Full-blown SharePoint Access from an iPhone 3G

OK, if that Blog entry title doesn't get me 1,000 hits a day then I give up. iPhone 3G and SharePoint both in the title!! The 3G is my newest and mostest favorite toy right now. It is not great as a business device, (no copy/paste, no email search and typing on it takes some getting used to), but as a general productivity device it rocks. It is extremely easy to use, reading emails and web pages is a joy and the free bubble wrap popping application keeps me going during project review meetings.

It got me to thinking that there are some similarities between the iPhone and SharePoint...I really do need to get out more. Here's my thinking...consider the iPhone in comparison to a Blackberry. The iPhone,

• Is amazingly easy to use - in fact you do not really need end user training,
• Includes things that make tasks that bit more fun during the day,
• Is aimed at the needs/desires of the end user,
• Is designed to be pervasive and provide 80% of the functionality that I need 80% of the time,
• Looks like it does everything that a Blackberry does if you read the marketing literature but it isn't quite there,

Now consider the same analogies with SharePoint and a classic ECM solution. SharePoint is intuitive, fun to use and definitely aimed at the end user community. It does provide a lot of the functionality that you need a lot of the time and according to the marketing fluff out there it is a panacea for the enterprise. The comparison falls apart completely when you start to look at the interaction between an iPhone/Blackberry and SharePoint/classic ECM... iPhones and Blackberries don't interact but it is obvious that SharePoint and traditional ECM systems actually work well together!

Oh the title, the image and the reason for this post? I faked the image and but the concept is real; it relates to this article...but truth be told I just wanted to increase my daily hit rate

Comments

[Andrew Chapman]

Sheetal,At least no one can accuse me of only promoting EMC's software I did a Google search for a SharePoint page image and it was the first one to display...that's just the image displaying in the iPhone browser. Maybe one day it will work for real and my head will explode with the excitement!!!Andrew

[Sheetal Jain]

This iphone screenshot is Interwoven Worksite for SharePoint Glad to see my code is working on iphone :) Were you able to see the right click and see the drop down menus ? When I wrote this code Iphone didn't exist:) though it was displaying the black and white text on my old blue blackberry Thanks AndrewSheetal

[Robert]

Mission accomplished, new visitor boarding...

[Sheetal]

Lol. Now that's a response from a seasoned ECM professional :) But you have a very good point. The iphone generation browser changes the game of browser based apps , you almost get a half a size of regular browser and thats makes it compelling for business apps as well. One of the thing I have built is the Outlook Web Access (OWA) integration for SharePoint and I was convince with the idea after I saw how clear and usable OWA and SharePoint looks

[Nondescript]

I use my iPhone to manage my internal SharePoint 2007 sites today. It's a little slow (I have the original iPhone) but workable specially for viewing things like KPIs.