I've been given the project of developing an intranet web portal for my company using MVC 5. This will be used to replace numerous Access Db front end apps that are currently in use as well as accessing SSRS reports.
My thought is to create a main "portal shell" that handles user logins and security and provides a customizable page where users can select which app (ie: portlets) they want to see and interact with.
Would Areas be an appropriate approach for this project? Add areas to the main shell for each app that returns a partial view to be displayed in that main shell dashboard?
Thanks!
Areas are simply logical organizations of an application. It will still be the same application (running under the same worker process), just properly organized for easier maintenance.
If you want the portlets to be different applications all accessible through a shell, then you may consider hosting them separately and communicating to them from the shell through actual redirects.
Take a look at this SO answer for code samples, both for normal calls and Ajax calls.