Enterprise Application Integration Digital Desktops
Information coming from a variety of business systems can appear on the executive desktop as a consolidated whole. Often referred to as a digital dashboard, the information contained in such a view might include the executive's schedule, current e-mail, a brief list of production delays, major accounts past due, current sales summaries, and a financial market summary. Although it isn't possible to fit all of an organization's information on a single screen, it is possible to summarize data in ways specified by the executive and then act as a launching point or portal for further point-and-click enquiries. How might such a system look? Portals such as my.Excite.com, my.MSN.com, iGoogle (www.google. com/ig), and my.Yahoo.com make good general-purpose information portals. These Web sites contain characteristics in common with their business-oriented brethren. They provide information from many different sources such as e-mail, instant messages, calendars, tasks lists, stock quotes, weather, and news. They allow users to determine what information sources they see; for example, a user may choose to list only business-related news and omit sports, lottery results, and horoscopes. They also allow users to filter the information they see; for example, a user may choose to view only local weather, news containing specific key words, or market results only for stocks the user owns. They allow users to arrange their own information space so that information a user finds most important appears in the right place. Finally, they allow users to drill down into the information they find important to receive more detail. Once a user has set up an account and identified his or her preferences, these public portals remember the user's preferences and deliver only what the user has requested. Users may change their preferences as often as they wish, and the controls to make these changes require only point-and-click programming skills.
a. Visit one of the portal sites listed above. Configure the site to meet your own information needs. Provide a printout of the result.
b. Look up Digital Dashboard on the 20/20 Software Web site ( www.2020software ), read about products with this feature, and describe these products in your own words.