Hidden information
The collations of explicit information included in already existing documents and their browsable publication located in meta systems seemed possible to be facilitated by introducing regulations or by terminating former channels (own Websites, distributed files). However, the problem has always been how to capture hidden data. Some of these data are not recorded, others are manifested in the manner in which internal – operating – processes are run. What often happens is that a given, unregulated internal process is handled in completely different ways by the various user groups.
Let it be any type of knowledge, the issue of motivation is always a problem. Acquiring the knowledge of how to use a new user interface requires extra efforts.
Portal framework systems introduced in recent times and especially the user attitude that has been established by Web 2 opens the gate to the emergence of the new-generation Intranet portals. It is not by accident that in the US the portal market last year made a very significant growth, which experts believe is to be still continued this year. The global market of enterprise portals also performs very well – according to BEA’s most recent survey a 9-percent annual growth is expected with market sales estimated to reach US $ 1.4 billion by 2011.

Let’s concentrate on the users
Modern portal framework systems include integrated tools that are necessary to build a comprehensive solution. For instance BEA’s AquaLogic User Interaction (ALUI) solution has an integrated content manager, a collaborative communities supporter, components that analyze user activities, packaged solutions (voting, document displayer, general input form manager, reports, threaded discussion groups) and other application components. Thanks to these features, the technological issues of portal building are given less emphasis and project members can truly concentrate on important matters, information to be collated and the users’ needs.
The implementation time of Intranet portals has been also drastically reduced. The wide-scale acceptance of standards provides the ability for a portal not to reside in the middle of an infrastructure as a stovepipe application, but to actively connect to applications that the users are familiar and comfortable with. The most sophisticated portal framework systems already really operate as portals, namely they capture the content and functions of portals provided by the different background systems and display these on a uniform user interface by extending them with the necessary authorization management and customizability.

Web 2 and knowledge management
When knowledge management portals are built, the most important task is to captivate the users for the multitudinous usage of the new environment. Experiences show that this cannot be achieved with administrative tools. An environment must be created that really inspires for the usage of it and makes work enjoyable. In addition to the built-in application components, the displaying of different multimedia contents and the customizability of user interface may also help in this.
The spread of the ever increasingly popular Web 2 applications also plays into the hands of knowledge management portals because users are accustomed to the different methods of knowledge sharing and utilizing shared knowledge. However, in order to exploit user socialization, additional tools are needed that facilitate the deployment of familiar techniques even within the enterprise. Therefore for instance it may be a good idea to extend our toolkit that supports the creation of interactive solutions with an application that facilitates blogging and community labelling, with a browsing application and in addition to all these we add an application that publishes the functions in an integratable manner (mashup).
Knowledge in the processes
Knowledge hidden in the processes is the most difficult to capture. Information related to these appear in blogs and in threaded discussion groups. However, these are by far not comprehensive and represent difficult-to-reproduce knowledge for the user. The solution is to use a process management engine, in which these processes are implemented together with the user interfaces needed for their usage. The user interfaces are standard (wsrp), which may be displayed directly on the user interface of the user portal but also as a banner in blogs or community collection of links.