I’m currently writing an article about building SharePoint 2013 mobile apps and things to take into consideration or think about before you begin.
I’d love input from my fellow community members, so if you have the time to answer 1 or more of the following questions, I’d greatly appreciate it! Â Please specify which question number you are answering.
- What are your favorite new mobile features that were introduced in SharePoint 2013, and why?
- Does your company or any of your clients currently use any 3rd party or open source mobile solutions? Â If so, which one(s) and what benefit do they provide or what problem do they solve?
- Do you think it’s better to build mobile apps for SharePoint, or just create a mobile browser version of your SharePoint site that works in all the major mobile browsers?
- How concerned is your company (or clients) about security surrounding mobile apps, such as, sensitive SharePoint documents falling into the wrong hands via mobile access; and what do you recommend they do to keep their content secure?
- Are there any other things your company or clients should consider before they start building mobile SharePoint apps?
#1 – Device Channels (although they provide a solution only for publishing sites)
#2 – KWizcom’s SharePoint Mobile Extensions, this solution enables creating custom mobile pages that include the exact fields, buttons, menus and workflows.It works with any type of site, and requires no development skills.
#3 – The answers depends on many factors.
The Advantages of App- works faster, easily integrate with the device’s file system, camera etc., can work offline
The advantages of Web – much easier to update and deploy (no need to create multiple versions for various devices…), so much less expensive to maintain than an app.
and..there are the Hybrid solutions (such as Netflix’s), if you use Netflix on your iPad for example, you may notice the updates that they are doing from time to time in the UI, without you having to download and install a new version of the App!
Seems to me like this Hybrid solution takes the best of the 2 worlds.
#4 – as long as we don’t have any offline capabilities – we’re not worried.
#5 – Before you buy anything really understand the nature of the required mobile solution. If you require progressive UX, where the level of interaction is low (mainly viewing content), then I would use SP2013’s device channels which looks to me like an excellent solution.
And, before you decide to develop an App – you should be aware of the maintenance costs involved. Developing an app for a specific target device (like iPad for example) costs much less than developing an App for iOS and Android and Windows Phone…and even if you develop it just for Android, you will face various issues with different devices – so bottom line: Developing an App (and properly support and maintain it) will cost a lot more than what you plan.
