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.

SouthLabs at SPTechCon San Francisco

In a couple of weeks we will traveling to San Francisco to exhibit SharePlus in all it's flavors in SPTechCon 2011, the largest independent SharePoint event in the US.

We are doing this for several reasons:

1. To learn, both about trends in the SharePoint ecosystem, as well as about the whole deal of being a vendor, sponsoring, having a booth, presenting your product to a crowd, etc. It's a first for us exhibiting anywhere, and I'm sure we've got a lot to learn about it.
2. To listen, we are really looking forward to be able to chat with the people out there that use SharePlus already and have something to say about it. We really value that feedback.
3. To engage. It'd be really good to meet other vendors, understand how they are adding value on top of SharePoint, to listen how they see the future of the platform and for them to know us, and maybe exchange some ideas. SharePoint is such a huge platform that I feel the sky is the limit to the things that can be done on top of it. Also I'd really like to put real faces to some twitter accounts we've been following for the past year.
4. To have fun. Last but not least I'm sure it will be quite the adventure. It's a long way from home, there will be three of us going, with different degrees of proficiency in our command of the english language, and it will be fun, if only to listen to some of my mates struggling to communicate, one in particular. So you've been warned, don't be too hard on us :)

We will be giving out goodies, plus an iPad to the lucky winner of a raffle we will implement among all the visitors to our booth.

So if you plan on going, don't hesitate to come by our booth, we'd love to talk. If you haven't registered yet what are you waiting? registrations are still open online!

Accessing SharePoint from a MAC...becomes easier with SharePlus

The user experience of accessing SharePoint from a MAC is crippled at best, particularly with SharePoint 2007. SharePoint 2010 has improved things, as well as Office for Mac has, but the fact remains that Microsoft acknowledges Safari is not fully supported even on SharePoint 2010, and features remain unavailable.

At the same time, Mac desktop adoption is on the rise, as well as SharePoint usage (Dux makes a good case for this in his blog).

This is why we've decided to launch a Mac version of SharePlus, which has been available since the beginning of this month in the newly released Mac app store.

We are well aware that the available version 1.0.1 has a lot of space for improvement, it must be regarded as a first version. For us it represents the start of a new journey, similar to the one we started back in April 2010, when we launched SharePlus for the iPad for the first time.

In the same way as the iOS version it comes in two flavors, Lite version for free with read only access, and a Pro version with offline support, plus write capabilities.

With time we expect to port the same set of features existing in the iOS version, to the MAC version, even some more to make the most of desktop capabilities. So you if are a sharepointer mac user you should get it now, while it's available at an introductory price of 14.99!, and as usual provide good feedback, which is always welcome.