been enhanced to support Netscape 8.0, FireFox 1.0.6, and Safari 2.0 on Mac OS 10.4

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Enhancements to Academus 1.5 Functionality

uPortal Framework

In the spring of 2005, JA-SIG released uPortal 2.4.2. As part of Unicon's effort to be an active supporter of uPortal and its community, the Academus 2.0 release has been designed to run on top of uPortal 2.4.2

Unicon made some changes to the group service provided with the base instance of the uPortal framework to improve the overall performance of the portal. Your institution should see no impact from these changes beyond improved system performance However, if your institution has coded custom channels or Portlets that are dependent the reference implementation of the local individual group service you may encounter errors following the 2.0 upgrade. This type of a dependency is widely recognized as a poor coding practice so is not typically to expected to be an issue for most customers. If you are encountering problems, Unicon can assist you with mentoring on the best practices for your custom development.

Navigational Enhancements

Navigational enhancements focus on the main navigation systems, both enhancing the traditional tabs as well as adding new components for convenience and redundancy.

Quicklinks

A persistent callout area that displays links to channels prioritized by the system administrator, utilizing one-click access to popular channels. Clicking one of the Quick Links will take the user to a focused view of that channel. Institutions have the option to enable or disable the Quick Links feature, as well as specify the desired presentation location within the portal layout.

Expanding Menus

Expanding (drop-down, fly-out) menus on each of the main navigation tabs. The expanded menu displays a list of links of the channels on that tab. Clicking one of the menu links takes the user to a focused view of that channel. Institutions have the option to enable or disable the Expanding Menu feature. Expanding Menus are available only to Netscape, Mozilla and FireFox users. These menus are not supported in Internet Explorer or Safari.

Sub Navigation

A left-hand navigation component comprised of a list of links of the channels on the current tab. Clicking one of these links will take the user to a focused view of that channel. Institutions have the option to enable or disable the Sub Navigation feature.

Web Search

An optional, persistent Web search feature that links to third-party public search engines. The list of third party search engines is configurable by the institution. Institutions have the option to enable or disable the Web Search feature.

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Preferences Enhancements

Preferences enhancements focus on improving the preferences interaction and interface, both enhancing the current views as well as adding new features for convenience and usability.

Preference Shortcuts

A set of links (add content, change layout, and pick colors) appear on the tab-view. These links are shortcuts into the corresponding preferences workflow.

Usability Improvements

Enhancements to the preferences mode to strengthen the modal interaction and increase the usability of the interface. Modified presentation of fragments to more clearly communicate which tabs can be edited by the end users versus which tabs are actually fragments locked down by the system administrator.

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View Enhancements

View enhancements focus on the two main types of view into the portal, the tab view and the focused view to provide a more standard, visually appealing “web page” view and increasing the elegance of column sizing and layout.

Focus View

Strengthen the usability of the focused view by simplifying the focused view (reducing extraneous information and navigation systems) and giving the focused channel more real estate on the page.

Channel Usability

The presentation, button and link labeling, and channel workflows have been revised in a number of Academus channels as part of the overall changes to improve the end user experience in their day to day interaction with Academus functionality. Channels with significant presentation changes include Calendar, Survey Author and Bookmarks.

Column Size & Layout

Simplify the column size and layout interaction. Increase usability by limiting the maximum number of columns to three. Allow for an optional left navigation column. Change column preferences to a graphical layout selection for column width distribution with column width options of narrow, wide, or even.

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General Skin and Theme Enhancements

General enhancements focus on improving the standardization, consistency, and flexibility of the theme code to provide greater skin support and make training for and enabling of client modifications to the theme and skin easier.

Skin Flexibility Enhancements

Variable-controlled logic add to the theme to produce (or not produce) hooks in the rendered (X)HTML for various institution-specific options (branding, navigation components, or copyright and legal information). Structure (X)HTML to provide for more skin design possibilities.

Code & Services Enhancements

Performed Maintenance on UI code for greater standards compliance and consistency in component architecture and naming conventions. Coded the theme (X)HTML output to validate to the W3C XHTML Transitional DTD. Comments were added to the code for greater ease in understanding and modifying the UI code.

Preference Lock Down

Changes were added to the theme to provide a configuration parameter which allows institution to enable or disable the Preference (Customize) link.

ADA Skin

A default Academus 2.0 installation will have "academus" and "academusADA" skins registered within the portal as selectable skins.

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Channel and Portlet Enhancements

Bookmarks

The ability to edit existing bookmarks was added. Additionally the bookmark description field was made optional when creating or editing a bookmark.

Classified

The phone number validation for Classified was removed to support international phone numbers, as
well as phone numbers which included extension information.

Survey Author

Additional confirmation messages for users deleting an unsaved survey.

Poll

Enhanced the poll channel to support multiple concurrent distributions of the same survey, if each survey is published to the poll channel under a different distribution name.

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Issues Resolved in Academus 2.0

Calendar

Previously when a Calendar event is sent to multiple groups, users that belong to more than one group will receive multiple notifications for the event.

When a user shares a calendar with an LDAP user and gives write access, the LDAP user is not able to write to the calendar. If the user selects 'Everyone' instead of a specific LDAP user, the LDAP users are able to add entries. This issue has been resolved in this release.

Briefcase Portlet

If a user publishes multiple Briefcase Portlet instances to the same tab, actions taken on the second instance will be repeated in the first Portlet (Ex: Click Open a folder etc.). This issue has been resolved to show action on just one Portlet.

While attempting to remove users from the shared LDAP folders, the channel would fail to render when the 'Remove' button is clicked after selecting the user. This issue has been resolved. In the briefcase folder view, when the 'Size' column link is selected to sort the folders and files contained in the selected folder, only the files are sorted and not the folders. This issue has been resolved to sort the folders and files.

When a briefcase Portlet drive is deployed with owner access and drive sharing turned off (sharing button disabled), the portal will fail to render when a folder is edited in that drive. This issue has been resolved.

Group Chat

While accessing a Group Chat channel to launch a Chat window as a PAGS group user that belongs to the group that has been given the access, the screen displays a message that the user has been removed from the group. This has been resolved to give user the access.

Campus News

Parent Topics were not displaying while viewing articles under different topics. This issue was resolved to display the topics correctly.

Bookmarks

When a folder was added to Bookmarks channel without a title the channel just refreshed without giving any warning or error messages. It has been fixed to generate a warning message to the user to enter a title.

CMS

While adding a note from Notepad Channel, a blank page is displayed while using Fire Fox.1.0.4 browser. The page has to be refreshed every time a note is added to see contents. This was a browser related issue specific to Fire Fox 1.04 and has been resolved in Fire Fox 1.0.6

While launching a Chat window from the CMS chat link, an instance of the CMS channel window opens instead of the Chat window. This was noticed in Fire Fox 1.0.4, Netscape 7 Mozilla 1.7.8 browsers and the issue has been resolved to display only the chat window.

In the discussion forums the edit and delete icon for the forums created was displaying incorrect mouse over text as forums instead of edit and delete. This issue is resolved to show correct text.

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Supporting Hardware and Software

Certified Server and Database Combinations

The following server and database combinations have been tested and certified for use with Academus:

• Redhat Linux ES 3.0 with Postgres 7.4.3
• Redhat Linux ES 4.0 with Postgres 7.4.3
• Solaris 9.0 with Oracle 9i
• Solaris 10.0 with Oracle 9i
• Windows 2003 with SQL Server 2000

Supporting Application Updates

The following supporting applications are now being used:

• IIS 6.0 (Windows); Apache 2.0.54 (Linux/Solaris))
• Tomcat 5.0.28 for all Windows, Linux and Solaris
• Jnet Direct SQL Server driver: 3.0.23
• Mod_Jk 1.2.14 for Windows, Mod_Jk 1.2.13 for Linux/Solaris
• Sun Java 1.4.2_05
• Coffee Link NNTP Server 1.3.1
• Jboss 3.2.5 JMS Server
• Aspell 0.60 ( Spell Checker)
• Blojsom 2.26 ( Blog)

Supported Browsers

A table with the supported operating systems and browsers for Academus 2.0 is included below.

Academus 2.0: Supported OS and Browsers
	Firefox	Internet Explorer	Mozilla	Netscape		Safari
	1.0.6	6.0	1.7	7.2	8.0	1.2.3	2.0
Windows 2000	X	X	X	X	X	N/A	N/A
Windows XP	X	X	X	X	X	N/A	N/A
Mac OSX*	X	N/A	X	X	X	X**	X***

* Mac users will not be able to use the Chat channel if SSL is enabled.
** Mac OS X10.3 only
*** MAC OS X10.4 only
Note: JavaScript must be enabled on all versions

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