BI Portal Version 2: BI Portal and UW Profiles redesign and consolidation – release in June!

May 25, 2022

Current Status: Team approved a release of the BI Portal (version 2) for June, after brief code freeze.

diagram showing BI Portal and UW Profiles merged into one new interface

User Acceptance testing (UAT) completed

User Acceptance Testing was successfully completed on May 23 with only a few reported issues. These issues have been prioritized and will be resolved or added to the queue for future updates.  

Upcoming code freeze

To prepare for the release of the redesigned BI Portal (version 2), we’ll initiate a code freeze on mid to late June, with a release to follow.

How will the freeze affect you?

During the content freeze, you’ll still continue using the current BI Portal to view and access reports, cubes and dashboards. However, during the freeze period, if you submit a ticket with an issue regarding a report, dashboard or cube, we won’t be able to resolve the issue until after the freeze period.

What’s next?

After the switch to the new interface, when you log in to the BI Portal, you’ll see the new interface with the same content, including all the items you had in your “Favorites.” 

Additionally, the new BI Portal will be the topic of a BI Portal webinar in August or September. We hope you’ll join the Reporting & Analytics team to take a grand tour of the new interface and get answers to your questions.

 

Project Summary

The BI Portal Version 2 (V2) project involves the redesign and consolidation of the UW Profiles portal and BI Portal back end and front end web interface.  The scope of this project is limited to the consolidation of UW Profiles portal and the BI Portal into a single, modern, easy-to-use reporting portal.

Objectives:

  • Launch a new BI portal version to consolidate UW Profiles and the existing BI Portal
  • Migrate users of both of the existing portals to the new consolidated BI portal and help them adapt.
  • Decommission the UW profiles user interface, admin interface, and backend databases
  • Change Management and Communication to the BI Portal and UW Profiles users.

Benefits:

  • A single BI Portal user interface will reduce overall technical maintenance costs by supporting one code base and database instead of many.
  • Improving the supportability and extensibility of the portal through a modern code language and infrastructure will make the portal easier to support, and allow us to add new features based on user requests.
  • Improve usability by resolving legacy design flaws and improving the user search and browse experience.

Timeline

The timeline for web interface updates is outlined below:

Oct-Dec 2021

  • Microservices and database schema updates
  • Home, Favorites, Catalog pages
  • Header/Footer updates
  • Tiles for favorites and catalog
  • Report Details updates started

Jan – Mar 2022

  • Reports, Dashboard and Cube detail pages
  • Catalog
  • Alerts
  • Reaching out to users for User Acceptance Testing (UAT) 

April-June 2022

  • Help page
  • Global Search
  • Conduct User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
  • UAT closure with approved fixes
  • Re-migration pre-launch
  • Fixes to the existing metadata content
  • Deploy all code/data to production
  • Lessons learned and project closure

Help

Please contact the UW-IT Technology Service Center at help@uw.edu with questions about the UW Project BI Project V2 Project.