One of my favorite capabilities Evolve has is the ability to create portals with no to very low code expertise required. The ability to create portals is included as part of your Evolve platform.
With Evolve, you can create internal or external portals. In this Tip of the Week, we are going to focus on Internal Portals. However, once you have the portal deployed, the design is the same between portal types.
Let's start by helping you imagine the possible use cases for internal portals. In today's world, most users have to juggle a lot of different systems and data, and knowing where and how to access everything can be a challenge for things like systems, data, web sites, documents, images, videos, policies, procedures, support teams, social media, etc. Trying to remember where everything is or keep favorites stored in your browser can be challenging. That's were internal portals come in.
What if you could easily set up landing pages for specific groups of people? Internal portals are great for
- Cross-functional teams working on special or ongoing projects
- Business units that need access to common data, systems, documentation, websites, etc.
- Regional teams that need access to region-specific systems and data
I'm sure you can think of a few examples beyond what's listed above. The goal is to help simplify your users' day to day lives by giving them a central place to go for everything they need.
When it comes to creating a portal using Evolve, the most time consuming part is content planning and collecting what is needed for that content. When planning a new portal, think about:
- Do I want a
- Left navigation bar?
- Header?
- Footer?
- What kind of content do I want?
- Pages - Do I want one page or multiple pages?
- Images - Do I want to use images for a more user-friendly interface?
- Links - Organize a list of any links to systems, websites, data, etc. to be included.
- Documents - Do you want to attach files as part of your portal (standard operating procedures, work instructions, examples, documentation, etc.)?
- Videos - Do you want to provide embedded training or informational videos to provide easy access for users?
- What do I want my pages to look like?
- Layout - What "look" do you want to use for each widget?
- Styles - Do you have branding you want to use?
Once you've planned your portal and organized all the information you want included, it's time to start designing your portal. See the Evolve Internal Portal Setup online help for instructions on how to create a new internal portal.
Once you have your plan in place and portal created, designing it is the fun part! Below are some tips/steps I use whenever I start designing a new portal.
Settings
- I typically start in the Settings tab. See the Settings online help for more details. Do I want
- Left Navigation
- Header
- Footer
Content
- Next, I move to the Content tab. This is where I upload all the content that will be displayed on my portal. See the Content online help for more information. There are many different Content types you can add:
- Pages - Do I want more than one page in my portal? I can create multiple pages here.
- Styles - Do I have CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that I want to use for branding/look?
- Data Connections - Do I want to have data connections?
- Images - Do I want to upload images/icons to help provide a user-friendly interface?
- Links - Are there links to things like systems, documentation, external web pages, internal reference, etc. that I want to include.
- Documents - Do I want to upload documents for users to access for things like a project charter, work instructions, documentation, etc.
- Videos - Are there any videos I want to embed for my users that are relevant to the portal?
- Actions - Different types of actions include set variables, set data source for this action, set the portal variable to a fixed value or to a widget-items column value, etc.
- Variables - Variables can be used for dynamic data.
Widgets
- Next, add Widgets to your canvas. Click a Widget to add it to your canvas. Use your mouse to resize or move the widget around your canvas. See the Widgets online help for more details. There are many different types of Widgets available.
- List - Display items in a list format with multiple options? Example:
- Card - Display a single item using a picture or icon? Example:
- Table - Do you want to show items in a table. You can bring in things like Evolve Tasks that make it easy for your users to see what is assigned to them. Example: (ignore all my past due tasks - it's a demo system after all ;-) ).
- Iframe - Iframes are a nice way to embed things like web pages or reports into your portal. The example below contains a live interactive Power BI Report:
- HTML - Embed HTML into your portal if you want specialized content. Example:
- Date Time - Display the date and time in your portal. Example:
- Weather - Add a weather widget to your portal.
- RSS Feed - Embed a live RSS feed in your portal.
- Social Feed - Do you want to have a link to your company's LinkedIn? You can embed that too.
- Chart - Show data in a data connection using a chart on your portal.
You can Preview or Save along the way. When you are ready, Deploy your portal to see it live.
It's not necessary to follow the steps in the order posted in this tip. You may decide you want to do it your own way. What's important is that you have fun with it. You can always come back and add more as you go. It's super easy to add, modify, and redeploy. Every time I create a portal, it's never complete the first time. There's always something else to add.
Now that you've seen one of my favorite things to create in Evolve, I hope you can imagine the possibilities for your organization. Let us know if you create one. We always love to see our customers' creativity in action. :-)
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Tammy Lake
Sales Engineer
*Precisely Software Inc.
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