Supporting a campus portal
William P. Wilson · 2001
Role based security and access to information in a portal is the current trend, but be prepared to find the concept of defining who belongs in each "role" much more difficult than it seems. Colleges have a lot of "gray" areas.Prospective students, students, alumni, faculty, and staff are groups that are typically identified as roles that provide different views and security elements for data within a campus portal. There are two considerations in this area that often create stumbling blocks to a clean implementation of a portal. First, are the definitions of these roles clear? In which group does the retired faculty member go? Which role would a board of trustee member be assigned to? What about a student who also works for the institution? The second area surrounds how a portal is going to handle people who legitimately belong in more than one realm. The author, for example, is a staff member, a faculty member at times, an alumnus, and a parent of a student at Gettysburg College. It is imperative that the portal be flexible enough to allow users with multiple roles to participate in the views provided for each of those roles.