somUPC: UPC intranets integration

UPC - Barcelona Tech offers a wide variety of services and features aimed to members of the community (mainly students, teachers and staff). Many of these services and features have emerged depending on the needs of each of these groups, and currently is accessed directly or through a generic list of UPC intranets.

This project was created with the goal of creating a prototype as a proof of concept system to unify and standardize all these intranets. From somUPC the UPC community members can access all they need and intranets that are authorized from one place.

From the user view somUPC has two components. One is somUPC Portal and the other is the somUPC bar.

somUPC Portal integrates information from digital Identity (photo, institutional profiles...), UPC Social user thread (like a Facebook wall with information of courses, and other contexts where we have subscribed), and the somUPC bar itself.

somUPC bar is a component that can be added easily to any existing application, you only need to add a little code in web pages and the bar is added at the top. The application will look like part of somUPC and not as an isolated component. This component has a menu that allows user access to different courses and some other applications, depending on their profile.

To add an intranet or functionality to the menu system, register the application is required, indicating which profiles can use it and what kind of integration is suitable.

somUPC has three types of integration:

• "External Application" you just have a link to the application.
• "Embedded Application " designed for small applications. The application is shown as part of somUPC.
• somUPC Bar this method can be implemented in two ways depending on whether or not you can modify the application code.