SharePoint Takes to Mobile

The World of Tomorrow: Yeah, SharePoint's on It

SharePoint is a highly fluid system, and while many beginning users feel that the components are somehow "restrictive," that's generally just because they haven't tweaked the appropriate features for full accessibility. The reality is, beyond having open intranet and extranet options, SharePoint pages can be made accessible on any number of other mediums – including mobile devices.

This started all the way back in 2007, before the rise of the modern smartphone (such as those created by Apple or Android). At this time, the SharePoint pages were reachable but difficult to use, decipher, and interact with. Since that time, two important things happened. First, SharePoint 2010 was released, and second, the world of public app development took hold of SharePoint's features.

The release of SharePoint 2010 meant that additional mobile features were present and account for but, far more importantly, were also easier to use. The mobile pages could be accessed from any phone that could access the web, and while the pages weren't exactly "optimized for mobile," they were entirely functional.

Apple's market of over 300,000 apps and Android's 200,000 plus, it's no surprise that some have been designed for SharePoint. Allowing access to various SharePoint pages, functions, reports, and more, these utilities for iPad, iPhone, Android-powered devices, and RIM (Blackberry) smartphones give users more mobility than ever before.

In the world of technology, there's little doubt that tablets and smartphones are the future. Microsoft is lunging into both arenas with WP7 and the upcoming Microsoft tablets, not to mention Windows 8 with ARM support. We may see more mobile resources developed by Microsoft itself, but even without the contribution of the tech titan, the SharePoint consulting and customization community is hard at work creating beautiful, powerful apps for SharePoint on the go.