Chapter 8. Personalization

Personalization refers to a group of features that tailor the user experience to the preferences of the user. It results in the delivery of custom content to the user when the user needs it, and it improves the online experience of the user . Personalization is important both for public portals and for enterprise portals. Users of public portals, whether commerce portals, membership portals, or government portals, need a sense of belonging to encourage them to keep coming back to the portal. For enterprise portals, personalization can "push" information to users based on their interests, conveying information that can help them but that they might not otherwise have found. Personalization is an essential element for digital dashboards, as the roles played by individuals are different and each role has different information needs.

Personalization builds on the user profile (see Chapter 7). This chapter introduces the personalization techniques most often used in a portal and outlines instructions for implementing these techniques on the Microsoft .NET portal platform. It also describes the integration of personalization with user profiles, web parts , subscriptions, and commerce features.