Southlabs

Starting a new chapter

2012-01-31T08:04:00.000-05:00

Two years ago we decided to bet the future of our young company in a device called the iPad so we worked hard to make it among the first wave of iPad only apps. SharePlus was released to the market April 2010, making it the first native iPad client app for SharePoint. Fortunately for us, the iPad turned out to be a success. Two years later SharePlus has more than half a million downloads worldwide, and is used in several Fortune 500 companies.

It’s been an amazing adventure, and today we are really happy to announce that we are starting a new exciting chapter in this journey, since SouthLabs has now officially become part of the Infragistics team.

Personally I know Infragistics from my SharePoint consulting & .NET developer days, way before starting SouthLabs. It’s a company I’ve respected and admired for a long time. I have personal friends who’ve been working there for years, and I know firsthand the level of technical skill and quality they put into the software they build. The fact that they have a very similar company culture as we have, with a passion for developing great software, and share our vision of the market opportunities for the mobile space were key to make this deal happen.

I believe for our customers this means very good news, because the investment on SharePlus will redouble, leveraging the expertise and resources of a world-class software products company. Infragistics has worldwide presence, with offices in: the US, UK, Bulgaria, India, Japan, and Uruguay.

Everyone in the SouthLabs team, including myself and Daniel, will remain as part of this new chapter so none of the expertise we’ve been able to build in the mobile space over the last three years will be lost in the integration process.

I look forward to this new chapter, to continue developing SharePlus and other mobile apps for the Enterprise space and to take good care of our customers; it’s been so far our pleasure.

An insight into SharePlus SharePoint Mobile Client v2.7

2011-05-04T15:13:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-20T16:06:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-13T22:13:00.000-04:00

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!

2011-03-28T12:19:00.000-04:00

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

2011-02-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-16T03:15:00.000-05:00

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!!

2011-01-27T21:17:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-26T10:53:00.000-05:00

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:

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.
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.
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.
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

2011-01-26T09:35:00.000-05:00

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.

SharePlus 2.3 released!

2010-12-06T10:19:00.000-05:00

SharePlus continues to upbeat itself

Our frequency of releases averages about one per month, therefore this time we bring you the brand new 2.3 version. Already available in the App Store for download.

What's New in Version 2.3

- Client Certificate authentication support.
- Support for iOS 4.2 multitasking.
- Video play support.

SharePlus 2.2 goodies

2010-10-20T14:32:00.000-04:00

Our frequency of releases averages about one per month, and October´s turn has arrived, we are about to submit SharePlus Office Mobile Client version 2.2 for approval to the app store.

Initially version 2.2 was meant to be a "quiet" one, meaning we would ship fixes, and minor improvements, but no major structural changes would be introduced, and no major features either (we do a quiet one, and a loud one, quiet, loud... works for us).

Fortunately this time, we did not only nail our planned features, but managed to package some ~~kickass~~ valuable features meant for version 2.5, such as forms based authentication. That I know some of our users will really, really appreciate.

In a nutshell, among SharePlus v2.2 new features are:

Form Based Authentication:
When configuring the connection to a SharePoint site now you can choose between form based or windows based authentication depending of your SharePoint credential configuration. Windows based authentication is set by default. How to tell which one you have? Easy, if when you enter the url of a sharepoint site, you get an html form, then it's form based, otherwise if you get prompted to enter user and password, in a little window the browser pops up, then it's windows based.

Calendar view (*):
Now lists of type Calendar can be browsed with a calendar month view display, allowing a more intuitive navigation of events over time.

Local files Management (*):
There's a new Local Files item in the initial view, which allows to manage files received from third party applications,
formerly named "SharePlus Inbox". This is a straight forward means to check existing local files, and remove them.

Passcode Lock (*):
From Global Settings you may configure the application to demand a passcode to be entered whenever SharePlus is open or reactivated, after a sleep period.
This represents an additional layer of security for the information stored in SharePlus, preventing upon theft the data to reach unwanted hands.

Global Settings: A centralized place to configure global application settings, such as connection timeouts, set passcode lock, or browse the product's documentation.

Help: This section contains product related documentation, to help you through the most common tasks in SharePlus, like setting up
a new SharepPoint server connection or how to configure offline behaviors.

Features marked with (*) will be SharePlus Pro only features, and wont be available on the Lite version.

Next one, version 2.5, is a "loud" one :)

SharePlus Pro price drop!! One week offer!

2010-09-10T13:39:00.000-04:00

SharePlus Office Mobile Client, the universal iOS client for SharePoint is in the spotlight of business apps for the iPad, in Apple's eyes.

We are just so happy about it that we've decided to take a leap of faith, and share the love with the masses offering for one week, as a one time offer, the app in it's Pro version, at a third of the price, 4.99$!!!

So don't waste any more time....

Buy it now!!! and go tell your mates to do the same!!

How to modify read permission level to browse directories

2010-09-09T14:55:00.000-04:00

In SharePlus v2.1 accounts with read only privileges may browse subsites with one simple modification on the permission level read, on the SharePoint server site.

First, go to site settings, and click on advanced permissions.
Second, select permission levels
Click on the read permission levels link
and select the Browse Directories option, and save.

Done!

What's new in SharePlus v2.1

2010-09-05T22:33:00.000-04:00

Last saturday we submitted a new update for approval to the app store, SharePlus version 2.1. For the first time we are not shipping any new feature, but we've made some modifications that we believe ship a lot of added value.

The changes released with SharePlus Office Mobile Client v2.1 (both Pro and Lite) are the following:

*SharePoint 2010 full support. We received reports from users having issues with the sync process not caching documents from SP2010 in SharePlus v2.0. After spending some time investigating the causes we found out SP2010's web services are not really 100% backwards compatible :( So we've made the necessary modifications to the sync process to handle SP2010 properly.

*Reader only privileges support. From version 1.0 SharePlus demanded the user configured an account with contribute privileges (typically users belonging to the Members or the Owner's site default groups). This turned out to be a major pain for a lot of users, since contribute permissions at root level are not common in some enterprise scenarios. This was caused by one particular web service to list the subsites of a site.
After several requests from our users we decided to revisit this issue, and we've made one little big change. Now this service is not required anymore, if the account lacks permissions the user will be notified once, and will be unable to browse subsites, and add, edit and delete items, but other than that will be able to use SharePlus normally, including offline features.
One observation regarding the ability to browse subsites is that it can be turned on pretty easily by modifying the list of rights, for the Read permission level in SharePoint (Site Settings > Permissions > Permission Levels > Edit Permission Level), checking the "Browse Directories" option.

*Crash on corrupted lists If one SharePoint site has a list that generates Error 500 on the server SharePlus v2.0 would crash. We've made changes for SharePlus v2.1 to report the error, and carry on.

SharePlus v2.0 available for download

2010-08-31T12:14:00.000-04:00

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

2010-08-23T20:22:00.000-04:00

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

2010-07-23T10:16:00.000-04:00

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

2010-07-13T23:34:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-08T21:41:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-12T13:51:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-10T23:30:00.000-04:00

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!

New presentation about SharePlus, the iPad client for SharePoint

2010-04-07T13:43:00.000-04:00

Afaik online marketing is about getting as many eyeballs as possible to check out something that you believe is remarkable, and then being able to convert that into leads, sales, business, partnerships, etc.

As part of our online marketing campaign for SharePlus our iPad client for SharePoint, the usual suspects will be addressed, being slideshare among the first. To make a decent video we still have to wait to get our hands on a real iPad (release was U.S only, won´t arrive until the end of the month, even though today we started having some sales from other iPad app stores). So without further ado, SharePlus´s humble presentation, hopefully brief and to the point.

SharePlus iPad client for SharePoint

View more presentations from SouthLabs.

SharePlus, iPad client for SharePoint FAQ

2010-04-07T11:26:00.000-04:00

SharePlus's been available for sale for almost a week now, and we've compiled a brief, but I expect hopeful SharePlus frequently asked questions page (FAQ), that might help troubleshoot some of the most common issues detected when trying to connect to a SharePoint server using SharePlus (so far, there were not that many issues detected :)

We're also giving away prom codes of SharePlus Pro version to all those persons who report an issue for the first time, and take the time to provide feedback, and help us troubleshoot the specifics of each scenario.

SharePlus, iPad client for SharePoint accepted in the app store :)

2010-04-04T11:52:00.000-04:00

SharePlus got accepted in Apple's app store, and it's available for download among the very first wave of iPad apps.

Our team worked pretty hard to make it happen, we even got some outside help to make the deadline, but thankfully the initial goal of making it into the first round of iPad apps was accomplished. Now we should take a minute to celebrate before we dive into the next sprint :)

It's too early too tell, we've had only 3 days of sales figures, but the outcome so far is that the lite version downloads are better than expected (even though we had no clue as to what to expect :) it even made it into the top 15 business apps ranks in the U.S. app store today, according to appfigures reports (I couldn't confirm this yet). While the pro version downloads are a bit below what I had expected, even if the average conversion rate percentage is a solid 5%.

Now we will have to work on improving those conversion rates, spreading the word about the app, getting reviews, and of course implementing SharePlus version 2.0 features, in particular online and offline edit.