With their numerous interrelated components, creating and maintaining portals can often feel like a project in itself. This article provides guidance toward managing and maintaining portal-related projects.

Prerequisite Skills

Slate functionality

• Configurable Joins

• User roles (for athletics or other user-based portals)

• Custom datasets (for alumni portals, or any dataset-based portal)

Web Development

• Basic HTML and CSS

• Liquid markup

• Knowledge of JavaScript

• Ability to add or edit custom SQL snippets 

Portals with Purpose

Start by clearly articulating the goals for the portal. Try to answer the following questions:

• What function should the portal serve?

• Can this function already be completed with other standard Slate tools? 

• Who will have access to the portal?

• What information should these users be able to see?

• How does this portal fit in with your other processes?

• What is the timeline for this portal?

• What are the priorities? Which functions are must-haves, and which are nice-to-haves after implementation?

• Who will be responsible for this portal? The owner might be the person who builds it—will they also be responsible for maintaining and troubleshooting it?  

Slate Resources

Examples and Templates

These can be especially helpful for building portals for the first time, or for grabbing snippets of code that could be re-used in your own custom portals:

• Add pre-built portals via Briefcase Import that could be further customized or used as reference.

• Provision Slate Showcase (via Launch Clean Slate) to see examples of fully functional portals.

• Provision Slate Learning Lab (via Database > Discover Slate) to see content from Slate Innovation Summit 2019's Learning Lab course "Expanding Your Portal-Verse," including lessons that walk through how to add portal components such as tabs, pop-ups, and more.

Webinars

Dive into the different components and functionality that can be added with custom Applicant Status Portals.

Portal Maintenance

Set a Schedule

Portals serve targeted groups of constituents, and depending on the time of year or admissions cycle, it may be appropriate to add minor edits or apply major updates. Cycle Prep is usually a recommended period during which significant updates or changes to active portals can be planned. Keep in mind your processes and available time and resources, and aim to set appropriate times of the year for portal maintenance.

Use Views

While XSLT-based portals continue to be supported, the ability to format the portal page using Liquid markup or drag-and-drop content widgets is not available. Some features, such as custom checklists, are only available with views. If you wish to replace an existing applicant status page using a status.xslt file with a portal, you must use views.

XSLT is also less straightforward to parse through and edit, compared to plain HTML. We strongly recommend using the newer Views functionality, as new features will mostly be created in views going forward, and if you are currently using an XSLT-based portal we would encourage you to prioritize migrating to Views.

Designate and Document

If you are working with an external consultant or Slate Preferred Partner to build a portal, ensure that you have clearly defined ownership and delineated all tasks involved with setting up and using the portal.

When building or updating a portal, take the time to document decisions made and other relevant details about functionality added or changed, how items were prioritized, etc. This should be shared with your Slate administrators and other relevant staff. When ownership of a portal has to be handed to another person, or if a colleague has to step in temporarily to troubleshoot or make a quick change, your documentation will help continue to keep portal processes running smoothly.

Eyes on Updates

Enhancements and new portals-related functionality are also added to Slate on an ongoing basis. Keep an eye on channels such as The Slatest News and Slate Scholar for updates and ideas for refining your portals.