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A portal is a central place for making all types of information accessible to an audience of varying range. Portals are primarily intended to consolidate a vast array of information from a multitude of sources onto a single screen. The users of this information typically do not publish to this type of portal; rather, they are the consumers of the information prepared and published by others. For example, consider an institutional portal that provides access to the following:
- Announcements of institutional programs, events, quarterly data, and so on
- Reports that enable users to acquire information and/or make key business decisions
- News, weather, and stock quotes from syndicated content feeds
- Availability of e-mail, calendar, meeting schedule tools, and other heavily used business applications
- Access to smaller portals created and maintained by independent departments within the institution
The presentation of this information is frequently augmented by typical portal services like customization (the ability for users to specify their own content of a page), as well as a sophisticated search engine to help users locate critical information quickly.
An enterprise information portal can support thousands of users or just a handful. Yahoo! is an example of a commonly used enterprise information portal, providing up-to-the-minute data from financial institutions, weather feeds, and other sources all over the globe.
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