Portal Design Worksheet

Use the Portal design worksheet to assist you in creating a Portal.

Before creating a Portal, you should ask yourself some basic questions to help drive the design.


	Question	Consideration
1.	Who is your audience (in other words, who are your customers)?
a.	Are your customers internal employees? External? Both?	Portal login credentials. Anonymous login/Security Groups.
b.	Are your customers experienced? IT personnel who can complete tasks by themselves? Novice customers who need guidance? Both?	Number of sites (single site or one for each expertise level). Site item and navigation design (simple or sophisticated). Portal Views (personalize and secure what customers see). Automation (Add One-Step Actions/Actions to simplify tasks). Tip: Expose customers only to the information they need.
c.	Do your customers have different interests (different teams/different responsibilities (example: General Status for Managers, Requesters of IT.)
d.	Are your customers international?	Localization.
2.	What will your customers need to do in the Portal?
a.	Will your customers view/monitor data (reports, dashboards)? Interact with data (Action Catalog/create Incident or Service Request)? Both?	Add data-driven site items (reports, dashboards, document repositories) or action-driven site items (Actions to create/edit records, run One-Step Actions, launch CSM Managers). Security groups/Security rights (View, Create, Delete). Record ownership. License consumption.
b	What activities do your customers need on a site (example: run a report, create an Incident, access documents (doc repository)?	Create site items that deliver what customers need most. Make information easy to find (Startup Item should be informative).
c.	Will your customers need searching capabilities?	Display a search control. Display Saved searches to automate common searches. Add an Action to display the Search Manager (allows custom Searches).
d.	Will your customers need to access documents?	Display a document repository.
e.	Will your customers need to access other websites?	Display an external HTML page or an external site.
3.	Will your customers need access to data other than their own?
a.	Will your customers need to view/edit other customers' records?	Record ownership. License consumption.
4.	Will different customers need different security?
a.	Will you allow customers to access data without logging in?	Anonymous login/Security Groups. Different Startup Items for logged-in/anonymous customers.
b.	Will you require a login?	Customers will need Portal login credentials.
c.	Will some customers need view-only rights? Will some need edit rights?	Anonymous login/Security Groups. Note: For more information about considerations and some helpful design tips, see Portal design considerations and Portal design tips. For more information about Security (security groups, license consumption, scope) refer to the Security documentation. For more information about site items (including how to create each), see their respective documentation.