best practices in smartphone business apps

19
Adam Blum, [email protected] Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

Upload: adam-blum

Post on 03-Dec-2014

2.010 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

DESCRIPTION

talk from Web 2.0 on recommendations of how to best build enterprise smartphone apps. Also briefly covers Rhomobile's Rhodes framework

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

Adam Blum, [email protected]

Best Practices in

Smartphone Business Apps

Page 2: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

Background

iPhone has changed the game All users now want to run real apps on their

smartphones It’s a huge win for businesses

Workers are productive everywhere, anytime Smartphones are cheaper than laptops They have senses (sight, hearing, touch) that laptops

never had But

Its difficult to write apps for all smartphones that your people have (without a smartphone app framework)

Good smartphone apps are different than good web apps or good desktop apps

Page 3: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

3

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

3

Page 4: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

4

Don’t Do This: KinitoPro

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

Page 5: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

5

Context Sensitive

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 what to

showbut no top level lists to select the right

object type/functionSettings as an option on the tab bar

5

Page 6: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

6

Don’t Do This: iPivotal

Page 7: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

7

Do This: TrackR (Koombea)

Page 8: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

8

Leverage Device Capabilities

smartphones have senses: sight, hearing, touch

don’t do myopic web portsyou can probably use:

GPS mapping PIM contacts camera

8

Page 9: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

9

What To Do:Nationwide Claims App

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

Page 10: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

10

Synchronized 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 frequently used datagenerally requires some kind of sync

framework

“Sync to Contacts” is not sync10

Page 11: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

11

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

11

Page 12: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

12

IFusion

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

Page 13: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

13

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: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

14

Support All Devices

Android and iPhone have great growthBut BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have

enterprise installed bases that aren’t going away

Symbian is still huge worldwideNokia/Intel Meego and Atom chip are very

interesting

14

Page 15: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

15

Rapid Iterations

deliver small identifiable features frequently

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

15

Page 16: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

1616

Rhodes Architecture

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 17: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

17

Rhodes v. Other Frameworks

17

Only one that supports all devices Only one with synchronized data Only MVC framework

And only ORM First Ruby on the device First and only hosted

development service for mobile

Page 18: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

18

Summary

Context sensitivityAvoid typingLeverage the deviceSupport all devicesSynchronized local dataHandle varying metadataRapidly iterate

18

Page 19: Best Practices in Smartphone Business Apps

19

RhoLogic for SugarCRM