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Microsoft SharePoint on the iPhone

Started by Arno Nel (SharePoint Magazine) · 11 months ago

I recently discovered what appears to be a “killer application” for mobile productivity: using and managing fully-featured SharePoint sites from an iPhone. No, not the dumbed-down, “/m” DOS-like simplified SharePoint views. We’re ... Continue reading »

21 comments

  • Arno Nel (SharePoint Magazine)

    11 months ago

    Wow, im really impressed Steve. Who knew !

    have you done any similar testing with other OS's? eg Windows mobile?
    reply
  • steve bell

    11 months ago

    no Arno this is just something I stumbled upon. Ironically, I was at the Microsoft campus in Mt View attending
    and all-day startup "business plan showdown" event, and it was only because their Wi-Fi is locked down so tight,
    and I was unable to get an EvDo signal within their auditorium, that i stumbled across this. I needed to get into
    SharePoint to get some work done but was pinned down in the auditorium all day, as described in the companion
    piece on my blog (www.bellc.com, search for 'SharePoint" from the search box in the banner) . A friend and I
    did try to get into SharePoint sites from various Windows Mobile devices, but have not yet been successful,
    although i know it is possible. However, not with Opera mobile on WM 6.1, as shown here. I plan to test the
    Blackberries eventually.
    reply
  • Arno Nel (SharePoint Magazine)

    11 months ago

    really cool. i have to say, its made me want the iPhone. I was about 2 days away from getting the HTC Touch Diamond, but might wait for the iPhone now.
    looks really good.

    great job once again
    reply
  • steve

    11 months ago

    I had the HTC 6800 Mogul, a little smaller device with a slider keyboard. At first I liked it, and thought
    "Gee, Windows Mobile has improved" (since the prior 10 times I have tried WM devices... clear back to CE).

    It took about 3 weeks before i realized... "I really dislike this thing!". Just the little details of using it that
    aren't properly thought through.

    I have no beef with Microsoft and hope they eventually get Windows Mobile right... but it isn't even close.

    The iPhone, on the other hand, was the opposite experience. The more you learn about it, the more useful
    it becomes and the more attached you get to it. I am a keyboard person, too - i would greatly prefer it had
    a tactile "slider" keyboard. But... the more you learn about how it's predictive onscreen keyboard works, the
    better you can get with it. It doesn't just to look-ahead... it ENLARGES the target area over your next likely
    target key, for example. Everything about the iPhone's super-slick OS and application is that way... I wouldn't touch a WM device with a 10-foot pole, now. Not even close, for usability, versatility etc.
    reply
  • Arno Nel (SharePoint Magazine)

    11 months ago

    hehe. ok im sold. now i just need to wait until it becomes available in South Africa. Hopefully it should be quite soon
    reply
  • steve bell

    11 months ago

    you may dislike the iPhone - everyone has to decide for themselves.
    But i am a convert myself - i'm a big fan of keyboards and don't like the
    fact that the iPhone will likely never have one. However... it is such a
    versatile device for the web, and does so many other things superbly,
    i'm willing to make the trade off - for now. But I don't want to try and
    convince anyone - many may prefer a keyboard. I would point out though,
    that the iPhone's operating system, and applications RUN CIRCLES
    around anything I've ever seen on a Windows Mobile device. I just
    don't think that the paradigm, of "moving" the desktop OS to a cell phone
    really works, in everyday life usage. For a mobile device, all of the assumptions
    for the OS and applications need to be re-thought from the ground up; every
    minute' detail. The iPhone architects did that, exceedingly well.

    However, some will prefer Windows Mobile. It depends on how you use it,
    what you care about, etc etc.
    reply
  • jthake

    11 months ago

    Still debating whether to chop in the HTC Tytn II. Browsing is so much easier on iPod Touch, but still unsure for email and calendar etc.
    reply
  • The ShareBear

    11 months ago

    Two well intentioned and justified comments: My iPhone (first gen, firmwared to 2.0) depends on at&t's EDGE network, which is dreadfully slooow here in Chicago (it's akin to waiting for a Cub's World Series appearence.). Doing anything on the net is painful away from wifi. Also, the touchpad keyboard is not an "Enterprise" product, compared to a thumb-able hard-key QWERTY setup like a Palm or Blackberry. My keystrokes are a sad 10WPM on my iPhone, whereas I used to get about 20WPM out of my Palm, driving on LSD.

    iPhones are great for high school boys, college girls, and effeminate web masters everywhere... I just wish I had stock in Apple, instead of M$FT.
    reply
  • steve

    11 months ago

    Hey ShareBear,
    yeah i sort of agree with you about the keyboard. I've been using these miniature mobile devices since they first started appearing in 1990 (a full list of every one i've owned is on my website - it's ridiculous:), and all of my favorites had keyboards. Thumb typing is the way to go. But i don't think anyone will convince Jobs to do a slider or a Treo/Blackberry like tactile keyboard. I decided to be open-minded and really give the iPhone's on-screen keyboard a chance, and I have to say, i'm at least partially converted. Most people just think it has look-ahead to complete the word. But the Apple Multi-touch technology has some remarkable innovations - like knowing what character is coming next, and enlarging the TARGET AREA over that particular character; which improves typing accuracy notably. It's still not a keyboard though, and i do agree with you that it's a bit of a problem for heavy emailers. But the solution can be to shift your habits, since the iPhone is so versatile for so many OTHER things. And I've been shifting away from email a bit anyway; i think the "peak email" years are behind us as we move into web 2.0 technologies.

    It's true about AT&T's EDGE network - verrry slow and frustrating to use an iPhone with that. Thankfully, the 3G iPhone has arrived, and the data performance is hugely better. Surprisingly, the voice performance on the 3G iPhone is way better than my EDGE iPhone; in fact it's probably the crispest/sharpest cell phone audio I've experienced (including my favorite Nokia's, Samsungs, and Sanyo's - and those are some great phones to compare it to. Surprised by that, but Apple really nailed the cell phone side of it this time. An added bonus.

    I do disagree with your last line, though. I am 54 and a type A business guy; and not matching any of the other descriptors, :-)

    thanks for your comments.
    reply
  • Todd Kitta

    11 months ago

    Very well written.
    reply
  • steve

    11 months ago

    this document from Microsoft provides a lot of information for MS-Exchange server administrators, to
    configure the network and the server(s) to support iPhone ("Enterprise Deployment Guide", a 728KB pdf from Microsoft):

    http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/07/11/44...

    some of this should be relevant to getting iPhones to play with Corporate SharePoint servers. Ports to open,
    permissions etc. Looks like MS-Exchange defaults to prohibiting links in emails fro opening SharePoint docs, as the
    default.

    Just an fyi of something that was brought to my attention.
    reply
  • steve

    11 months ago

    Also... Apple has published this enterprise deployment guide:

    http://support.apple.com/manuals/en_US/Enterpri...
    reply
  • PeterMorath

    11 months ago

    Excellent article :-)

    It's beyond my knowledge to know how this would work on an internal installation of SharePoint 2007 that is currently not accessible externally, but I can see how the iPhone could easily replace the Blackberry, which, despite improvements, still has too small a screen.

    With SharePoint's ability to access Exchange/Outlook email it's easy to see how our key services (web/email) could be delivered through Apple's snazzy device.

    I'm not an iPhone owner (in the UK, O2 are the only network provider that we can sign up with), although I nearly bought an iTouch! If the iPhone was able to support Office applications (can it already? I don't know) it would make it easier to justify ordering one ;-)

    Cheers - Peter
    SharePoint Developer in the UK
    reply
  • Monica

    11 months ago

    Wonderful article!
    It totally changed my mind about the Iphone _ in general I tend to dislike the popular stuff Apple comes up with, I just find them insanely expensive and not worth the extra money you pay just to have a cool gadget..

    P.S. Keep up the good work, every article so far was great, I'm becoming a real sharepointmagazine fan!
    reply
  • Tony

    11 months ago

    My only issue with this would be the international data changes on using something like this. For Roaming users working across international borders most mobile operators charge peak tariffs - I know some iPhone users who have had horrific bills from their operators because they used iPhones for data exchange while Roaming. Also in Europe there is not a single operator for iPhone but different ones in each country, which does not help international companies using a single operator. But I loved the article and the possibilities.
    reply
  • Zac

    11 months ago

    Looks fantastic! Managing all those SharePoint lists and libraries. Would be great if you could actually participate in the libraries as you can on WM. At least you can admin the sites and create list items. Just forget documents, or any content for that matter. You can't even save anything to the phone, can you? Again, pretty, and pretty unpractical... unless you are the site admin... /m might be ugly but on WM it is fast and functional.
    reply
  • Mike

    10 months ago

    Pretty cool. I had tested this a while back and was amazed at how well it worked. After thinking about it thought, it really is not that surprising. The 2007 flavor of SharePoint is designed to work with all standards compliant browsers, which iPhone's Safari is. The only cavaet is that to get full functionality your browser must support ActiveX, which pretty much limits the field to IE, with the best performance IE6 and up.
    reply
  • TJ

    10 months ago

    hi, I really would like to hear from you how you did it.
    I have WSS 3.0 installed on the company I work. I successfully connect to my work
    throuhg VPN. I can RDP into my office computer from my IPHONE but I can't open
    my wss sites from my iphone.

    I can see you did it, but I just receive " Safari can't open page because could not find server".
    when i use url name. if I type my wss server address I get the authentication page but after
    i type user name and password the same error message.

    can you please help me here.
    reply
  • nrhodes61

    9 months ago

    We are having an issue when connecting to our VPN via an Iphone when trying to connect to a SharePoint internal resource it prompts for username and password than we get a page not found errror? We are using correct credentials and using NTLM authentication.

    Any Ideas?
    reply
  • NicaGeeks

    7 months ago

    Great info here. Great article. In response to the question about the page not found error I don't have a fix yet but I have a couple of questions that might help figure it out.
    1) If possible disable the authentication for the WSS site and then try it again. Does the same thing happen?
    2) What is the exact address displayed in the browser when the error is shown?
    3) Try to specify the port number in the address and see what happens...like this:
    http://internalServername:80/default.aspx

    I would also install the full version of Safari on a machine and test to see if it works through the VPN.
    If you are connected directly to your office network via wireless does it work?

    Cheers,
    Scott
    reply
  • Fernando

    7 months ago

    Have you been able to figure out how to use a reporting services report through the IPHONE?
    I can access the report but the Expand capabilities do not work [+] or [-]
    reply

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