Why Portal Intranet Workflow Is Widely Used in Today's Business Systems

Web portals, both public and private, the latter often referred to as corporate or intranet portals, are now so sophisticated that workflow management is considered a must-have feature used to organize, manage, and track portal intranet workflow. In fact, public web portals also rely on intranet workflows for organizing the entire operation of a portal, with those actions not visible to website visitors.

In brief, portal intranet workflow should be organized and managed in a fashion allowing certain outcomes to be produced, depending on predefined tasks to be performed. Thus, portal intranet workflow is basically about managing different tasks and the underlying processes that take place within an organization. One should bear in mind that a software system is also a type of organization from software developer's point of view.

Thus, intranet workflow, namely those tasks and processes that are performed within an organization, and whose only visible to outsiders part is their respective outcome, deals with tasks and their statuses. Hence, when the status of a task or a process that comprises multiple tasks changes, the respective task or process is assigned to another individual or group of individuals whose responsibility is to process in further until a certain goal, or status, is achieved.

Web portals and websites rely on workflow management to automate various processes and tasks usually performed in relation to content management and other processes which require high-automation level. For example, a document that is in draft status would be automatically assigned to an editor for further polishing and then scheduled for publication, according to preset rules. On the other hand, all those procedures are inter-dependent, therefore a document would be checked for revision by an editor prior to publication i.e. a document that is not edited cannot be published. Such basic functionality of content management systems is widely used in today's online environment, where automation plays an important role in the overall optimization of processes and procedures used in day-to-day activities.

In addition, portal intranet workflow requires a certain level of interoperability between different software applications because modern-day business systems usually interact with external devices and third-party software, often in real-time. Therefore, reliable portal intranet workflow depends not only on software compatibility and interoperability but also on system's overall ability to communicate with different hardware platforms and devices of various types. For example, the workflow scheme of a web portal may require email messages to be sent to users, or other means of communication to be used, subsequently those messages should be readable by any hardware device that may be used to receive notifications.

In addition, workflow management process applied in public and intranet (corporate) portals should allow for creation of a set of rules, defining steps to be completed within all and every process before it produces the desired outcome. Thus, an administrator can also define user roles and user permissions that provide the framework for completing a task without omitting a step in the process.

In the context of a complex system, portal intranet workflow management is as important as the processes and tasks it is intended to manage. Software vendors, realizing the huge potential of workflow management and under constant pressure by demanding users, now incorporate software tools for workflow management even in free web content management systems. Evidently, licensed software applications feature more powerful tools for managing portal intranet workflow, while the number of affordable solutions in this field has been growing rapidly in the past few years. Thus, reliable and affordable tools for managing portal intranet workflow are now available to both individual and business customers all over the world.

Mobile Challenges that Web Portal Development Is Facing

The general concept of how a web portal should look like and what it would incorporate evolved markedly within lees than a couple of decades, with web portal development now including approaches previously considered integral part of application development only. Those involved in development of web portals have also deal with a very different concept of how things work in an online environment and how software applications and hardware devices interact, thus re-shaping the entire concept of web portal development.

A good number of popular public web portals have disappeared in the course of only a decade, while new players have set foot in the market, introducing new approaches and vision that seem to work, for now. At stake is a huge market niche worth billions of dollars in annual revenues, generated mainly through ads and commissions on mercantile deals. Thus, web portal development is more about design and implementation of successful business ideas rather than simple aggregation of content from numerous diverse sources. Obviously, content aggregation will never lose its primary role in the context of web portals; nevertheless, entrepreneurs and software developers alike are increasingly looking for lightening business ideas rather than methods to implement the idea in practice.

On the other hand, web portal development has never been so a challenging task in the light of new technologies emerging on a daily basis, as well as a booming market for mobile devices. In the space of a few years, web portal developers have been forced to enter into the uncharted waters of software solutions running on a wide range of mobile devices, all of them capable of connecting to the Internet. Thus, the market for web portals suddenly expanded to cover billions of mobile users, with increasing number of these users browsing the Internet mainly on their mobile devices that may include smartphones, tablets, netbooks or any mobile devices that is Internet-enabled.

Consequently, web portal developers and web portal owners re-focused their efforts to enhance a wide variety of services provided by web portals to run smoothly on mobile devices, which in turn operate on different operating systems and use different web browsers. Reliability is a key success factor in the online world, and since web portals are intended to provide services to large audiences, web portal development must cope with the challenges of maintaining the faultless operation of web portals that deal with vast volumes of data on mobile devices and in real-time environment.

For example, a good number of web portals include tender modules, where individuals and corporations can post offers and strike deals. Design and implementation of underlying algorithms for such a software module can be a challenge itself, but the real challenge lies with the implementation of such a module to support various operating systems running on different hardware, including mobile gadgets, while interacting with all other modules that make a reliable web portal.

Other mobile factors that influence web portal development are related to the general design of a web portal that is intended to be accessed through a mobile device. Display resolution and display size, availability of touch screen functionality, colors scheme, and available memory all are essential factors that a web portal developer should have in mind in the process of developing reliable software to run on mobile devices. Evidently, design and functionality are inter-dependent, but in the context of mobile devices design and interface issues can cast shadow over an otherwise full-functional software application.

It is still unclear in what direction mobile device evolution will head, but it is quite evident that hundreds of millions of people around the globe now use mobile hardware to access online services, including various web portals. As far as the general concept of web portals is well-defined, or at least is defined to a reasonable extent, web portal development is destined to focus on mobile devices in the foreseeable future.

Optimize Organization’s Performance through Automation of Portal Intranet Workflow

Intranet portals are widespread systems to manage various business applications and data used in day-to-day activities of a corporation, specifically designed to improve the overall performance of an enterprise through the means of different tools like portal intranet workflow. Workflows and intranet workflows in a corporate context consist of a number of steps aimed at improving the technical aspects of task performance, in addition to better organizing the overall process of job communication, collaboration, and completion of tasks. Thus, the corporate portal intranet workflow is an invaluable tool to automate various processes and procedures, while tracking the progress of a particular task, a project, or a set of projects.

Evidently, intranet workflow is where planned and actual performances of tasks meet, and where automated procedures can be applied in order to better the outcome of a particular task. Hence, an intranet portal serves as a primary hub for not only exchange of information and collaboration, but also as a tool to improve corporations’ efficiency, providing room for application of numerous automated procedures in the field of corporate reporting, scheduling, and many others.

Communication and interactions between both business software applications and users within an intranet portal is performed in a more secure way compared to open systems that allow third-party users to access the system. An intranet portal usually also provides access control functionality and user or group based security that prevents or allows access to particular intranet resources and data. Furthermore, a user or a group might be prevented from accessing outside networks, as well as to get automatic denial when attempting to get remote access to the system, while enabling system administrators to create strong hierarchical user trees.

Another dimension of intranet portals is their ability to utilize templates that automate particular tasks or even trigger actions depending on the state of a task or a project. For example, a template can be used to distribute mass-messages to groups or individual users when a certain event, like scheduled appointment, occurs. Other tools to manage workflow can also be incorporated into an intranet portal, enabling managers to keep close eye on internal work processes.

Workflow depends on data and information that is used within an enterprise as well as data and information coming from outside sources like contractors, clients, and suppliers. Therefore, an intranet portal is usually equipped with software modules to process, handle, and transfer such data in various formats that allow for interoperability between enterprises and within the company. Portal intranet workflow may comprise prices of information originating from different business applications thus creating a working environment that should cope with the challenge of various data formats, standards, and procedures. The automation of such processes can relieve employees of duties related to manual exchange and re-formatting of data and provide secure medium for inter-departmental communication and collaboration.

While many people think of portal intranet workflow mainly in terms of calendaring and scheduling optimization, a full-fledged intranet portal can feature modules that optimize and automate the work process across all departments and cover virtually every aspect of running a business. The functionality allowing for triggering scheduled and accidental actions is unparalleled in terms of organizing and optimizing performance, while providing early warnings and reminders caused by the occurrence of a particular event or lack of action.

Furthermore, the entire corporate paperwork can be regarded as an element of the portal intranet workflow and managed according to preset corporate policies and procedures. Overall, a reliable intranet portal provides unlimited opportunity to automate myriads of processes involved in the portal intranet workflow that would otherwise require manual actions, thus improving efficiency and boosting performance.

What Drives the Success of Web Portal Development in India?

Whether it is a personal or a corporate portal, a growing number of customers worldwide look for services related to web portal development in India to get first-class yet affordable product. Web portal development is still a rapidly growing business, with huge potential for further expansion, despite that the first web portals have emerged a few decades ago. The inevitable need to collect and present data from various sources at one site, to place offers and make trades online, to communicate with individuals and businesses gave birth to different types of web portals: from personal to corporate to governmental to tender portals.

Equipped with features like free or paid email services, stock quotes, news, and research tools, web portals are considered a major driver of the Internet’s progress as a whole, while organizations, both private and governmental, are eager to promote their own personalized web portals that might be public or not. Thus, fueled by excessive demand, web portal development evolved into a lucrative business, while the affordability of portal development services soared, especially quality services provided by reputable software developers and vendors. This undesired development, from customer’s point of view, had happened mainly because of the concentration of web portal development services in the West where market fundamentals presuppose higher costs of web and software development as well as higher payroll costs.

Gradually, this Western hegemony in the field of software development, including web development and portal development, has faded away, after new market players from Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America unveiled products and services featuring high quality and reasonable pricing. Today’s market for web portal development is much more customer friendly in terms of pricing, customization, implementation and support services available to customers as well as in terms of number of providers to choose from internationally. Moreover, the emergence of advanced online collaboration technologies has largely eliminated the obstacles preventing enterprises from adopting solutions developed abroad and installed or hosted internally through the means of remote assistance.

Web portal development in India is a relatively new phenomenon; nevertheless, the market is growing at tremendous pace, powered by rapidly expanding demand for outsourced software and web development services, mainly in the West. At present, even large multinationals outsource web portal development, implementation, and support to India-based vendors, looking for external expertise, optimization of costs and more affordable service. While the costs of web portal development in the Western hemisphere have plummeted markedly in the past decade, software developers in Asia/Pacific region are still unequaled in terms of price/quality ratio, giving them notable competitive advantage over rivals.

This is of particular interest to medium- and small-sized business looking for affordable solutions to design and implement an organizational web portal. Such an organizational web portal may feature advanced capabilities like online collaboration tools, workflow management, content management, as well as ability to connect to the system remotely and safely through a module designed to controls user access. In fact, those types of systems are widely adopted across virtually all industries and within enterprises of all sizes, which in turn means that India’s software developers can apply their skills in many different spheres where website portals are used.

The recent emergence of cloud computing as the next big thing raised questions whether the Cloud is to put an end to locally hosted and administered web portals, both public and private, while offering even greater opportunities for those involved in web portal development. As far as the cloud is considered a growingly safe environment, software developers and customers alike can take advantage of advanced third party software and hardware infrastructure to develop, host, manage, and administer web portals, which also greatly reduces the overall cost of running a public or a private web portal. Thus, web portal development in India is now trying to expand into the territory of cloud computing, where promising opportunities are hiding.

How the Concept of Portal Intranet Workflow Is Working

Portal intranet workflow cannot be dissected outside a specific corporate or industry environment because workflows and workflow management are industry-specific and can serve different purposes within different contexts, scholars and professionals agree. Workflow and workflow management  are only one of many constituents of a corporate web portal, where the power of modern-day intranets is used to deal with complex tasks that involve collaboration between work groups, content management, and workflow management software within enterprises of all sizes.

Contemporary enterprises rapidly pile tons, actually terabytes of information that should be managed efficiently and accessed according to hierarchical access level trees. A corporate intranet portal is able, in theory, to provide the means to combine access points, applications, and information processing and analyzing tools that should create a valuable tool for accessing, processing, and publishing content (virtually everything can be considered content, starting from customer support forms, to invoices, and personal work calendars). Thus, corporations can gain significant competitive advantage by automating various tasks and crating algorithms to deal with their rapidly, and inevitably growing documentation.

An enterprise portal usually features personalized views and is intended to be used in a multi-user environment where managers and personnel can easily interact, collaborate, and utilize various embedded or third-party applications. Workflow management, within such a context, is taking advantage of integration of tools used to automate and handle various tasks, including scheduling, project tracking and reporting, making revisions of different documents, etc. Most workflow management systems rely heavily on alarms and alerts related to various tasks; therefore, software vendors incorporate advanced alarm modules into workflow management systems intended to be integrated into an intranet portal. Alerts generated by the system may be related to possible issues or risks to projects under way but can also signal that new content is added to the intranet portal or important information has been changed or edited.

Workflow management deals with repetitive tasks and portal intranet workflow can be considered an example of a machine (not a physical machine but a mechanism to collect, process, and disseminate content) where content is processed according to preset rules and managed in a strictly planned manner. In a business context, portal intranet workflow involves repetitive application and performance of a thoroughly designed plan to accomplish particular goals. In this regard, scholars gradually realized that information flows are far more adaptive than their mass and energy counterparts, while information flows are also characterized by their low cost compared to mass and energy flows.

Thus, an enterprise portal, with the help of workflow management software modules, improves the overall efficiency within an organization by alerting individuals or groups that a task should be performed and transferring the task between those responsible for its completion until the project is complete. This is an extremely simplified model of workflow management, though.
Portal intranet workflow is usually also subject to strict access rights rules to eliminate risks of accessing, editing, or deleting content that is intended for restricted use only.

Improving Intranet Workflow through Web Portal Development

Corporations witnessed their intranets grow tremendously in the past two decades and web portal development is now an integral part of a complex process of developing corporate portals, designed to improve workflow and provide advanced functionality to employees and customers. During the past years, corporate portal intranet workflow has become increasingly hard to manage, while corporate IT departments were under growing pressure to optimize corporate web portals and offer personalized tools for management of data, information, and applications utilized by users. As a result, today’s web portal development increasingly involves design and implementation of software aimed at corporate users, instead of development of classic web portals intended to serve as entry points to information available on the Internet.

Workflow management within corporations offers numerous challenges to both webmasters and IT professionals, with user-generated content growing rapidly. Therefore, software vendors offer various ready to use and custom solutions to deal with the increasing amount of data, stored in numerous file formats, that is hampering the flawless workflow of business operations. In general, an intranet portal would provide access to variety of corporate applications and information stored in company databases, while personalization offered by such gateways markedly improves the overall efficiency of the system.

The corporate workflow process can be improved by integrating various software tools with an existing enterprise portal, with most corporate portals featuring built-in email, calendar, and scheduling capabilities. Furthermore, many corporate portals, designed by reputable software developers, are highly customizable and configurable, enabling users to personalize views, take advantage of custom modules, and collaborate in a multi-user environment.

Workflow automation is considered an important tool to boost overall efficiency within an enterprise, and web portal software allows creation of personal and group alerts that are triggered if a pre-defined event occurs. In addition, corporate web portals offer virtually unlimited opportunities for creation of templates that automate workflow and do not require extensive knowledge of programming languages.

Web-based portals, as a rule, can be accessed from any location and any type of computer, thus providing improved workflow management abilities, while employees are able to access and modify corporate documents from remote locations at any time. Usually, the corporate data is stored in a centralized data repository, which allows for faster indexing and searching of information and facilitates data backup procedures within an enterprise. Those factors have indirect positive impact on business performance and help reduce the overall costs of running a business.

Some authors claim that security issues might prevent intranet portals from achieving their projected effectiveness. Nevertheless, modern intranet portals utilize web-based technology and applications that allow webmasters to apply highly centralized approach toward security, monitoring and granting/revoking access permissions within seconds. Evidently, the majority of intranet portals that allow users to connect from remote locations could become victims of a targeted computer attack but this is a relatively small price to be paid for having a modern business system.

Overall, web portal development is a growing market for developers offering services to enterprises that plan to boost efficiency through creation and maintenance of intranet portals that also facilitate collaboration within larger corporations.