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December 20, 2002 [Number 225]
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NIH Portal—A Single Web Site for Accessing NIH Information
The NIH Portal is a Web-based application that provides a single point of access to the data, documents, processes, and services available at NIH. CIT has developed the NIH Portal to enable NIH institutes, centers, and offices easily access to the vast amount of NIH data and documents in many systems. The NIH portal enables employees to bring together in one site the links to NIH data and documents needed every day (internal databases, forms, training resources, meetings, directories) and external information (scientific journals, medical news, search engines, media coverage). NIH Applications to Be Accessible from the Portal Available to the NIH community since June 2001, the NIH Portal will become much more valuable to the NIH community with the introduction of enterprise authentication (EA) early next year. With EA, you will be able to safely and securely log in just once to the Portal and then access other NIH-wide applications without logging in again. (See an article on enterprise authentication in this issue.) The NIH Portal will be the first system to be protected under enterprise authentication (EA), being provided by the Netegrity SiteMinder® software. When you log in to the NIH Portal and your identity has been authenticated, the system then passes on your authentication when you link to other applications also protected by system. This means that once you log in to the NIH Portal, you will not need to log in again to other protected systems. Just click on the link to the application you want, and you're in—automatically. After the Portal, the next applications to be protected under EA—ITAS, and NBS applications for Travel, General Ledger and Budget—will have their own gadgets. (See a discussion of NBRSS below under "Communities.") Logging In New users (or users not logged in) to the NIH Portal will first get the Portal login page (below). To log in, you will need to enter the user name, password and "authentication domain"—the ones you use to log in to your desktop computer on the network. If you don't know your domain, or if you are unable to log in, please contact CIT's help desk, TASC at (301) 594-6248. 
NIH Portal—NIH Enterprise Login Page The NIH Portal brings together in one place a wide variety of "gadgets"—mini-applications that open up to give access to NIH resources, applications and systems. The NIH Portal offers three powerful facilities for managing your daily access to NIH information and applications— "My Pages," "Communities," and "Document Directory." "My Pages" The following example of a Portal page shows how it can be customized with "gadgets" for weather, Portal Training Tour, NIH Calendar of Events. Notice the horizontal dark-blue bar that heads each gadget and the list of "Enterprise Applications" connected to the EA system (upper left-hand corner). 
An example of the Portal when enterprise authentication is operating Portal users create their own "My Pages" by adding just the gadgets they want. This customization allows NIH employees to focus on the applications and information critical to their work and to filter out the overwhelming amount of peripheral information bombarding them every day. You can choose from almost 150 gadgets, position them anywhere on your page, and further customize the pages at any time by adding, deleting, or rearranging gadgets. Also, you can create multiple pages (up to six) for grouping items on special topics.
"Communities" A community provides information for a specific NIH interest—and can serve as a site for a project team, an NIH Office, or for users with a common professional interest. The "Communities" link to the left of the Portal title allows you to browse the list of about 16 communities now available—you will see only those that are open you, since Portal security limits access to communities. Those already created include Desktop Support, Intramural Research, Security at NIH, and the NBRSS Budget/Finance. The administrator of a community page can build the tools and information important to that community—using either the gadgets available for “My Pages” or community-specific collaborations such as task lists, threaded discussions, and document repositories. Communities can also provide document management and threaded messaging designed to enhance the sharing of information within members of the community. The following example—NBRSS Budget/Finance Community—shows the variety of information available on a Portal community. Portal gadgets are included in this community. Note the threaded discussions, as well as the links to outside resources—Department of Treasury (FMS), NIH Office of Financial Management, OMB Circulars. 
NIH Portal—NBRSS Budget/Finance Community "Document Directory" The “Document Directory,” when complete, will provide a single point of access to documents and other resources from all major areas of NIH activity. The Directory is being developed with the help of NIH staff who meet in focus groups to identify items used by those who work in their functional area, institute or center. As you can see in the screen shot below, the Directory will group items in 10 to 12 top-level categories, each containing many useful links. All items in the Directory are listed with a description, along with a link to more "Document Info" (e.g., title, author, date, keywords, source). You will see only those that are open to you, since Portal security limits access to the Document Directory. 
NIH Portal—Document Directory For a demonstration of how the Directory will function, open the “Reference & Research Resources” category. When this category is complete, you will be able to browse a wide variety of resources—including general and biomedical reference books, online journals, and all major newspapers from around the world. Have you ever needed to know the meaning of an NIH acronym? The amount of air pollution emissions by ton in 1983? Life expectancy in 1950? The name of the head of a foreign government? Make the NIH Portal Your Browser's Default Home Page When you make your Portal pages the default, your browser opens to your customized "My Page." It is easy to do. The portal works on Macs and PCs, but it is optimized for use on Internet Explorer. Substitute the Portal's Web address
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| Published by Center for Information Technology, National Institutes of Health |
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Accessibility |
