SharePoint 2007 ships with a mobile-friendly interface. In the past few years the usage of mobile devices has grown tremendously. It is then not surprising that the SharePoint team has provided a mobile-friendly interface for accessing data stored in SharePoint. Unfortunately the standard SharePoint mobile interface is far from perfect and maybe even far from useful.
It’s not Black & White
SharePoint’s Web UI is richly loaded with bulky html, images, cascading style sheets and JavaScript: 400KB in total (based on the default home page of a Collaboration Portal). Most of the desktop users don’t even notice how many requests are being fired toward the server and how many bytes are going through the pipeline. Mobile users are a different story however. So far, the mobile Internet access isn’t that fast and many users don’t have unlimited bandwidth. Limiting the number of requests and the generated HTML markup to the minimum speeds up the loading of the page and rendering it on a mobile device. It also saves you money on your cell phone bill.
It seems like the SharePoint team has seriously took mobile devices into consideration. In the standard mobile-friendly SharePoint interface they’ve stripped all rich elements, leaving only an overview of lists located under the current site. The standard mobile view allows you to explore the contents of lists and document libraries but you will hit a wall if you want to navigate to another site.
It’s great to see that the mobile UI is very lightweight (3KB only!) and robust. Someone has really took the time to have a look at what’s really necessary to keep it functional. Hasn’t he? Personally, I think the standard SharePoint mobile UI is too lightweight – almost useless. It misses some basic functionality like menus and the way it’s all presented makes it look like we were looking at the World Wide Web in it’s very first days. We know better than that.
Call for an alternative
Mobile market has been growing very rapidly for the last few years. Looking at where the things are going, it’s more than a guess that we will see more and more of mobile devices with Internet access. They will get faster and smarter but one thing will stay the same: they won’t get any bigger. Maybe they will get even smaller? So in the next few years there will still be no room for huge and complex interfaces. Less is more
will still be the key rule of thumb for mobile interfaces.
Considering the above I have decided to create an alternative mobile interface for SharePoint: the Imtech Mobile SharePoint solution.
Imtech Mobile SharePoint – overview
For this first release I have chosen a simple guideline: the mobile user should be able to get to any data stored in SharePoint (assuming he is granted permissions to access that data). You can neither add new items nor edit existing ones: read-only is what’s supported in this release.
In order to access Imtech Mobile SharePoint view you have to append _layouts/Imtech/m/default.aspx to the URL of your Site Collection, eg. http://litwareinc.com/_layouts/Imtech/m/default.aspx. The first thing you see after opening Imtech Mobile SharePoint is a list of all lists and libraries (1) and sites (2) located under the root site.
If you click on a list you will be redirected to the list view. The list view shows a list of all items in a particular list.
Because you’re not on the home page anymore two buttons appear in the header: Home and Up. Using these buttons you can navigate in the hierarchy of your site. The Up button redirects you to the parent element: a folder, list or a site. The list view allows you to navigate even further to view the details of list items.
After clicking on a list item you will be redirected to the item detail view. This view is built based on the columns available in the Default View of the list where the item is located.
Using this version of Imtech Mobile SharePoint you can navigate not only through sites, lists and list items but also through folders. After opening a document library which contains folders, you will see a list of all folders (1) alongside the overview of all documents (2). Navigating through folders has the same User Experience as navigating through sites and lists.
Cool, isn’t it? And the best of it all: it can be installed afterwards on top of any existing site. The Imtech Mobile SharePoint solution is a set of application pages and therefore doesn’t require any modification of existing Sites. Upon deployment Imtech Mobile SharePoint can be used with any Web Application running on the farm.
Imtech Mobile SharePoint should work in every mobile device with Internet access out there. If your device is capable of rendering HTML, it should be able to run Imtech Mobile SharePoint without any problems.
Installation of Imtech Mobile SharePoint is straight-forward. All you need to do is to deploy the solution to your farm. There isn’t even a feature you have to activate to make it work. To simplify the installation process even further I have included an installer based on SharePoint Solution Installer by Lars Fastrup.
The future
This release is the very first release of Imtech Mobile SharePoint. We have tons of new ideas here at Imtech ICT Velocity about how it could be extended to provide even better experience, but I’m particularly interested in what you think about it? Do you like it? Do you think it’s more user friendly than the standard mobile view provided with SharePoint? What would you like to see in the future releases? Your feedback can help shape this solution.
Imtech Mobile SharePoint is a free product and you can use it without any restrictions.
Download: Imtech Mobile SharePoint (144KB, ZIP)
January 30th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Cool, almost like Web Apps for iPhone
Cheers,
Jakub G
January 30th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
January 30th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Very neat app, and nice functionality. Good job.
February 5th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Still innovating, I see? Congrats on you MVP status.
February 5th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Sure thing! Thanks, Paul
March 19th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Wow. This thing pwns the OOTB mobile view. NICE WORK!!!
March 19th, 2009 at 8:18 am
@Jason: That's why it's there
Let me know should you have any feedback, question or ideas.
April 17th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I installed this, and it is much nicer than the MS navagation.
Thanks!
April 25th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Fantastic, just what I was looking for to browse a Sharepoint site on iPhone…
Would be perfect if there's some way to integrate a search bar at the top to query to the underlying Search Server. That would combine simplicity of http://en.m.wikipedia.org with the backend Sharepoint CMS/Search/etc.
April 25th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
@CY: Glad to hear you like it. I've been thinking on some other things we could include in the mobile interface and search is definitely one of them. Thanks for the feedback
May 12th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Looks very promising! However, a list of links displays a blank page and a calendar event does not show any detail. Am I missing something?
May 13th, 2009 at 7:05 am
@David: are these the only two that don't work correctly?
May 13th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
I am trying this on WSS, so maybe that\'s why some things don\'t work for me. Here\'s everything I\'ve tried:
Tasks – Due date is blank, % complete is blank, assigned to inculdes sharepoint user id, link doesn\'t work and it is not trying to link to the task edit page and it is not an actual hyperlink.
Document Library – everything seems to work well but would be helpful to be able to view metadata for each document.
Calendar – Start time, end time, Recurrence, and All Day Event are all blank. The approval status shows the sharepoint int instead of the string representation – example: shows 2 in the UI instead of Pending or 0 instead of Approved. Same issue with any workflow status info.
Links – first page is blank. Viewing the page source reveals that the links to open the detail for each link is there, but there is no text between the <a href> and </a> tags. Guessing it should be inserting the link name here?
Discussion board – The threads show up, but clicking on one brings up a blank page with only the standard header and footer. Page source reveals nothing between header and footer also.
Announcements – No way to view body of announcement.
Picture Library – see document library notes.
Wiki – blank page; source reveals only a link tag containing a link from the wiki page and no text.
I haven\'t downloaded the source code and debugged anything yet. If you don\'t have plans to further develop this though, I might take it on, so let me know if that\'s the case.
Finally, something that would make this much more useful to me, until the write access is added, is linking everything to the full blown page so that edits can occur there if really needed.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
@David: Thanks for the feedback, David. I know that there is a lot of stuff to improve out there. The first release was meant to show the community that alternative mobile interface can be made without a lot of effort. As you have noticed it covers only the basics but a lot more can be achieved. So far I haven't made any plans as for future releases. That doesn't mean however that there won't another release in the future.
May 27th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Really Really amazing work!!! Keep it up! Only request you to provide the Source Code for customization.
Feel free to contact me thru mail Id: rajesh.nrh@wipro.com
May 27th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
It's really really amazing work, Hats off to U Mastykarz, the application you created is helpful to everyone who works on Sharepoint Mobile.
If you've any idea in sharing of your source code, if it's open source then anyone can modify according to their suit.
You can contact me thru rajesh.nrh@wipro.com
July 17th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Great Tool!!
Is there any way to get the a document librabry's detail ex Title etc?
Kind REgards,
July 17th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
@Adrian: if you mean whether it's possible through code, the answer is yes. The solution doesn't provide such functionality at this moment, though.
August 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Hi I installed it and it is working.
But (there's always a but):
1. it always asks me to login. My Website is configured to be anonymous. Can I set it to anonymous mode?
2. Can I remove some list or library not to be available in mobile view?
August 12th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
@Drasko:
1. I haven't checked it in the anonymous mode. As I was developing it as an intranet solution, I wasn't focusing on an anonymous version.
2. In the current version there is no possibility of hiding any of the lists.
August 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
hi Waldek, first of all congrats for your tool, it has been very useful for me and my company, jejejje.
i want to ask you something…..
my company boss also wants to be able to search using your tool. can i customize your proyect for my porpouse? i mean, can i add a dropdown/textbox and a search button next to your original buttons (up & home)???
to sum up, i am able to code it but i don´t know if it is possible, i mean, is there a sharepoint mobile search engine or something like that. if the answer is yes…could you tell me (here) some useful links to look for any info…..it is strange but i can find any info related to sharepoint search in mobile devices.
thanks in advance
August 28th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
@josetellan: there is no specific Search for Mobile in SharePoint. If you want to customize the searching experience you have two choices: you can either run the search query running the Search Object Model or the Search WebService. Both approaches have been described on MSDN.
August 28th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Hi again, and thanks for your fast reply. i think the better choice is via webService, i only want to search documents, files and folders. what do you think about it?
many thanks
August 28th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
@josetellan: you should be able to achieve that using Search Scopes. Using WebService is okay. Be aware of the extra hop which you will be making to get the search results from the WebService. As the search control is on the same server as SharePoint you might consider using the object model for better performance. If you want portability though, WebService would be a better choice. It all depends on your requirements.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:34 am
Hi Waldek, my requirement is The search´s scope has to be/set at siteCollection level.
In steps:
1.- add a placeHolder named "PlaceholderSearchLink" and add a class to your .master like this:
2.- generate my SearchButton.cs using the object model (i think is the best choice) and redirect to “myCustomSearch.aspx” page to show the search results.
3.- In “myCustomSearch.aspx” page i have to recreate the default SP search Page behavior, with all the results as links to the file-document-folder the user cliks.
Is this ok? Do i miss something? I need advices, I have one year experience working with sharepoint so i am very newbie in this world.
Do you mind if i ask you for some help to achieve this?
Many thanks.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:20 pm
@josetellan: That should do the job indeed. Good luck
September 16th, 2009 at 7:15 am
Hi Experts,
I have a application that needs to be run on the mobile haing GPRS or internet connection.
I have a page that has some columns with browsable functionality, for this I create a web part with this functionality and then stores the data in a sharepoint list but I want that the page having that web part should open on the molile.
But after lot of googling i come to know about that only sharepoint list & libraries can be views on the mobile not the particular sharepoint site or page having that web part.
Please tell me if you have any solution to view the site or page on the mobile.
Thanks
Ram
September 16th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
@Ram: As far as I know the standard SharePoint Mobile Layout doesn't provide a way to display a Web Part Page in a mobile-friendly way. You would have to develop it by yourself. While it's quite easy to display the content of a list item, it's quite complex to do that for Web Parts which are basically controls. What you could try is to create Control Adapters which would target your mobile device. So using one and the same URL you would be able to display full blown functionality for PC users and mobile-friendly version of the page for mobile users.
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Hi again waldek,
i tell you my progress if u dont mind.
i type in your .master the next:
Search
function redirect()
{
window.location = "http://xxxxxx/mobilesearch/results.aspx?k=" + document.getElementById("").value;
}
well…what i am trying is add an input textbox to pass its text by querystring to the link called "A1". everything is perfect in a PC but when i browse the url in a Windows Mobile device i can´t see the textbox.
with the result is the same, i can only see the searchButtonLink. what do you think about it?
if you dont understand me, please let me know.
cheers
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Sorry but some text is missing:
code text:
Search
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
sorry again…can i send my question by email???
i can´t upload my code text here.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:17 pm
@josetellan: you can try to send me the code using the contact form on the about page.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:02 am
Looks great, Waldek!
Some feedback, if I may.
(1) Do you still intend on furnishing the Header and Navigation sections that come with the OOTB mobile? If so, will they be customizable (company logo, static links)?
(2) I wish there was a way OOTB to provide a list of lists on the home page, where the title of a list follows a pre-defined subset of the that list followed by the ellipses. Clicking on the title will bring the user to the entire list. Clicking on one of the list items will bring user to the detail.
(3) Any chance the home page can contain some static content in the content-area (images, links)?
Cheers!
November 7th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
@Mark Pitts: Thanks for the great feedback, Mark. At this point I'm not planning any new releases for the mobile-friendly interface. If you are interested in extending it with some custom functionality like the one you mentioned for commercial purposes feel free to contact me using the contact form.
July 27th, 2010 at 1:51 am
Thanks for the great project. It really is a winner!
Is the source code available? if so please could you email it to courtenay.farquharson@gmail.com
August 1st, 2010 at 7:28 am
@Courtenay: Sorry to say, but I can't send you the source code, as it belongs to my previous employer. You could however try to contact them at info.is@imtech.nl and see if they are able to help you out.