We’ve been gearing up for our Luminis 5.1 upgrade, so I was interested in this morning’s update on Luminis. This morning’s webinar was hosted by Alan Hansen, VP of Product Management, and Cordell Bourne, Product Owner for Luminis. Even though it was short on specifics, it was a good overview of their direction with the Luminis Platform. Below are some takeaway items.
Luminis Roadmap
Mar 2014, Email password recovery
Mar 2014, Data migration tools from LP 4.3 to LP5.2
September 2014, Banner XE based Portlets
ILP (intelligent Learning Platform) – Provides integration between eLearning, Luminis, and Banner. LMS Integration that goes beyond SSO. End of 2014.
In 2015, Moving to LIS 2.0
In 2016, Upgrade to Liferay 7.0
Looking at Luminis in the Cloud in the far future.
End of Support Date for Luminis IV?
Alan said, “There is no end of support date for Luminis IV. However, an announcement is likely in mid-2014.” He also stated that they will provide 18 months for clients to make the transition.
What’s New in LP5.1
- Technology stack
- Liferay Enterprise Edition 6.1 GA 2
- Able to support Java 7
- CAS 3.4.12 – Not an integrated CAS server. Luminis 5 can be configured to use an existing CAS server. With Luminis 5.1.1, CAS is upgraded to 3.5.2. It was necessary to work with Shibboleth and Office 365.
- Tomcat 7
- Open DJ 2.5 – Change from LP 5.0 which uses Open DS because Open DS is being sunset by Sun.
Liferay is now a strategic partner with Ellucian. Luminis Platform 5.1 is built on Liferay Enterprise Edition 6.1 GA 2. This has full support from Liferay with lots of additional functionality not available in the Community edition. That means the older Luminis portlets are being replaced by the Liferay-supplied portlets in 5.1.
Functionality
- Site Templates
- Can reuse sites for different student communities
- Dynamic Site Membership
- Provides support for custom fields. Uses a Luminis Dynamic Group to determine if a user should be automatically joined to a site, or removed from a site.
- Makes the determination at login.
- Long-time request from Luminis 4
- Page Templates
- Provide opportunity to reuse a page with portals, themes, and layouts. Can set a parameter to not update.
- Page Customization
- Set up public pages to be customizable by the end-user. Allows additional customization.
Use of the Liferay Community Features – Their portlets have become better over time and the Luminis team felt it important to move in that direction as well. That’s why Community and Collaboration are using the following Liferay portlets.
- Wiki
- Blog
- Discussion Boards
- Bookmarks
- Documents and Media
- Web Content
- Polls
- Tags
Site Delegation – Long requested feature so that admin don’t have to manage every site. Allow users to sub-delegate out admin functions for the site.
EXAMPLE SITE: Sample of a Reworked Luminis 5.1 Title Screen
Why Luminis 5.x over Luminis 4.x?
- Vastly improved UI with web 2.0 user experience
- Improved Personalization, Community, and Communication Tools
- Luminis Platform 5 is the preferred portal of choice for Banner XE
- Updated Technology Stack
Moving to Luminis 5
- Clean Start with Luminis 5.1
- Migration of data from Luminis 4.3
Sharepoint Portal Offerings
Colleague Portal <-> Colleague (Built on Sharepoint)
PowerCampus Portal <-> PowerCampus (Built on Sharepoint)
New offering will be called the Ellucian Portal and might be offered to Banner in Q2 of 2014. Roll out details at Ellucian Live.
Liferay and Sharepoint are 2 of the top 4 technologies in the upper right hand quadrant of Gardner’s surveys. To change from Luminis to Ellucian Portal, there would be no change in licensing fee but there would be a new contract to sign. It’s about freedom of choice, not about a lack of faith in Liferay.
Questions
Workflow portlets have been delayed but should be available by the end of the year.
Only major difference in 5.1.1. will be the Office 365 integration
Windows support? Not on the roadmap because the interest has not been there. Only 3 customers have asked for Windows support on Liferay.
SSO to Banner 8 requires the SSOManager with BEIS. Do not need to implement all of BEIS. Just need the SSOManager. Afterwards, you’ll be able to do SSO between Banner XE, Banner 8, and Luminis 5.1
Group Studio? Because they are reliant on the Liferay database structures, this content will not be moved.
Smart Notify events send info to Luminis 5 based on Banner events. Will be looking at the additional functionality with BEIS.
Does not support Security item with the PIN.
Email and Targeted Announcement? Backlog item
Stress loads on LP5.1. There are points where you have to scale horizontally.
Third Party Identity Management. Use their own IDP systems in place. How do we get those users provisioned back to Luminis? Table for another call.
Hardware requirements? Available in the Customer Support Center.
Can we consolidate course communities?
Rolling content from term to term. The end-user can export the content from the site and then reimport the LAR file back into the site.
Accessibility – Ongoing accessibility improvements with Liferay.