IBM updates portal-building software

IBM Corp. released on Tuesday an update to WebSphere Portal Application Integrator (WPAI), a tool for building portals, or personalized Web sites where employees, partners, and customers can access company information.

WPAI ships as part of WebSphere Portal, IBM’s main product for building and deploying portals, and is aimed at business analysts, systems integrators and other users who are not typically expert programmers. It includes prebuilt portlets that can be customized or used as they are, and adapters for connecting to back-end applications.

The update adds more than a dozen new portlets, most of them for SAP AG’s Manager Self-Service product, an IBM spokeswoman said. It is also easier to use than the previous version, and lets users add instant messaging and presence awareness functions to a portlet, said Tim Thatcher, IBM program director for portal and workspace products.

“If you’re working in a portal and you come across a person’s name, you’d be able to click on the name or highlight it and be presented with various collaboration options,” such as sending an instant message, he said.

IBM also updated several of the Lotus Notes portlets, including Lotus Web Conferencing, People Finder and Lotus Notes Discussion, to improve collaboration among users, and added some additional document management capabiities, IBM said.

WebSphere Portal customers will be able to download the WPAI update Tuesday at no charge, the company said