User profiles in organizational environments

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to describe a project to provide an online web portal that can be used as a front-end for all university users - students, teachers, staff - and services, library, administration, e-learning, and e-mail.Design methodology approach - The profile model proposed is mainly inheritable, defined by profile components with transactional templates, security rules and layout templates. This approach is being tested on a campus prototype portal. The prototype is an underway project in development at our university.Findings - This paper explains that, even though different from the overall approaches, the basic profile and the profile management system proposed are solid alternatives when addressing personalization of organization users.Originality value - This new approach explains how user modelling applications can be integrated into any organization without the cost of reengineering the entire information system already in place.