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iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

Date post: 03-Dec-2014
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Describes best practices for building enterprise smartphone apps. An update of earlier presentations in this space.
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Adam Blum, [email protected] Create Effective iPhone/iPad Apps for the Enterprise
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Page 1: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

Adam Blum, [email protected]

Create Effective iPhone/iPad Appsfor the Enterprise

Page 2: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

iPhone has changed the game

All users now want to run apps on their smartphones

But writing native apps that run at the edge is

quite different than web apps Tools for mobility are mostly the same as 20

years ago Approaches to mobile development don’t

incorporate modern software engineering

Page 3: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Avoid Typing

Pick reasonable default settings number of records, objects to be shown,

languages, sort ordersDon’t have any setup process EVER

first screen should be functionalUse information on device to pick

locations people

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Page 4: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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What Not To Do: KinitoPro

all of this just to get to your accounts? why not just use reasonable defaults?

Page 5: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Context Sensitivity

take users right to the data common metaphor: list of records at top level or a map with objects using location, time, user info to select

but no top level lists to select the right object type/function

settings as an option on the tab bar

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Page 6: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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iPivotal

Page 7: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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TrackR (Koombea)

Page 8: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Local Data

make it possible to use the app without connectivity

insure that user’s work on transactions (Create/Update/Delete) is never lost

automatically cache (through database or otherwise) frequently used data

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Page 9: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Handle Varying Schemas

Large enterprise apps (CRM, ERP) rarely have fixed/”out of box” schema

Need to handle varying builtin objects (account, contact, task, etc.)

Plus handle inevitable changes to those schemas

one reason why apps for CRM/ERP are rare on the App Store

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Page 10: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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What To Do: RhoLogic for SugarCRM

(written with Rhodes)

take people to their objects right away. summarize data on the device with dashboards

Page 11: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Limit Objects/Functions

ideally one main object typesno more than two or three “dependent

objects”limit features/functions/actions on objects

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Page 12: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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IFusion

no local data (sync so you can access contacts when offline)? no save to local PIM contacts?

Page 13: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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InfusionSoft

written with Rhodes. data is synced and available offline. robust set of capabilities on each contact (tags, followup sequence, history, action set). save to PIM (address book)

Page 14: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Device Capabilities

smartphones have senses: sight, hearing, touch

don’t do myopic web portsyou can probably use:

GPS mapping PIM contacts camera

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Page 15: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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What To Do:Nationwide Claims App

great use of device capabilities (GPS, camera) to record accident info. free on App Store

Page 16: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Rapid Iterations

deliver small identifiable features frequently

use a toolset that enables rapid iteration Objective C might not be the best one for that

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Page 17: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Rhodes Architecture

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RhoSyncServer

RhoSyncServer

your app code

RhoSync client

RhoSync client

ORM (Rhom)ORM (Rhom)

Rhodes components

Rubyexecutor

Rubyexecutor

HTML templates

HTML templates

model

controllercontroller

modelHTML

templatesHTML

templatescontrollercontroller

Backendapp

Backendapp

mobile device

sourceadaptersourceadapter

sourceadapter

Backendapp

Backendapp

model

model

We provide:We provide:

You write:

Rhodesapp

generator

Rhodesapp

generator

Backendapp

Backendapp

Devicecapabilities

Devicecapabilities

smartphone device

Page 18: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Handle Your Whole Userbase

Android and iPhone have great growthBut BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have

enterprise installed bases that aren’t going away

Windows Phone 7 looks goodSymbian is still huge worldwideMeego may get used for tabletsSamsung makes great phones and now

have Bada OS18

Page 19: iPhoneDevCon: Building Effective Enterprise Smartphone Apps

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Summary

Avoid typingContext sensitivityLeverage the deviceSupport all devicesSynchronized local dataHandle varying metadataRapidly iterate (use a framework)

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