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New HFCC Portal
Contributed by Sandro Silvestri
Have
you ever been at home and discovered that you had forgotten an important
file required to complete an assignment? Tired of carrying files between
home and office on an old floppy disk? Ever wish for easy access to all
of the College’s web resources? Well, wish no more!
In an
effort to provide greater access to the College’s vast technical
resources, Administrative Data & Voice Communications has
implemented a College Portal. Located at http://myportal.hfcc.edu,
the portal provides a single point of access to the College’s internet
based resources.
What is a Portal?
At the
most basic level, a portal is a web site targeted at a specific audience
that provides:
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Content
aggregation and delivery of information relevant to the
audience
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Collaboration
and community services
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Services
and applications access for the target audience, delivered in a
highly personalized manner
To
access the portal, simply point your web browser to http://myportal.hfcc.edu
and the
following screen will come up: |
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While
any browser can be used to view the Portal, the advanced features can
only be access if Netscape 7.01 (or later) or Internet Explorer 5.5 SP 2
(or later) are used.
To
Login, simply user your network login and password and click the Login
button. Through the Portal, you will have access to both Administrative
(ADM) and Instructional (ACS) resources. If you have accounts on both
the Administrative and Instructional networks, a screen will come up and
allow you to accept which resources you wish to access. Simply select
ADM for administrative resources and ACS for instructional resources.
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Note:
If you have do not have accounts on both the Administrative and
Instructional networks, this screen will not appear.
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| Upon
entering the Portal, you will see the screen below. |
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| The
screen is divided into two sections. The section to the left contains
all resources
that are available through the portal. The links in this section will
differ based on the user. Students will have a different link list than
full time employees. The section on the right is the area that you can
personalize (to a limited extent). The News and Stocks link provides you with the ability to add or remove stock symbols
as well as change the number of news feeds that you view. |
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The H:
Drive link
will allow you to access files on your H: drive. It does not provide
access to files stored on a particular computer. How you download and
view files is completely dependent upon the configuration of your
computer. Clicking on a file may cause the file to be opened or it may
prompt you to download the file. Downloading a file may also be
accomplished by right clicking the file and selecting Save
Link Target As
(Netscape)
or Save Target As (Internet Explorer). |
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The Portal also has a link that allows you to access GroupWise.
The first time you enter GroupWise via the Portal, you will be prompted
to enter your GroupWise login and password. For most people, the
GroupWise login and password are the same as their network login and
password. However, if you changed your network password and did not
change your GroupWise password, the two passwords would be different.
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My HFCC WebSites provides a link list of HFCC internet sites. As additional sites
are added,
they will be added to the link list.
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| When
exiting the Portal, it is very important to properly logout. To do so,
simply click on the icon at the top of the portal page. |
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What’s Next?
Over
the next few months, the Portal will be expanded so as to be able to
properly handle large numbers of concurrent users. Also, as an important
Distance
Learning resource,
availability of the Portal becomes critical. To ensure constant Portal
availability, the two Portal servers will be tied together in clustered
environment. Should one of the Portal servers go down, all connections
will be automatically transferred to the second cluster server.
Clustering of the Portal servers will provided uninterrupted Portal
services. |
