Tag: Portal

Looking At Documents Differently

Nick Jackson / / Stuff Which Doesn't Live Anywhere Else

I frequently have to access a variety of documents to do my job. Unfortunately a lot of these documents are stuck on the Portal, which whilst it can do a good job of being a document management system it does terribly at getting those documents out to people. Let me explain how getting a document normally works.

  • Visit a long Portal URI, which is usually long enough that either you’re drawing a pension by the time you’ve finished typing it or it breaks across two lines on your screen so it needs copying and pasting.
  • Log in, even for supposedly public documents.
  • Discover I’m not at a document, but at a ‘sub-portal’ for a department with a big list of things I can read.
  • Find what I want.
  • Click the item, to be taken to another page where I can click another button to download it.
  • Download the document.
  • Open Pages, since my Mac doesn’t have Word installed.
  • Tweak the document formatting so it looks right.
  • Read and enjoy.

Now, I really wish I was exaggerating there, but I’m not. What I’d like to happen is:

  • Visit short, sensible URI.
  • Read online version with a nice layout, the ability to use my own browser accessibility etc.
  • If I want it to download, click to get a PDF.

Let’s see how we can do that.

Continue reading “Looking At Documents Differently”

Seriously? Permission Fail.

Nick Jackson / / Stuff Which Doesn't Live Anywhere Else

I’ve just been flicking through the Daily Alerts for my staff account (It’s almost as mind numbing as the one for Students, but sometimes contains information which has a use outside of the land of marketing).

Today I decided to make use of the link telling me to find out what was going to be on the menu in the Atrium this week. I duly clicked the link and was whisked off to Portal and prompted to log in. At this point my devious mind went “hold up a second, will this work if I’m a student?”. Being the investigative sort, I plugged in my student account details to see what would happen and was promptly refused access. My staff account works fine, and will happily tell me what I can enjoy for dessert this week.

From this I can only guess that the information on the menu is so highly secretive that students aren’t permitted to see it lest they go wild with desire for the honey glazed pork steak (Wednesday), the lemon Bakewell (Tuesday) or the Thai fishcake with sweet chilli sauce (Thursday). Or they could stand outside the servery and just read the entire menu for the week on the board. Go look, it’s on a bit of orange paper.

As a side note, the link which actually came through the email included some elements specifying that I should be in edit mode. Thankfully Portal has the sense to ignore this if I don’t have permission to edit, but can people please remember to sanitise links before sharing them?

Update: Thanks to Dave, all students can now enjoy reading about the full range of meals on offer.