An insight into SharePlus SharePoint Mobile Client v2.7

SharePlus Office Mobile Client, iOS v2.7 is out and about, so what's new? why should you upgrade?

Because...

Data Protection

Version 2.7 introduces one major modification, which is data protection. A major asset in security terms, since from v2.7 onwards all information stored locally is encrypted using the built-in hardware encryption that Apple recommends and uses, specially valuable for our Enterprise customers.

Sorting & Grouping

Now includes the ability to sort and group list contents dynamically, by tapping at the view settings icon, and selecting which fields to sort, or group by, and yes, you may sort and group by more than one field :)

Wifi Document Sharing

Turn on wifi sharing and enable your team mates to connect to your iOS device, and browse your local files using a regular web browser. File upload it´s also supported converting wifi sharing in a powerful collaboration mechanism with network users.
For security reasons this feature is disabled by default, and remains only enabled while the dialog stays open.

Picture Board

Browsing pictures with SharePlus has now been made easier, with a mosaic like thumbnail view of all the contents of a SharePoint's Picture library.

plus...

As usual with each update there's a set of minor improvements and bug fixes, in this case such as SharePoint 2010 external lists query support.

Stay tuned for our next update!

SharePlus Enterprise = Mobile SharePoint Enterprise ready

I've just published the following intro presentation about SharePlus. It's a very much needed update from it's former version, several things have changed since that version was published. SharePlus has grown to become the top ranking SharePoint mobile client app in the iTunes app store, we've the fortune of having Apple's endorsement, and it has become a multi platform SharePoint client with support for iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch), Macs, PlayBooks, and there's more to come. These slides introduce the product and the latest flavor in our offering, SharePlus Enterprise.

SharePlus comes in three flavors: Lite, Pro, and now Enterprise as well. So how do these three flavors differentiate themselves beyond features, spiritually, so to speak. Well, to begin with, the SharePlus Lite flavor is meant as an easy to obtain, free, get it from the app store version that allows someone to test the connection to the SharePoint server, and provide a testdrive of navigating the contents of a SharePoint server with a mobile native application. For some users, that do the content adding and managing bit from the server side, and are always connected, this is all they need, we have a lot of Lite active users, who use SharePlus on a daily basis, and that's fine.

The SharePlus Pro flavor on the other hand has the full range of features, it's meant to become a rich value adding companion to the SharePoint user with a mobility requirement, that needs to access data both online, and offline, and needs more than a read only view, he needs to get things done. Yet, typically the SharePlus Pro user is an individual, that's paid for the device out of his own pocket, and that's using SharePlus as a personal productivity enhancement initiative.

Then there's companies with large SharePoint invesments, who see value in mobile access to corporate assets, who've decided to adopt SharePlus company-wide and face a distinctive set of challenges when they attempt to configure, distribute in house, and manage a large set of devices with SharePlus internally.
Sometimes they need help and support with the deployment process, or an extra killer feature for our app to become the productivity boost they are looking for, and we can implement it as a customized version of our app within days or a few weeks, depending on the scope of the change requested.

Typically companies leverage this investment not only for SharePlus but for a set of productivity apps, within the context of an Enterprise app store initiative.

In some cases the governance part is the priority, others times the need to customize the look & feel of the app, because it will be used in client facing scenarios, and they want nothing but their brand to be displayed. It's for these cases that we've come up with SharePlus Enterprise.

We are very happy to say we have a growing number of customers who've already trusted us. SharePlus is a multi platform mobile app, with leading presence in iTunes app store, RIM's BlackBerry's app world, and very soon Android. Our licenses are cross device, and that provides an extra layer of confidence for our clients, since they don't feel they are getting married with one mobile platform.

Mobile SharePoint Enterprise ready

View more presentations from SouthLabs.

If you've tried SharePlus Pro, and feel SharePlus Enterprise may be the right thing for your company, don't hesitate to contact us at sales@southlabs.com.

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook Enters The Tablet Wars, with SharePlus

We are very, very happy to announce that SharePlus our mobile client for SharePoint has been approved, and will be present next week, when the Playbook is finally launched.

Much has been said about RIM's BlackBerry upcoming tablet, the Playbook, some say it will launch without an email client, we know nothing about that. All we know is when the Playbook comes out, you will be able to connect to your SharePoint with it using SharePlus.

Operation ShareLove = Support NZ + Japan and win awesome prizes!

We are a global community, interconnected more now than ever before. When a disaster strikes even on the other side of the world, it affects us all. The SharePoint community has come together and created Operation ShareLove, an initiative designed to respond to natural disasters with an outpouring of financial support funneled through disaster relief agencies trained to get help where it is most needed.

SouthLabs is proud to support Operation ShareLove: New Zealand & Japan to help the victims of the recent earthquakes. If you'd like to be a part of this global initiative, all you have to do is donate to the charity of your choice in support of victims of these disasters. In addition to the feel good vibe you'll have from donating to an excellent cause, you'll also receive a FREE e-book voucher from O'Reilly Media. Once you've made your donation of $25 USD or more, email proof of your donation to sharelove@innovative-e.us to receive the voucher for your free e-book.

And there's more! When the fund drive is over, on April 15, 2011, all donors will be entered into a raffle for fantastic prizes worth over $50,000 , including SharePlus Pro licenses both retail and enterprise and much, much more! To see a full list of the raffle prizes and to read more about Operation ShareLove and how you can help, visit http://spgur.us/ShareLoveNZJP

Edit SharePoint data offline in your iPad with SharePlus

I'm working on a new series of videos to showcase SharePlus features in the iPad version. The following video features edit offline support, which is basically the ability to add, change, or remove contents in SharePoint lists (even documents), and then have them automatically synchronized back, when the app returns to a connected environment. Hope you find it useful.

SharePlus was present at SPTechCon San Francisco

As we had announced SouthLabs' team participated in SPTechCon San Francisco, the largest independant SharePoint technological conference, exhibiting SharePlus in all it's flavors.

Here are a couple of pics of our booth, including cybozu's ninja "visit".

I'd like to thank everyone that took the time to stop by our booth. We had a blast presenting SharePlus and visiting San Francisco which turned out to be such a beautiful city! I'm already looking forward to the next SPTechCon.

SharePlus v2.5, with write offline support is available for iOS!!

You may have read my rants about how our rhythm of releases tends to feature a major release, with major new features (aka "a loud one"), followed by a "quiet one", with fewer features more focused on bug fixes, applying feedback, and stabilizing. Well, version 2.5 has just been approved, and made available for download for the iOS platform, and it's a loud one! It's actually more than that, it's a milestone for us, since it's the version introducing write offline support.

Among version 2.5 new features are:

Offline Edit support

The same experience you have adding or editing items online, is now possible in offline mode. All changes are saved locally and synchronized once the device has connection to your SharePoint server.

Basically in the Pro version the same add, edit & remove buttons that appear online, are available offline. Once you add, modify, or remove an item offline, it gets marked with a different icon to display it's status. Each action: add, edit, and remove gets a different icon, plus when there are pending changes on a list, this is shown with a red box at the bottom right, with the number of items pending to be synchronized with the server. As shown in the following image:

Once the app goes online, and the sync process executes (when idle, forced, or app is suspended) pending changes are synchronized. Whenever a document has been changed both on the device and in the server, we say there's a conflict, and in those cases the user is prompted to select which version to keep, either the local version, or the server one. If the sync process hasnt executed yet, and the list is selected the red box displays the pending changes, by tapping this little red box, the changes are listed, allowing to force the update, or discard the changes.

Three important tips for a better usage of this powerful feature are:

• First if a list is configured for offline access, and it relies on another list, because it has lookup field, then the second list must be configured as well with offline support for the offline data entry to work properly and display the list of possible values to choose from.
• Second for the people picker to be enabled offline, it must be used at least once while online.
• Third, from this version onward the sync process keeps running on background, for as long as ten minutes when the home button is pressed and the app is suspended (iOS4 only). In a LAN environment this should make for good synchronization time.

We believe this feature is a game changer for road warriors with an iOS device, such as door to door salesmen, insurance agents, consultants, etc, with a need to gather information on site. Now they can do so with SharePlus Pro plus their iPhone or iPad, no matter what the connectivity with the SharePoint server is like. Sweet!

Audio & Video recording

Taking a picture and uploading it to SharePoint within SharePlus was a feature already implemented. A similar capability is now introduced for two new media formats, audio, and video.

Basically when adding or editing an item, now you can choose to record a video using your built in camera, when available, and add it as a linked file to the item you are adding or editing.

The same as video recording, you can record audio right from the add/edit form in order to use it as an attachment for an item. The audio is also saved to your local files the way you can keep it for further uses.

These two media formats seem to be very valuable in education scenarios, where students, or teachers record right away from their mobile devices to a SharePoint servers.

Grid View

The lists default view, with a row of list items, with the column labels values displayed with a small font wasn't enough for some scenarios, in particular those involving custom lists. Several of our customers need a way to view at once all the list's view columns much in the same way as they do in SharePoint web's interface, closer to a spreadsheet view of the data. So we implemented the grid view :)

AirPrint support

When viewing documents, now you can use this iOS feature in order to print documents directly from your device using SharePlus Lite or Pro.

Paste file support

If you have previously copied an image from any app such as safari, mail app or photo album, you can paste it as a linked file to an item.

Closing thoughts

On top of all these new features there are several enhancements, and fixes, I won't dive into, driven by the continuous user feedback we get (you know who you are, thank you!!).

We are really proud of this release, we hope you find it as valuable as we think it is, and as usual if you have any feedback don't hesitate to get in touch with us, we are always looking for ways to improve our product.