SharePlus: What are your customization options?

Since the first laptop computers were released, and with the more recent emergence of smartphones and tablets, mobile devices have allowed ever more flexibility for the modern workforce. The most forward thinking companies have capitalized on the potential of this technology and employees are able to collaborate and contribute from outside the office, while travelling and from a distance. Such technologies have brought about a small revolution in working practices, and have allowed employees to fit their work around their lives in a more natural way.

Given the flexibility offered by the hardware, it is a great irony that the applications on these devices or very often stuck in the past. Employees are regularly frustrated by the limits of enterprise mobile apps; they don’t work anywhere near as well as their desktop counterparts, are often slow and clunky and look and feel alien. Whether a business has a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy, or provides mobile devices to personnel, being sure that your workplace collaboration platforms work well on tablets and mobiles is essential.

SharePoint is one of the world’s foremost enterprise collaboration tools, and SharePlus by Infragistics leverages the power of SharePoint on iOS and Android devices. In addition to its state of the art sharing, on and offline collaboration and security features, SharePlus crucially allows companies to modify the platform on mobile devices too. This means the platform looks and feels more consistent and streamlines workflows of different employees and departments.

Customization - more than just a vanity project

SharePlus has been designed with the needs of mobile workers in mind, and this of course focuses on flexibility. The ability to customize the app is about more than simply making your company’s SharePlus look nice, but has real business benefits too. A customized UX means:

• Employees get things done quicker. They feel at home using the app and screens correspond with their specific needs
• You can configure anything, including branding. If an app has the same logos, colors and styles as the rest of your company’s media, the UX will be smoother, cleaner and more seamless. Consistent branding looks professional too, so when your salespeople are demonstrating data and analysis to clients on their tablets, your logo will always be present.

 

SharePlus customization options

SharePlus lets you modify your mobile SharePoint experience in a variety of ways. We recognize that different organizations have different needs, so constraining them to one template just makes no sense. For example, while one company will be happy to implement the same features across sites, another will need specific screens for each of their mobile teams. SharePlus lets you modify and control the SharePoint screens your employees are presented with when they open the app, as well as many other variables. Infragistics offers a range of in-depth guides to help end users customize the different features of their solution (see here and here for further information).

While much of SharePlus can be modified, users find it particularly useful to customize:

1. Launchpads.

Operating like ‘custom screens’, Launchpads allow easy access and display of different areas and content (reports, dashboards, PDF files, libraries) in SharePoint. These can be set as a home screen when users login to your company’s SharePoint platform, on sidebars, within specific sites, subsites or even down to lists and libraries. Launchpads allow quick and streamlined access to the data and information which users need the most, and specific Launchpads can be configured for the needs of different departments or even specific users. Your sales team, for instance, will appreciate a home screen with direct links to data, information and the contact details which they need for their work. Customizable Launchpads make this possible. The goal of Launchpads is not only to enable quick access to content, but also to help you ‘mobilize’ a SharePoint page and create mobile optimized views that are available both online and offline, and are always synchronized.

Launchpads are easy to build and maintain. For developers they require a very short learning curve as they let you write with HTML5 and JavaScript and can be managed and deployed from a central location to all company devices.

2. Change the look and feel.

Seamless corporate branding and style across company IT platforms distinguishes the most forward thinking companies from those which are just happy to accept the bare minimum with IT. There are many ways in which visualization, style and branding can be changed to support your company’s corporate policies. SharePlus’ look-and-feel can be customized during its implementation by the inclusion of customized assets and by adjusting the application’s theme.

3. Configure everything based on your needs.

SharePlus has an easy to use JavaScript API which lets you extract content from SharePoint and present it with the help of modern client-side web technologies like HTML5, CSS, JavaScript. You can configure SharePlus in many ways: for example, specific sites can be hidden, visualizations can be configured for specific lists or libraries, sections can be removed or rearranged, and more. Beyond simply adding the company logo to SharePoint sites, SharePlus lets you alter content presentation in various ways:

• Incorporate grids and different data viewing styles
• Use picture boards
• Sort and group to customize how data is displayed
• Change functionality to support specific requirements

 

Pimp my SharePlus

Customizing your organization's IT solution is good business practice for a variety of reasons and SharePlus is designed with the diverse needs of our clients and partners in mind. The modern workforce uses flexible technology, and SharePlus is a flexible application which corresponds perfectly with their needs.

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