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Home > Blog > SharePoint Mobile Development – Part 2: Decide Between Mobile Site, Native App and Hybrid App

SharePoint Mobile Development – Part 2: Decide Between Mobile Site, Native App and Hybrid App

08 Jan 2014

With organizations adapting enterprise mobility, mobile devices and tablets have become more powerful and an easy channel to access and deploy enterprise information. Developing enterprise ready mobile applications have become easier with SharePoint 2013. Read below to know about SharePoint Mobile Development and its best practices.

 

SharePoint is a unique web application platform that simplifies different types of web requirements for various business units and organization. This platform provides many collaborative tools required by the organization to achieve its business goals and simplify employee communication. Microsoft Office acts as a core framework for SharePoint platform, enabling easy integration with existing suits with better user experience.

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SharePoint mobile development provides various collaborative features like intranet; websites and extra-net portals; files and document management; social networking services; enterprise search; and business intelligence.

 

There is a critical aspect to be kept in mind while creating SharePoint mobile web development and it is about the diversity of devices available in the market. There are applications built specific to support iOS which will not work on any other device platform. SharePoint mobile development should be executed in a custom format which is device independent and can serve the user’s need. By creating a common app, it helps you to save costs in development and execution.

Take Your Pick

Option 1: Mobile Site

 

The mobile market place serves many mobile apps which are available for ready use, but if you are planning to develop a customized SharePoint solution for your organization, then must ensure to create a mobile web browser or “mobile site” or create an app on the SharePoint platform. Once the business needs are identified, you should also take care that the enterprise app should be compatible with vastly used mobile web browsers and mobile platforms.

 

Option 2: Native App

 

Both of the approaches have their own pros and cons. If you are creating a native mobile app then you would need to make it compatible for all mobile platforms. The mobile websites are inexpensive to maintain compared to an app, and mobile sites are easier to deploy and update, but mobile sites may be operational only when it’s online. SharePoint mobile application development can be integrated very easily and fast when it comes to mobile device’s file system and, these applications may be used in offline mode as well.

 

Option 3: Hybrid App

 

Another option of SharePoint mobile development is creating a hybrid mobile app also known as web based app that runs within the native application. It works in a similar fashion to that of a native app and can access every mobile phone API. Hybrid mobile apps can be updated without downloading and installing the newer version of apps.

 

Although, various companies turn towards developing mobile websites for their business; mobile apps are widely preferred by users in the market. Overwhelming results have been delivered by mobile users and they strongly prefer mobile applications over mobile sites; the reason behind the rapid adaptability of mobile apps is that they are much faster and easier to use compared to mobile websites. Therefore, prior to making a decision, you should go through the above mentioned considerations.

At Rishabh Software, we help our client to reach an informed decision to build or customize the best possible solution for their business needs. Apart from SharePoint mobile application development, we also provide consulting and support for Microsoft SharePoint. For more details, do not hesitate to call us on 1-877-RISHABH (1-877-747-4224) or fill out the contact us form and we will be happy to help you implement SharePoint Mobile App.