IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator - features and benefits for mobile portal access

Web portals allow partners, employees and customers to have an optimal user experience, with personalized applications based on role, context, actions, location, preferences and team collaboration needs. By leveraging and providing access to portal services and data from many of the approximately 3 billion mobile devices in use, enterprises can potentially gain marketplace advantage, increase their customers` loyalty, increase revenue and improve mobile employee productivity.

IBM delivers both portal software (IBM WebSphere® Portal) and IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator software to extend portal-based applications to mobile devices to help Line of Business.

Delivering Web content quickly

IBM WebSphere Portal software provides aggregation of a broad mix of applications into a unified, personalized display, and it provides single sign-on and security-rich access to those resources. IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator software provides a delivery platform that supports delivery of portlets to mobile audiences worldwide: internal employees, customers, business partners, and service providers. The software provides an easy and cost-effective way for organizations to gain a competitive edge by delivering mobile enabled applications, business processes, and revenue-producing content and services—on virtually all mobile device types used today.

Enhancing mobile user experiences

Devices differ in their physical characteristics (screen size, keyboard), which affects the navigation of pages shown on wireless devices. A mobile portal represents a set of pages with menu links—appearing as text, icons or both—which allow end users to navigate to sub-menus or content pages. The more sophisticated the device the richer the user experience can be.

Mobile Portal Accelerator software has advanced, intelligent content-adaptation capabilities that can render the same content, created once, optimized and tailored for virtually any of the over 6000 mobile devices in market. The software also provides mobile navigation optimization, modifying the navigation type (links, pulldown menu, indented, breadcrumbs, other style attributes) based on what will display best on that device. This drives an exceptional user experience that takes advantage of the unique characteristics of a person`s mobile device.

Addressing mobile device diversity

The constant introduction of new mobile devices brings diversity to the marketplace, and can present challenges for enterprises seeking to support users on the new devices as they reach the marketplace. Through use of a separately priced, related subscription service—IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator Device Update—organizations are provided with regular updates to the worldwide mobile device repository file used by the Mobile Portal Accelerator software. The subscription service includes new mobile device definitions and updates as they become available from device manufacturers, so that enterprises can rapidly support users on the device types they are using—even the latest in market.

Developers need to provide Portal based Web content and services across the wide variety of mobile device types available today. However, mobile devices differ in their physical characteristics (screen size, keyboard), as well as in the markup languages supported by their browsers. To provide a high-quality mobile user experience, developers can leverage the Mobile Portal Accelerator and optimize content delivery based on device-specific capabilities—for the device types used today and those to be added to the market in the future.

Quickly and cost-effectively delivering people mobile access to portal services and data

Mobile Portal Accelerator software provides a variety of out-of-the-box mobile portal samples, device-aware tools and runtime device recognition that can optimize content delivery based on device-specific capabilities. Developers can "write once" and leverage the standards-based XHTML with Device Independent Markup Extensions (XDIME/XDIME 2) language and Multi-Channel Server engine to automatically optimize web content for mobile display and action—without changing business logic.

Supporting new devices as they enter the market

IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator Device Update subscription service helps developers keep pace with and support the latest mobile device types. The subscription service includes new mobile device definitions and updates as they become available from device manufacturers, so that enterprises can rapidly support users on the device types they are using—including the latest in market.

IBM WebSphere Portal software provides platform services that flexibly coordinate assembly of Web and IT assets into a unified, personalized display. IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator software extends access to personalized WebSphere Portal applications and services to mobile devices by providing the following capabilities.

Out-of-the-box mobile-enabled portlets

Mobile Portal Accelerator software includes XDIME-enabled portlets that can be used out-of-the-box or as samples for demonstration purposes:

• Mobile Portal RSS is an XDIME 2/XDIME mobile-enabled version of the IBM Syndicated Feeds Portlet and supports RSS2 and ATOM feeds
• Mobile Portal Stock portlet is an XDIME2/XDIME mobile-enabled portlet that displays stock quote and performance data for selected companies, symbols and investments, with configuration and edit options for users to modify selected stocks and quote sources
• Mobile Struts MailReader portlet sample
• Mobile Image Conversion Server (ICS) portlet sample
• Change of Address portlet sample for mobile devices
• Calendar portlet sample, for managing appointments, meeting events and calendar
• Mobile Login portlet
• Mobile Portal Client Framework Sample Portlet is a mobile-enabled portlet and artifacts that showcase over 50 XDIME 2 sample widgets that can be used to deliver an enhanced, more interactive experience to client capable mobile devices. Examples of widgets include styling, transition, AJAX table, autocomplete, popup, ticker tape, and more.

Multi-Channel Server content-adaptation capabilities

The intelligent Multi-Channel Server content-adaptation capabilities of IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator software enable fast and effective delivery and optimization of portal content according to the mobile device specific capabilities. Mobile Portal Accelerator software provides a repository of mobile-device policies, which define visual presentation elements (such as page layouts and style sheets) and device-attribute information, and device categorization for over 6000 mobile devices. The software`s multi-channel server content-adaptation capabilities use this repository so that developers can write once and render personalized Web content quickly across a broad range of mobile devices—without changing existing business logic

Multi-Channel Server Framework Client services

The Multi-Channel Server framework client services enable delivery of XDIME/XDIME 2 applications leveraging widgets with rich client-side user interfaces that work on vast range of mobile devices.

Lotus Web Content Management integration

Integration with IBM Lotus Web Content Management enables content authors to render content to both server-based and mobile audiences.

Mobile Portal Toolkit:

To help developers create XDIME/XDIME 2-enabled mobile portlets, the Mobile Portal Accelerator software includes the Mobile Portal Toolkit, an Eclipse plug-in. The toolkit can be used with IBM® Rational® Application Developer 7.5.1 or IBM Rational Software Architect 7.5.1 to create XDIME/XDIME 2 portlets and Multi-Channel Server policies for mobile portlets.

The toolkit includes support for mobile application development: markup/layout editors, templates for rapid site development and enforcement of style guidelines, mobile portlet samples, APIs, and documentation.

In addition, when the toolkit is installed, sample XDIME/XDIME 2 portlets are added to the Samples Gallery for use within the Rational development environment.

The toolkit also includes these features:

• Portlet Creation Wizards. These wizards include support for creating Mobile XDIME Standard and Mobile Struts portlets that support standards-based JSR168/286 APIs. Developers can use the Portlet Creation Wizards to create configure-and-edit mode JavaServer™ Pages (JSP) for XML-based, XDIME (XHTML with Device Independent Markup Extensions) portlets. (XDIME is a flexible, device-independent authoring language that is used in many mobile networks to collect information about a user`s request; then to select related pages or portlets; and finally, to aggregate the output for display. With XDIME aggregation, content can be created once but delivered to a wide variety of mobile devices that are used to connect to the Web.)
• Device Repository of mobile-device policies, which define visual presentation elements (such as page layouts and style sheets) and device-attribute information, and device categorization for over 6000 mobile devices.
• Policy editors. Rational-software-based policy editors are used to create policies which are referenced in the XDIME markup and used by the Multi-Channel Server runtime to make the best decision for emitting device-dependent markup to a target device.
• Sample XDIME/XDIME2 portlets. The samples gallery includes these:
  • Mobile Struts MailReader portlet sample
  • Mobile Image Conversion Server (ICS) portlet sample
  • Change of Address portlet sample for mobile device
  • Calendar portlet sample, for managing appointments, meeting events and calendar,
  • Mobile Login,
  • Mobile Wireless Stock,
  • Mobile RSS/Syndicated Feed
  • Mobile Portal Client Framework Sample Portlet is a mobile-enabled portlet and artifacts that showcase over 50 XDIME 2 sample widgets that can be used to deliver an enhanced, more interactive experience to client capable mobile devices.
• Test Environment. The test environment enables portlet developers to deploy and test XDIME portlets.

Mobile Page Management

Mobile Portal Accelerator allows administrators to configure mobile pages from the WebSphere Portal Administration panels. The software:

• Allows portal administrators and marketing personnel to define how mobile users access and navigate portal services from mobile devices. The mobile pages navigation tree is stored in the navigation model of WebSphere Portal and consists of nodes that represent pages, URLs, labels or portlets. At runtime, the XDIME/XDIME 2 aggregator displays and allows users to navigate the tree created by Manage Mobile Pages.
• Supports the configuration of metadata for each navigation node and portlet on a page. Some metadata will be standard (device characteristics, icons) and understood by the XDIME aggregator. Configuration of custom meta-data is also supported, but a custom aggregator or other functionality is required to use this data.
• Includes support for metadata configuration to enable a higher quality user experience by fine-tuning content delivery based on device type and capabilities. For instance, it filters image and audio content when a device does not support those features, or filtering content based on device type or manufacturer. At runtime, the aggregator queries the metadata for a node to determine whether the corresponding page, URL, label, or portlet is to be included in the display output.
• Creates the navigation for wireless devices and PDAs, and support the configuration of meta-data as provided by the Extended Attributes Configuration Portlet.
• Preload Notices are typically informational pages that are optionally displayed after a link is selected and before it is displayed. They may be used to insert special promotional advertisements, notify users of billable charges associated with a selection, or deliver a warning regarding the content to be displayed. The preload notice works with the Manage Mobile Pages portlet to do the following:
  • Allow configuration of where preload notices appear in the navigation.
  • Allow selection of pre-defined rules for determining when a preload notice is displayed.
  • Provide a mechanism for navigation to flow from the preload notice to the target link.

Platform support

Mobile Portal Accelerator software supports WebSphere Portal V6.1 platforms operating on Windows, Linux, Solaris and AIX platforms.

IBM Mobile Portal Accelerator Device Update is a separately priced, related subscription service that helps developers keep pace with and support the latest mobile device types. It entitles customers to receive regular updates to the mobile device repository file that is used by the Mobile Portal Accelerator software Multi-Channel Server engine to optimize web content display to specific mobile devices. The subscription service includes new mobile device definitions and updates as they become available from device manufacturers, so that enterprises can rapidly support users on the device types they are using–including the latest in market.