Introduction

Amongst the Aims and Objectives of the PortisHEad project, which began in March 2007, was the objective to:

Enable electronic data transfer from the students’ e-Portfolio to the University via UCAS, linking into current UCAS centralised procedures.

JISC Project Page

The University of Wolverhampton; Pebble Learning and APS developed a demonstrator tool in which applicants were able to draw upon course information; write personal statements against learner entry profiles and publish specific ‘presentational or application eportfolios’ to named institutions. Piloting of this tool required some implementation work by UCAS which they were unable to commit to within the timeframe for this project.

With 5 months of the project left to run APS and Pebble Learning decided to develop an alternative means of supporting the generic aims of the project.

PortisHEad Interoperable Form Fill (PIFF) allows students to safely import their personal data from a web-service enabled ePortfolio system or data source allowing them to automatically fill in web forms on the internet. For the purposes of this document and the demonstration of this tool/service PebblePad is the system in use.

Webmasters of sites containing educational or employment related forms can very easily implement this tool kit on their web-based forms and can get this feature up and running in less than 15 minutes. It is extremely simple to use and secure. None of the student’s personal information is stored anywhere and the information can only be obtained by the student after they log on to their eportfolio system using his or her user name and password.

The system has been designed to be compatible with every major browser and has been tested with Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9 and Safari 3.1.1. The system is not dependent on any libraries and makes use of Javascript and Ajax to perform its activities. The system is relatively light on resources.

In simple terms the web master includes a button on the web page which allows the student to log on to his or her PebblePad account; single version data (e.g. a single surname) automatically populates the mapped field on the form. Where data has multiple values (e.g. address or email) the tool kit allows the user to choose the ones they wish to use for this current application.

Implementation

There are two main actions required of the webmaster to get this feature working. Firstly, include the provided Javascript code between the tags of the webpage containing the form and also include a button on the page which leads to the PebblePad login.

The second more important task is to match the form fields with the names used by PortisHEad to match the information (see below). The string in question is stored in a variable called query and is easily understandable:

Example: if your form contains a field where the user enters their name, and the name of the textfield is username then you need to add name,username on to this field. Each item of the field list is separated by a ';'

The simplistic syntax for this is:

<portishead tag name>,<your formfield name>

If the form has multiple fields for similar data then you can separate the fields using the ‘:’ character. So, if your name field is separated into firstname and surname fields, then you will have to add name,firstname:lastname;

<portishead tag name>,<multiple formfield name1>,<multiple formfield name2>

This will allow the user to fill in the fields that are matched, and then additional fields which might have multiple values will be displayed to the user and the user can simply select the values they intend to use on the form and the form fields are updated as per the users choice.

You will also be required to include a login form to the PIFF web service. The login form allows the candidate to securely enter their personal details (Username and Password) along with the link to the eportfolio service provider so that their information can be accurately imported from their respective service provider.

It is anticipated that a completed version of this toolkit will allow the user to enter only the URL of their eportfolio and the login form will append a fixed path to server-side folder holding the web service e.g. http://www.pebblepad.co.uk/portisheadpiff

No changes need to be done to the login form other than branding/styling.

A complete list of Supported PortisHEad Tags is as follows:

S.no PortisHEad Tag  Tag Relevance  Comments
 
1 address Form field for Address Should be a single TextArea or a Single textbox
2 rad Reference Address  
3 refname reference name  
4 eaddress previous employer address  
5 qual qualification  
6 etitle previous employment title  
7 edesc previous position description  
8 ename previous employer name  
9 hphone Home Phone  
10 mphone Mobile Phone  
11 name name field Only one textbox
12 email Primary E-mail address  
13 email2 Alternative E-mail address  
14 city City for Current Address Set address as 10
15 pcode Post Code for Current Address Set address as 10
16 dno Door / Apartment number for Current Address (First Line of Address) Set address as 10
17 streetname Street Name for Current Address Set address as 10
18 emailconfirm Confirmation for Primary Email Address When the user is required to enter the same email address twice
19 dateofbith Date of Birth of the candidate Single Textbox
20 gender Gender of the Candidate  
21 county County of the Current Address Set address as 10
22 folio Candidate CV link from ePortfolio System  
23 name Name of the Candidate name,fname:lname;
format when there are two separate boxes for first name and last name
24 dateofbirth Date of Birth of the Candidate dateofbirth,dobday:dobmonth:dobyear
format when there are three different fields for the day , month and year for the candidate birthdate.

The tags are case sensitive and tags can be arranged in any order. More tags can be added to the system for recognition if your ePortfolio system is capable of exporting more information based on the HR-XML standard. This can be done by making minor modifications to the web service code as well as the JavaScript file on the client side. Theoretically, the system should be able to match most fields without any modification. To download the script as well as other related files please scroll down to the additional resources section below.

Technical Issues

Known issues with the current demonstration system are:

Technical Details

The system makes use of widely used standards such as HRXML for data representation and uses the transitional XHTML 1.0 specification. The web service itself is written in .NET 3.5 using C# / VB.NET. The user will not be able to see the web service response and will only see the HTML forms. The authentication method used is Digest Authentication and it is performed by the .NET web service. The authentication details are sent from the form using POST method however they are not encrypted. However using a HTTPS connection would prevent eavesdropping. However it is still a minimal risk component.

Demonstration

For demonstration purposes a range of apposite forms have be cloned; each presenting a scenario representative of a situation that any student might face. We demonstrate how PIFF can reduce the work load for the student by providing an easy to use tool which auto fills the forms using just a few clicks.

Form A is a typical new job application form that can be found on most job sites.

Form B is for the application to a university for a post graduate course

Form C is a typical application for a Bachelors course at a university

Form D is application for a NHS health card

Form E is a replica of a UCAS application form(Edited to include all relevant fields on 1 page)

Additional Resources

Further development work is being carried out to improve the utility and usability of these tools and will be available from this site from October 2008

PebbleBar (For Firefox Version 1.5 and Upwards)

Webmaster's Kit ( All files required to implement PortiHEad on your website)

ePortfolio Developer's Kit (All files required to modify PortisHEad to work with your ePortfolio System)

Additional Resources

PebbleBar was designed as a value added extension for the PortisHEad project. While not a part of the original specifications of the project, Pebblebar is an extremely powerful example to demonstrate the capabilities of the PortisHEad project. Pebblebar is a simple Firefox extension which can help candidates filling personal information in web forms over the internet using information from their existing eportfolio accounts.

Pebblebar works on the same principle as PIFF and makes use of the same web service that PIFF uses to authenticate and identify candidates. However pebblebar further extends the concept of PIFF by simplifying the process. The user installs the extension and then updates her login details within the extension by entering her username and password in the options menu of the extension. The toolbar automatically authenticates the user and fetches her information from her eportfolio system hereon. The user can simply right click anywhere in the form and select "import from PebblePad" option and the extension does the rest.

However, the extension does have a few limitations when compared with PIFF. Pebblebar will only fill in textboxes. PIFF is capable of matching and filling in data in TextArea and Select fields as well. PIFF also allows the user to select the information she wants to fill in where there are multiple data items for the same field. Pebblebar will fill in the first item in the system in case of multiple data items. In order to make your forms "PebbleBar friendly" make sure that the name and id tags for all your form elements are the same.