SPOTLIGHT:  PORTAL

Sponsor: Dr. Sam Levy
Project Managers: Jeremy Ahrens, Elizabeth Houle, Kevin Knutson

Background

Based on feedback, IRT has been working to improve your web experience.  Over the past year we have been creating a system that pulls in different information sources to a central location. The new UST Portal is an application designed to enhance and organize academic and extra-curricular experience at St. Thomas. 
Visit http://portal.stthomas.edu to view your email messages, chat with friends and classmates, check your grades, view Blackboard announcements, research a term paper, and much more.

We interviewed hundreds of people and they all told us that they wanted their Social Web Life to be separate from their St. Thomas Life.  We listened, and we focused the UST Portal on the parts of your life that define your relationship with St. Thomas.

Overview of Current Features

Login                      
The login page is the starting point of your experience with the UST Portal.  Just type in your existing UST username and password and hit the login button. No new passwords or pin numbers to remember! 

Occasionally we might put notices or messages on the login screen to keep you informed of new features or important announcements.

Home                     
After logging in, the first thing you will see is your dashboard.  Just think of it as an overview of all of the functions inside portal or as a quick view of recent activity and updates in your St. Thomas life.

You’ll see your most recent mail messages, news, course updates, events for the day and any outstanding tasks.

News                      
The News section of portal pulls together news from wherever you want, but sorts it into two main groups:

University News – Here you can subscribe to news from all over campus and have it filtered into one place.  If you just want to see one source, select it from the list on the right.

All Other News – In this section you are able to subscribe to news from all over the Internet.  Feel free to browse the categories and listings we have pre-populated for your, or add your own RSS feeds using the “Add a Feed” button.

Courses                 
Whether you’re taking a full course load or have a light semester, there are still plenty of things to keep track of related to courses.  The UST Portal knows what courses you are enrolled in, their times and locations, who teaches the class, when the final is, and the names of all your classmates.

The courses pages pull all of this information together as well as updates from Blackboard and Murphy to keep you on top of your assignments and keep those A’s coming in.

Chat                       
Have a question about an assignment? The UST Portal knows if your classmates, instructors, subject librarians or friends are online and allows you to quickly engage in instant message sessions with them.

To manage your online/offline status or list of friends, use the preferences section.

Networks             
Networks are our way of showing all of the different ways that you are connected to different people on campus.

We will be adding networks all the time to help you connect to fellow athletes, club members, advisers, and other groups.

Similar to courses, you will be able to see when your friends and colleagues are online and collaborate with them.

Calendar               
Ever wish that someone put your courses and their locations on your UST calendar each semester?   Well, we did.  Even as you change your schedule by adding and dropping classes, your UST calendar will reflect the changes and update each day.  Feel free to add notes about assignments to individual entries or delete a cancelled class.

You can also add personal events or browse the different St. Thomas calendars to find events you might be interested in.

Inbox                     
The Inbox is your expanded view of all your mail at St. Thomas.  Reading, composing, replying and deleting messages is easy.

You can also browse and manage folders and search for items in any of your mail folders.

Research               
The Research section was built to help connect you to resources around campus to help you work on research projects.

St. Thomas subscribes to thousands of data sources and our Library staff has organized the content by subject to help connect you with the best sources more efficiently.

For each subject you are able to find databases, research guides and helpful searches.  If you don’t see a subject that you are researching, just use the “Add a subject” link to add or remove any subjects you want to appear in the list.

For more broad searches, the find section allows you to quickly locate books, databases, indexes, journals and other library resources from our catalogs.

If you aren’t sure where to start, the Library’s staff is just a click away in the Ask a Librarian section.

 
Portal is a work in progress and will continue to grow. We’re just excited to roll out the completed parts and start getting your feedback.  That way, we will continue to add features that will make your St. Thomas life easier.

If there is something you don’t like about it, if you have ideas about things we can do to make it better, or if something just plain doesn’t work, let us know.   We keep a very long list of all the features we are adding and we change the order and priority of that list based on the feedback we get from you.

We encourage you to use the new UST Portal and help us make it a better product for you.

We will be working each day to add more functionality and we hope it becomes a tool that helps to bring your life at UST together.