SharePlus v2.0 available for download

We are pleased to announce SharePlus Office Mobile Client version 2.0 is available for download. It was a long wait, a lot of effort went into this particular update. Some of the implemented features are not trivial at all, and in some ways we feel we rewrote the app.

Users will notice a slowing of performance in the first access to a configured connection, but subsequent access should be faster than previous versions since we are cashing all the site's metadata now, and we don't request on every hit as we used to.

Version 2.0 main new features include the capacity to add & edit list items, and automatic sync for offline browsing support.

Document editing relies in the "Open In" file sharing protocol present in iPads, and iOS4 iPhones. SharePlus can both send, and receive documents to and from third party apps (purchased separately), such as Documents To Go. In this way new documents may be added to document libraries using SharePlus, or edited. Once a document is received by SharePlus, it's stored in "SharePlus Inbox", where it remains available to be selected when adding a new item or editing an existing one.

Main new features:
- Content add, edit & delete support! (finally)
- New SharePlus Inbox, and Open In support, to send and receive documents from third party apps, and upload them to list items
- Revamped offline support with background synchronization process based on a specific view

Improvements:
- Improved performance on recently opened document
- Improved performance on blog filter by Category in offline mode
- New icon for a row in custom list
- CheckIn, CheckOut and Discard CheckOut
- In rich text field support to add pictures
- The ability for iPhone to take a picture and upload it to an image library

Hotfixes:
- Fixed non ASCII characters issue in files names and urls (cyrillic, greek, chinese, and japanese users will find this valuable)

I hope you find this update valuable, and easy to use! Any feedback will be appreciated, we are always looking for new ways to improve our app.

SharePlus v2.0 Add & Edit Document support

SharePlus v2.0 introduces add & edit support for list items. In the case of document edit, SharePlus relies in third party apps, such as Documents To Go for Office docs, and the usage of the "Open In" file sharing protocol present in iPad, and iOS4 iPhones.

New, or edit documents can be "sent" to SharePlus, staged in "SharePlus Inbox", leaving them available to attach them a new or edit list item. Here's a brief video showing how this is done:

SharePlus iPad client for SharePoint, now in youtube

We've been meaning to make a promotional video about SharePlus for sometime now, and yesterday we finally published one. Without further ado...



It's a first, with lots of space for improvement, starting with my accent, and more importantly it's based on v1.5, which is a couple of releases behind our working version, so there are some nice features not present in the video. Still I hope it captures the essence of the app and you may even like it :)

SharePlus v2.0 comming attractions

We've received several emails querying the status of version 2.0 of SharePlus, our iPad/iPhone client for SharePoint, so I thought it might be a good idea sharing it over here.

Version 2.0 will introduce two major improvements. First of all, support for adding and editing list items, meaning SharePlus wont be anymore "just" a read only app. For the moment adding and editing will be available only when connected, and for SharePlus Pro.

In order to support editing documents, and then uploading them back to a document library we introduced the notion of a document's inbox within SharePlus. The idea is that you open a document for edit in a third party app, such as Documents To Go, edit it, and then send it back to SharePlus, since now we implement the "Open In" file sharing protocol for incoming documents. Documents received this way are stored in the SharePlus's inbox, so that when you edit a list item, you may select from the inbox the edited version of the document to update the list.

The second improvement is about storing data for offline navigation in a background process. At the moment offline support requires for the user to pre-navigate all the data for it to be stored locally.

This involves re-implementing from scratch the way offline data is stored, and introducing some filtering mechanisms to let the user specify which content should be downloaded to the device, since we definitely don´t want to attempt to download all the SharePoint data, potentially teras of information, to an iPad/iPhone device (unless you explicitly want to :)

A first design decision in this sense is to allow the user to choose the list view that will be used for downloading the content. In this way the user can define server side filters at the List view level. Additionally other filtering mechanisms will be added such as specifying max size for attachments and documents to download.

We have a great deal of faith put in this version, we believe it has the potential to take SharePlus to a new level for SharePoint mobile users. We are working hard to make a submit for approval sometime next week.

SharePlus v1.7 available for download

I´m pleased to announce that today SharePlus Office Mobile Client version 1.7 was accepted in the App Store, and it's now available for download.

This update was focused on a better integration with the outside world and improving user experience. It represents an incremental improvement over version 1.5, since it packages a set of features and fixes that while not groundbreaking, I believe will make the overall user experience much better. All the fixes and improvements are both for the Lite and Pro versions.

The following are the new features released with version 1.7:

"Open In" support

Now it´s possible to edit documents in third party applications, such as iWork, Pages, Numbers, GoodReader, Documents To Go, etc (provided of course, you had previously downloaded that application). This is probably one of the most valuable features in this update since it enables SharePlus scenarios such as: user browsing a SharePoint list, opens a document for reading, detects it wants to apply some changes, then right there opens the document with a couple of taps in another app for editing the content.

Email attachments

In a similar way, now it's possible to send documents as email attachments.

VGA output support

If you have the VGA output cable for the iPad, you can use SharePlus to display documents in meetings (thanks Mr Carver).

Enhanced Views for Blogs&Discussions

In SharePoint all the information is stored in a list, and by browsing lists independently you can access all the content of a site. While this is true, it also makes for a poor user experience when you navigate certain lists, such as discussions & blogs, since they combine information from multiple lists. After receiving several emails with feedback on this we implemented specific views for this types of lists.


I hope you find value in the new features, and like this new 1.7 version. We are already working on version 2.0 with support to add & edit SharePoint's list items. As always if you have any feedback don't hesitate to contact us.

SharePlus Roadmap

SharePlus version 1.5 has been released, we are very proud of what we have accomplished so far, but we are also well aware that there´s still a lot we can do to make SharePlus the best mobile client for SharePoint.

A great deal of the email answering we´ve been doing lately was related to telling when certain SharePlus features will be available, so I thought I´d better share a sketch of SharePlus roadmap here. First to provide an insight of where we are thinking to take the product, and second hopefully to be able to gather some feedback on it.

SharePlus Roadmap

Version 1.0 (Released March 30)

• iPad User Interface
• Connectivitiy with different SharePoint scenarios, online, SSL
• Offline read only storage

Version 1.5 (Released May 10)

• Universal build, iPhone User Interface
• Hotfixes from user feedback

Version 1.7 (Estimated Release: 31st May 2010)

• Specific views to improve the navigation of popular content types, such as:
• Blogs, 
• Discussion forums
• Custom Lists

Version 2.0 (Estimated Release:  28th June 2010)

• Add & Edit list items in online mode, with check in and check out support
• Offline storage re factoring

Version 2.5 (Estimated Release: 26th July 2010)

• Add & Edit list items in offline mode 

So far the most requested features is content edit, and as you can see it´s planned for version 2.0. Is there any particular feature you would like to see implemented?

SharePlus iPad and now iPhone client for SharePoint

Today we were notified that SharePlus version 1.5 was approved, this came as great news for us, since we put a lot of effort into it, and it carries some hotfixes to the most critical reported issues.

The main feature of this version being the universal build, iPhone+iPad support in one build. You now download/buy it for one device, and you can use it in both.

Plus some nice improvements, such as:
- New About page
- Send feedback within the app
- Wiki content views support
- Support to trigger phone calls, and emails from Contact Lists View

And hotfixes:
- Fixed cant open document issue, when connecting to subsites
- Special characters in folders
- Folders support in Offline mode
- Site url validation fix

We are getting a lot of emails with questions, the most frequent is when will SharePlus support add & edit list items. The answer to that question is wait until version 2.0, and for a more detailed plan of when that will take place hold on until I publish a SharePlus roadmap entry (which I hope to do soon).

Thanks to all the users who've provided feedback and supported our product!