The initial version of the user feedback portlet developed at the JA-SIG Winter Unconference has been added to the JA-SIG source code repository. The portlet allows users to provide simple feedback about the containing portal, and also provides an administrative view of the content.

The portlet was designed with uPortal in mind, but as it follows the JSR-168 portlet specification, it should work in other compatible portlet containers.

User feedback submission features:

• Simple user UI for comment submission
• Users may make their feedback anonymous, but the default is to collect user information
• Automatically collect information about the user and his or her browser

Administrative feedback features:

• Admin interface for viewing feedback with recent comments and overall stats summaries
• Easily filter feedback by type or user role
• Shortcuts for sending email to non-anonymous users
• Excel data export
• Optional listener to forward feedback submissions on to an email address

Technical implementation:

• JSR-168 portlet using the Spring PortletMVC framework
• Hibernate backend

To try out the portlet, download the source code from subversion at https://www.ja-sig.org/svn/portlets/FeedbackPortlet/trunk, run “mvn install”, and follow your portal’s instructions for portlet deployment.