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?
Here are some things I can share about what we are hearing from customers:
Lots of companies are struggling with the fact that workers are going outside SharePoint to share documents because there isn’t a good mobile solution to SharePoint today. The use of these unsanctioned apps like Dropbox and YouSendIt (now Hightail) is causing angst for IT folks who are chartered with maintaining corporate governance. Getting this under control is a big deal because companies have already invested in SharePoint, which means getting the most of existing investments and it’s a huge security risk because documents are being stored all over the place – outside the confines of the company.  (This is where apps like harmon.ie become strategic for companies).
Also, the browser experience for SharePoint has never been easy for business users; on the mobile devices it is even harder to use. So folks are looking for easy to use apps that give a native experience, not only for accessing documents on SharePoint, but for actually editing the documents as well.
Which leads to the next point, which is almost everyone I talk to is evaluating or has selected an MDM or mobile VPN solution; getting the necessary security infrastructure in place is critical for using SharePoint apps. Some folks are there; others are working towards it. This is another element that dictates the pace at which organizations can actually take advantage of SharePoint from mobile devices.
