Alerts subsystem - uPortal - JA-SIG Wiki

Overview

RU is building an Alerts subsystem into uPortal. The high level Use Case was presented on the mailing list.

The use case describes a general Alerts and Notification system. Alerts are packets of data that describe that some business event happened (e.g. financial HOLD placed/removed, grade change, etc). Notification schemes are mechanisms to inform the user of unacknowledged Alerts.

Features

Users can use the Alert Manager channel to:

Show Alerts Summary (actions: sort, filter)
Show Alert Detail (actions: acknowledge alert)
Choose Notification Schemes

We currently are planning three types of Notification:

Email when an Alert gets published
Auto focus Alert Manager Channel on login
Unacknlowdged Alert indicator in portal header

Any authorized external system can publish Alerts via the Alerts Manager web service. External systems are responsible for the content and knowing when to publish an Alert.

Status

This system has been in production since Jan 05 within our myRutgers portal. Feedback from our clients has been very positive (one department actually complained alerts were TOO effective at getting students to call in, as they were unprepared for the traffic.) If folks are interested we could either bundle it up as a add-on module or incorporate it directly into uP2.x. We'd also be interested in any additional features, use cases, thoughts, etc...folks think would make such a system valuable.

Testimonial about the value of this idea

We definitely have a need for this, and would be very grateful if it could at least be offered via the Clearinghouse. In fact, I'd even go so far to say that if we are not able to provide some sort of alerts notification, it could very well kill our uPortal efforts.