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Fire and Forget Manager Component

Owned by Paul Zablosky
Last updated: Sept 20, 2007Version comment
1 min read

Problem To Be Solved

The user needs to know understand the relationship between the Portal and application windows spawned or launched from it. Confusion arises if the portal launches an application window that looks entirely different, obscures the portal layout window, and persists even after the user has logged out or closed the portal window.

  • The user's role, privileges and permissions may be unclear
  • The portal window may be hidden -- it's not clear how to get back or what getting back means
  • The user's authentication status is unclear
  • "I thought I was using the portal?  Am I still in the portal?"

Interaction context

The user clicks on a link within a portlet window, expecting to expand the view of a particular service. A new window appears for the service with the user already authenticated, but no other connection to the portal.

Current Solutions

Discussion

It is very easy for uPortal sites to do a very minimal integration of existing web-based based services by simply passing an authentication token to the application and launching a new window, so this is a common practice. There are a number of technical difficulties:

  • Single logout is problematic
  • Reaping of spawned windows is  problematic
  • Security