VIP Help - Terms and Concepts
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Portal
A portal is a web site that organizes and displays information in a particular format. One of the most common features of the VIP portal is the ability to pull content from many existing VBA web sites into one centralized location. The content and navigation change depending on your location within the portal, guiding you to the most relevant content.
Page
A page is one view, or screen, of the portal. When you initially log in, you are taken to the VIP portal "VBA Home" page. Within the "My VBA" community, you have the ability to create your own, personalized pages.
Each "My VBA" portal page contains one or more gears that provide information for that specific page. Only you can see your user-created pages.
Gear
Individual Web applications, which are called gears, provide the various kinds of functionality users see within portal pages. Gears are installed in the Portal Application Framework. Portal administrators can customize how gears are displayed on a portal page, and they can restrict access to gears if necessary. For example, an administrator could set permissions on announcement gear to control who can read and post announcements.
Application
Applications within VIP show up within the left-hand navigation under the "Application" header. Applications include externally-facing web-enabled applications (e.g. The Appraisal System, TAS) or internally-facing applications used only by VIP employees (e.g. VBA E-Mail). Many of the applications are integrated with the portal using single sign-on technology, allowing a user to access all relevant applications with a single username and password.
Community
A community is a collection of "Home" pages created by a specific VBA organization. These Community pages are accessed through the top level navigation. (Loan Guaranty is broken down into communities by business line, including Loan Administration, Loan Production, Monitoring Unit, etc.) Only administrators with privileges on a specific community or community page can make changes.
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Reviewed/Updated Date: July 23, 2010