What do you think?

[marc_dubresson]

So, Alfresco Mobile 1.0 is out! http://itunes.apple.com/app/alfresco/id459242610

It's simple and does what it says on the package. Where do you want to see it go now, what do your users/customers want to do on the go?

[alexjrb]

OK, thanks.  I'll make a request in the JIRA.

[marc_dubresson]

this is a good start guys.
I just would suggest to re-think the design for your iPad version.
Packaging the app as a universal app is the right thing to do, but the users rather expect you to use Ipad specific UI features, like the UISplitViewController, and so on.
I am speaking out of experience, btw I wrote the app for Activiti about a year ago.

@yury How do you think the latest version 1.1 is doing for iPad UI?

[franck_paris]

In my company, our Alfresco server is in 3.4.3 Enterprise release. We're testing AlfrescoMobile 1.1 on iOS 5.0.1 with a couple of iPads.

The main functional use case is very simple :
- Access to documents in Alfresco from iPad, with the capability of reading them when the user is offline : Our main target is to read existing documents.
- We'll see later how to update them on iPad and then upload them back to Alfresco.

Here are the main additional requirements (meaning not included in Alfresco Mobile 1.1) we have for the usage within the entreprise :

1 - Support configuration of AlfrescoMobile through our MdM solution (Mobile Iron). This means the support of "AppConnect" for being able to pre-configure AlfrescoMobile client and push the app and its configuration on the mobile device.

2 - Support of Alfresco Shortcuts - Alfresco Explorer - Shelf : Our document structure is deep. When we connect to Alfresco using AlfrescoMobile, we access to the root space "company home". We have to "drill" into the different spaces for accessing to the documents. It would be nice to be able to re-use the shortcuts define in Alfresco user profile (Alfresco Explorer - shortcuts in shelf). It that case in one clic (one touch on iPad), the user can access to his targeted space.

Other request : as we have large documents (more than 40 Mb), we'd like to "push" those docs on the iPads instead of downloading the documents by the users themselves (pull mode). Any idea for doing that ?

[mikeh]

1 - Support configuration of AlfrescoMobile through our MdM solution (Mobile Iron). This means the support of "AppConnect" for being able to pre-configure AlfrescoMobile client and push the app and its configuration on the mobile device.

I dont' know about that product myself, but we'll take a look and see if it's feasible for a future release.

2 - Support of Alfresco Shortcuts - Alfresco Explorer - Shelf : Our document structure is deep. When we connect to Alfresco using AlfrescoMobile, we access to the root space "company home". We have to "drill" into the different spaces for accessing to the documents. It would be nice to be able to re-use the shortcuts define in Alfresco user profile (Alfresco Explorer - shortcuts in shelf). It that case in one clic (one touch on iPad), the user can access to his targeted space.

Unfortunately CMIS doesn't support app:fileLink and app:folderLink node types, so these would require a workaround. Navigating large repositories in an easy way is definitely something we'll be looking at in future versions.

Other request : as we have large documents (more than 40 Mb), we'd like to "push" those docs on the iPads instead of downloading the documents by the users themselves (pull mode). Any idea for doing that ?

Yes - you can use an app like PhoneView which directly navigates the iOS file structure.

We could also look at the iTunes Document interface which lets you do the same thing through that app.

Thanks for your feedback,
Mike

[steven_okennedy]

Hi,

One of the use cases for mobile that we have been looking at in passing is for review board type meetings.  We have cases where senior management groups will meet on a monthly basis or so for the purpose of approving or rejecting suggestions for projects that have been proposed for them to review.  It forms one of the last steps in the overall project initiation cycle that decide whether a piece of work gets the green light (and funding approval) to go ahead.

As you can imagine, each proposal has a reasonably hefty information pack that goes with it detailing proposed scope and functionality as well as projected costs and resource profile, and a meeting may deal with 5-6 or more different project proposals depending on what's going on.  We are already using Alfresco to prepare and store these documents and their supplementary information, so for us the next logical step is to set up a workflow to fully control the lifecycle of each proposal from creation through its approval/rejection and eventual post implementation review.

What we were also thinking was wouldn't it be great to give these groups the ability to have the entire information pack for each project to hand in the meeting (via iPad) but also to have the ability to instantly approve or reject the proposal on the spot (if the app could do this…).  Seeing as a lot of large corporations are investing in tablets for their upper management rather than ground staff, I would imagine that this kind of workflow use case could be very common. Please let me know what you think

Regards

Steven