Enterprise Information Portal

1. The problem of unstructured data within an organisation

Organisations need to find a way to structure data in a format of a synthesized directory of information. This often becomes a problem because the data may be stored in different formats and files. When data is unstructured within an organisation it will waste time and money because employees will be spending time trying to amalgamate information from various sources and organising it therefore decreasing productivity.

1.2 Examples of data that needs to be organised within an organisation.

• Training materials

• Brochures

• Invoices

• Microsoft office documents etc. (1)

2. What is an information portal?

An information portal or what is commonly known as an Enterprise Information Portal is a collection of applications that enable an organization to unlock information the is stored both internally and externally therefore allowing users a single gateway to the personalised information needed in order to

The features and functions needed to develop an information portal.

The features and functions of information portals are used interchangeably because they are interrelated and are growing and maturing simultaneously.

The various functions and features needed for an information portal to be developed are:

• Customization

This function refers to altering the information portal to suit the needs and preferences of the organisation this includes four features; the personalisation feature, the change in colours and layouts feature and the selection of resources feature.

• Proactive search

The proactive search function has four features namely; the integrated search capability feature, the embedded search engine feature, the secure search results feature and minor identification feature.

• Collaboration and community

The collaboration and community function consists of these four features; the threaded discussion feature, the community and document collaboration feature and the task management