Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Mobile devices in SharePoint 2013


SharePoint Server 2013 offers many new advanced mobile device features for different mobile platforms. Some are including the mobile browser experience, device channels, Office web apps, location, Push notifications, Business intelligence content, subscribe to mobile alerts. Let’s elaborate these points one by one: 

1. Mobile browser experience

SharePoint Server 2013 offers three views according to your mobile browser to improve the mobile browser experience:
 
Classic view: This view present in HTML format & provides compatibility for mobile browsers that failed to present in the new contemporary view.  

Contemporary view: This view present in HTML5 & offers an optimized mobile browser experience to users. This view is available for Mobile Internet Explorer version 9.0 or later versions for Windows Phone 7.5, Safari version 4.0 or later versions for iPhone iOS 5.0 and the Android browser for Android 4.0 or later versions. Here are some advanced features of contemporary view: 

Menu button Check: Right side of the title area of the contemporary view. This includes the following features:
  • View Site Contents used to view all of the site content on the SharePoint site including lists and document libraries.
  • Sign Out used to log out from SharePoint.  
  • Close used to closes the Command button menu and get back to the SharePoint site.
Switch to PC View: This view used to display from mobile browser view to a full desktop view of a site. This view is present in both contemporary and classic views in SharePoint Server 2013.  

Navigation window: Check left side of the title area of the contemporary view. This navigation window presents a single menu with breadcrumbs, top navigation, and quick launch navigation from the full desktop view of the site. 

Tap-to-open links: As name indicates, it displays text or icons on a wide strip that is easier for a user to tap.

Pagination: Lists with more than 20 items are automatically paginated.

New and edit functionality: You can create a new list items and edit them in the contemporary view. 

Full-screen UI: You can see full desktop view of a SharePoint site on a Smartphone device.





2. Device Channels: 

In Oldest versions of SharePoint Server, there was a single default mobile view that was auto-generated based on the existing site. Device channels in SharePoint Server 2013 used to present a single site in multiple ways by using different designs on different mobile devices such as Smartphone, tablets etc. 




3. Office web apps:

In older version of SharePoint , Office Mobile Web Apps used to open documents in the mobile web application by using a mobile browser. When Office Web Apps Server is installed on Older version of SharePoint Server , Office Mobile Web Apps is also get installed on the server. 

In SharePoint Server 2013, Office Web Apps Server is a new stand-alone server product that provides mobile browser-based viewers for Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc named as Word Mobile Viewer, Excel Mobile Viewer, and PowerPoint Mobile Viewer. 

4. Location:

SharePoint Server 2013 offers geolocation field type that can be used in a list. 

5. Push notifications:

To receive notifications from a SharePoint site to mobile devices, device applications must be register with a SharePoint site. After register, you can write event handler code to interact with Microsoft Push Notification Service of other mobile device platforms. Notifications can be any type like events on the site etc. 

6. Business intelligence content:

This features of SharePoint Server 2013 used to view certain kinds of dashboard content.  

7. Subscribe to mobile alerts:

This feature enable users to subscribe the alerts that are sent by using Short Message Service. These alerts are sent to the mobile device when the changes are made to a SharePoint list or item.  

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