Richard Paterson Assesses Mobile Access Options for your SharePoint Site

June 19, 2012

Mobile access is no doubt becoming the ubiquitous and a go-to source for users as the office extends well beyond physical office walls. In “SharePoint on Mobile Devices: The Options,” Richard Paterson takes a look at ways to expose SharePoint portals on mobile devices, including out-of-the-box mobile SharePoint views, Responsive Design, Mobile Web Apps, and native apps.

Paterson points out that mobile views are not ‘one size fits all,’ rather the delivery style you choose depends on your target audience, target device, and site content. While an out-of-the-box SharePoint mobile view is simple to implement, it gives you only basic navigation around sites, lists, and document libraries.

Paterson has this to say about a framework solution:

A framework such as Mobile Entrée can provide a richer experience than the out of the box views and will normally provide an API to code against, making extensibility and customization of the functionality intuitive. They will normally operate on templates which allows for powerful front end customization. Views can be made available for different devices, e.g. you might want a two column layout on a tablet, whereas on a phone you would want just one. Frameworks will make form building simpler and also presenting back graphs and tables often used in Business Intelligence easy and more cost effective to implement.

If your site is geared toward news, marketing, or communication, Paterson suggests that a Responsive Design may be best, but it is lacking if you need forms or functional parts. A native device app can give you big results for the user experience, but Paterson explains it also requires the largest investment.

Paterson’s reviews are not comprehensive, but definitely provide a good introduction to mobile options. You may consider the read if you’re looking to beef up your site’s mobile experience. You may also consider adding a third party solution as a means to expand mobile offerings while also saving valuable time and investment resources. We like the feedback we’ve seen about Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile.

Here you can read about the Mobile Search solution from Mindbreeze:

Smartphones and tablets are constant companions, indispensable in the business world. Information needs to be able to be exchanged at all times and wherever you are. Easily. Quickly. Securely. Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company data available on all mobile devices. Regardless of whether you have a BlackBerry®, iPhone®, Windows Phone or Android™ Smartphone or a tablet such as the Apple iPad, Samsung Chromebook/GalaxyTab or Blackberry Playbook, you can act independently and freely – yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: the display of the search results is homogenous to the tried and tested web client in terms of clear design and intuitive navigation.

Read more about the Fabasoft Mindbreeze Search Solutions that easily integrate into your SharePoint farm at http://www.mindbreeze.com/.

Philip West, June 19, 2012

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.