OK, I should have published this a while ago. I just noticed it’s still in draft mode.
IBM has been adding to their strategy with portal lately by providing industry specific toolboxes suited to specific suites. It includes case studies, white papers, ROI /Value Analysis and most importantly, key assets to be used on your portal. The idea is to make it easier to get your portal up and running and hopefully leverage what others have done. I think they’ve gotten it right based on what I’ve seen with healthcare and government toolboxes. The out of the box portlets they use are great with self-registration, checklists portlets, task list portlets, etc. (Most of these can be found on IBM Solutions Catalog.)
I’m in a session that highlights it the industry toolboxes. Here are some highlights:
Have a number of toolboxes which include:
- Government
- Healthcare
- Banking
- Insurance
- Retail
- Telecommunications
- Industrial
- Travel and Transportation
Notes:
- The accelerators leverage IBM’s Portal Accelerators.
- New code written for the toolboxes are built in Portlet Factory. This means that anything developed can be downloaded and easily modified. (vs reverse engineering it from compiled code for portlets not developed in Portlet Factory)
- Templates are built on the assumption that you have portal and relevant acclerators installed.
- Then download the software assets and run the installer to get your base site up and running (the template is delivered on a CD for now. should be available in the catalog in the future)
- Then change the site to match branding needs, content, etc. Note: This is a start, it’s not your end result. IBM just wants to give you a start.
- The template install is based on a Portal Application Archive (PAA). You can create your own PAA on your own as you develop your own reusable solutions or templates.
Specifics on each toolbox
Government
- Use for this is a government to business owners. Make the government more business friendly and allow business to do more online
- Leverages Portal, Web Content Manager (WCM), Lotus Form Server, and any portlets are built on Portlet Factory
- It comes with pre-built forms using Lotus Forms Designer but the expectation is that you would build your own forms specific to your organization.
- Template has a simple theme called Greener Gov
- There is a variety of content built from WCM so business users can easily create articles.
- There are wiki and blog portlets
- There is a self-registration portlet. If you want to change it, just use Portlet Factory to change.
- Once logged in, the use see the following tabs: Government, Resources, Events, News, Community, and My Account
- It includes an Activities or Tasks Portlet
- The checklist portlet is specific to restaurant registration but it’s easy to change with an xml editor. (instructions are included)
- Lotus Forms in included and the checklist template points to the forms.
Healthcare Toolbox
- Has the same set of “soft” assets like application briefs, business value guides, case studies, etc.
- Called the Healthcare accelerator
- Has a fair amount of WCM content about the hospital, health topics, etc.
- Has an appointment portlet where they assume it would hook to a back end system)
- Has a payment portlet – again, assume integration to your back end system
- Includes a self-registration portlet. Most likely the same but modified to fit the health care scenario
Retail Banking
- Built to showcase improved customer access, increased customer sat, greater efficiency, more innovation
- Leverages, Portal, WCM, Lotus Connections and Lotus Sametime
- Will soon have a mobile version on the catalog.
- Has a simple theme for, “Open Financial Network”
- Includes WCM content like events etc.
- Include a Links portlet that’s probably WCM content
- Has a My Accounts Portlet on the default home page.
- Shows chat to a personal advisor using Lotus Sametime
