It's time to say goodby to MyBLIS - the portal that is now used by around 140 customers at the lab. It is based on outdated and unsupported technology and a number of the features that made it attractive when it was introduced are no longer working.
It did offer some features that might be missed - but we have some suggestions for most of them:
- Bookmarks
- Common links for Lab services
- Work Queues
- Single Sign on
Bookmarks
Bookmarks are an important component of any browser experience. They provide an easy way to get back to a web site of interest. However, bookmarks are traditionally stored in a file on your computer - use another computer and you can't access them. myblis had the capability of storing bookmarks on a Lab server. There are a number of alternatives that can be considered.
Both Firefox and Chrome browsers provide alternatives.
- Firefox Sync - "Take your bookmarks, tabs and personal information with you"
- With Chrome's sign-in feature, "you no longer need to fret about your bookmarks or apps being "stuck" on one computer."
Another option is to use Google bookmarks.
We also want to note that Firefox and Safari both have interesting new features when you open a new tab - images of the web sites you last visited appear - and can be used to quickly go back to one of them.
Common Links for Lab services
The A-Z index on the labs home page remains as one of the best places to locate a link to a service you need. Over time this is likely to be supplemented with a web page that provides some of the same categories and links available through myblis. In the meantime, use this page.
Work Queues
One of the nice features in myblis (while it was working) concerned work queues. If you missed an email relating to approval of a procurement action or approval for employees LETs time was still pending, the work queue feature made it easy to catch up. We do not have an alternative to this feature.
Single Sign On
When myblis was first developed, it was thought we would integrate a single sign on capability along with it. For various reasons, it did not survive as our solution. Since then, we have implemented it with a new technology - those of you who access any of the Google Applications, Taleo, and the commons wiki's already take advantage of it - with many more applications planned in the next year.
