Articles
SharePoint 2013: What’s new with mobility?
The much anticipated SharePoint 2013 preview was released a few weeks ago. I’ve had a look at what new functionality has been introduced and have outlined my findings in a series of articles.
This article is a quick overview of SP2013’s mobile functionality. For more detail see the TechNet article.
What’s new?
SharePoint 2013 offers new, optimised viewing experiences across different mobile platforms. Additionally, there are several features that are available to help improve both worker productivity and usability.
Optimised mobile browser experience
SharePoint 2013 offers two new views for mobile devices:
- A new contemporary view for optimised mobile browser experience
- A new full-screen UI view which enables the user to view a full desktop view of a SharePoint site on a smartphone device.
SharePoint 2013 also still supports the classic view that was available on SharePoint 2010.
The following figure shows a classic, contemporary, and full-screen UI rendering for a smartphone browser.
Figure: Classic, contemporary, and full-screen UI on a smartphone browser
Device channels
SharePoint 2013 supports targeting different devices such as smartphones, tablets, and set-top boxes. Designers can create channels that allow a single publishing site to be rendered in multiple ways by using different designs that target different devices.
Push notifications
Mobile applications can receive notifications from a SharePoint site. Notifications can be events that occur on the site e.g. a document uploaded or updated. The push notification feature needs to be enabled on the site and the device needs to register to receive the notifications.
Location
There is a new geolocation field that can be used in a list. This is particularly useful for mobile application development. For example, you can now make lists “location-aware” and display latitude and longitude coordinates through Bing Maps. An entry is typically seen as a pushpin on the map view.
Business intelligence content
The iPad and other devices that have iOS 5.0 Safari browser are now able to view business intelligence content such as PerformancePoint Web Parts, Excel Services reports, and SQL Reporting Services reports.
Office web apps
SharePoint 2013 offers additional functionality when viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents in mobile browsers. Together, SharePoint 2013 and Office Web Apps Server Preview offer a better user experience when interacting with documents on a mobile device. For example, when both products are used together, a user opens a server-based version of the document in the mobile browser. Without Office Web Apps Server Preview, the user would first have to download the file and then open it in Office Mobile or in an Office document viewer.
It should be noted that all of the above applies to Android 4.0, iPhone 4.0 or later versions, and Windows Phone 7.5.
Conclusion
In summary, I think the new UI for mobile devices and the ability to easily channel content that is rendered for mobile devices are great new features that will provide organisations with enormous benefit.
What’s new in SharePoint2013? Will it be really social?
Join my colleague Fiona Shaw for this free webinar on 20 September 2012.
SharePoint: To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question – Unique World says:
[...] In this case SharePoint 2013 has some major improvements around mobility. It might therefore be worth the wait to upgrade to SharePoint 2013, rather than developing lots of custom code in SharePoint 2010. For further information on what is new with mobility, see my blog on SharePoint 2013: What is new with mobility? [...]
September 16th, 2012 at 8:52 pm