SharePlus and Launchpads - Customize SharePoint Data on the Move

As a result of the explosion in smartphones and tablets in recent years, consumers are now used to controlling and accessing many aspects of their lives from mobile devices - whether it’s email, banking, travel or their purchases. It’s therefore no surprise that those same consumers have begun to expect a similar level of flexibility and instant access from their devices in the workplace too.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), the consumerization of IT and other related trends offer many benefits and employees take this freedom for granted. Knowledge workers have come to expect their IT experience at work to be just as customizable as the IT they use in their private lives. And this is a good thing for enterprises: using a customizable enterprise IT solution offers a broad range of benefits to the business as well as to employees.

SharePlus from Infragistics taps into this need for customizable IT by offering individual users unique views of their company’s SharePoint solution through our customized Launchpads. Designed for tablets and smartphones - for the worker on the go - these Launchpads allow users to get to what they want directly. Let’s look at how you can customize your Launchpads in a little more detail.

Tailored to users

As the names suggests, Launchpads work as a ‘home screen’ which can be configured for the needs of specific users when they log in to SharePlus on their mobile device. For example, members of the sales team can configure their Launchpads so they can get instant access to the content which is most useful for them - in this case, sales reports, pipelines, targets and SharePoint sites. Project Managers, Admin teams or engineers would all want their Launchpads to show the things they need to get their jobs done.

SharePlus can be configured to match the ways users view the information they need; this can include almost any kind of content - reports, data, team site, PDF files and so on. It’s simple to set up a Launchpad using basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript knowledge.

Configuration within a few clicks

It’s clear that end-user autonomy doesn’t always sit comfortably with concerns around data loss and privacy, but with SharePlus Launchpads, have no fear. With SharePlus, permissions are managed at the content level in SharePoint. Users, developers, or IT admins don’t need to take any extra consideration. If the content is secured in SharePoint, it won’t be available in SharePlus for the specific user, either.

SharePlus allows IT teams to pre-configure and manage devices from a distance. The configuration possibilities here are available on a:

• Central Application level: In which IT administrators can mandate what layout and customizations a user will experience
• Site by site level: In which different sites or content sources can be configured with their own layout, which ensures users don’t have to stick to one layout for all their sites.

Mobile Device Management (MDMs) - Citrix XenMobile, Oracle Bitzer, MobileIron, and other integrations into SharePlus, add additional management capabilities and an extra layer of security.

Launch into Launchpads

Launchpads are built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and can be enhanced with jQuery. SharePlus comes with its own API, which gives you the ability to access SharePoint information and dynamically render it regardless of online or offline status. 

A mature SharePoint platform will have more than likely been optimized for specific audiences.  Sales areas may lean towards being analytical and numbers led whilst Facilities Management areas will be more documents and form heavy. Each of these departments has specific audiences to cater for. In this scenario, all SharePlus enabled users will be able to move towards any of the available content-specific sites. When the SharePlus application opens, the user is presented with a welcome Launchpad that works as a customized doorway to SharePoint.

Now, let’s assume you are the user and want to navigate to the Facilities Management site. After interacting with the appropriate link to the site (via a tap or a swipe), you are presented with another Launchpad displaying the latest maintenance information. All of this content is dynamically loaded from SharePoint. All SharePlus Launchpads are highly interactive and optimized for mobile, and links to the SharePoint content can be navigated easily.

The new normal

Adapting a mature solution such as SharePoint for delivery on mobile devices is essential in a world of constant mobile content consumption. Solutions like SharePlus respond to this need, not only from a content consumer perspective but from an IT and data security angle too.

Try our SharePlus Enterprise for iOS demo now and see the wonders it can do for your team's productivity!