Category: web design

Mobile Phone Compatibility

Robert Everatt / / Cloud Computing, Office 365, web design

It appears that Microsoft Office 365 is a little vague when it comes to their mobile phone compatibility. It appears that each type of phone has different functinality.

Both the Android and iOS can view the team site in a very basic and unattractive web page, there is no supported application for either phones. The mobile view can access all workspace areas from the home page and from there navigate through all the pages.When viewing any list, the list will just show the title until you click on it. The user is still able to upload new items to a list, custom or stock. Features such as workflows do not work and calendars only work in an extremely basic form. Documents are also viewable in the web browser but are not editable, it is also not possible to upload files to SharePoint.

Office 365 compatibility with Nokia’s smartphone OS is a little different (possibly due to Nokia’s recent deal with microsoft?) Most of the features in Nokia are pretty much the same as Android/iOS with the exception of being able to download and edit documents from the team site on the device. Unfortunately, I cannot comment any further on the Nokia OS as I am yet to test it personally.

Microsoft have this to say about Blackberry’s Exchange compatibility:

“The previously available Hosted BlackBerry for Microsoft Exchange Online will not be available for Office 365. Instead, RIM will provide BlackBerry Business Cloud Services as part of a Beta offering by end of 2011. BlackBerry Business Cloud Services will have an improved feature set compared to the Hosted BlackBerry service. The service will be hosted, licensed, and supported by RIM and will be offered at $0 per user per month. The service will require the appropriate BlackBerry data plan from the customer’s mobile operator.”

The Office 365 Team Site’s and other work spaces, work on the blackberry much like they do on the Android and iOS.

It appears Microsoft have not really paid any attention to any mobile phone operating system other than their own. Windows Phone 7 has its own SharePoint application, which is extremely feature rich. From this application the user can collaborate with PC users on a word, excel, powerpoint and one note documents. The user can browse the pages and lists in a very appealing (windows tiles) user interface.

The email system works much the same on all smart phones, they connect to outlook using Microsoft Exchange active Sync. On the iPhone, the user only needs to enter the email address and password and the rest is done automatically, on android the user enters the same information plus the server domain which is, in this instance is; pod51014.outlook.com

Despite the unattractive user interface it is still an improvement on the SharePoint 2003 as the page is loaded as it is on a PC making it difficult to view on a small screen.

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JQuery and Office 365

Robert Everatt / / Limitations, web design

Now, my skills in JQuery are very minimal, never really used it much but I have just started picking bits up so I’ve decided to start using it where I can, so there is probably an easy way round this that I am unaware of.

In previous blogs we have described the difficulty in editing the public facing website outside of the sandbox tools,and  not being able to locate let alone edit the root.master page. Since then we have discovered more permission settings that were only available to Tim, we now have majority access to the files containing the public facing site, including root.master. I thought this might be a nice time to add some JQuery in after opening the master page in advanced settings and inputting/referencing the JQuery library I clicked save, Sharepoint Designer asked me if I was sure as this would change it from the site definition (I was aware of this, after all, I did just add some extra code in). Before adding any actual JQuery into the site pages I decided to check the site in the browser, it didn’t load, for some reason it wont accept any variation of the root.master page, it has to be to the site definition so I was forced to reset the root master page. Now I could create an entirely new master page mimicking the root master, but this would be time consuming and quite annoying.

There must be a better way to add Java into the site as recreating the root master doesn’t seem like the right way, it shouldn’t be so difficult, the only thing I am wondering is if it would be any easier for the Enterprise version of 365 as the P1 plan claims that no IT professionals are required, so obviously that leads to very little customization beyond the sandbox.

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Editing the Customer Facing Website: I Take it Back

Robert Everatt / / Limitations, Office 365, Public Facing Website, web design

After spending some time fiddling with the Public face site, Michael and I have found that customizing the site beyond what Microsoft has provided is rather difficult and headache inducing.

I stick by what I said about editing the .ASPX files, it is very easy adding new content in HTML using Sharepoint Designer, however, it’s the master page that is proving to be the big problem. We wanted to edit the structure of the website, change the navigation and the shape of the site completely, this isn’t covered in Office 365 ‘Out-0f-the-box’ tools, so the sites master page needs to be edited. This is a problem, Microsoft does not allow you to edit the master page provided and leaves the user stuck with what they give you, the phrase “You’ll get nothing and like it!” springs to mind.

One user claims to have a workaround for this, copying and editing a masterpage outside of Sharepoint, reinserting it into the correct folder and editing the .ASPX files to accept the new master page. I’ll report back once I have tested this.

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