SharePoint 2007 Mobile Views and Microsoft Tag Beta
One of the most frequently overlooked capabilities of SharePoint 2007 is its automatic creation of efficient, mobile views. This is a powerful capability that people often find surprising. The SharePoint mobile view allows you, and your users, to gain access to the SharePoint list information contained on your site.
In the first half of this video I will show you how to access your SharePoint mobile view by typing a single letter on your keyboard. SharePoint mobile views are there, behind the scenes, just waiting for you and your users.
In the second half of the video I will show you how create and use your own Microsoft Tag to easily load your mobile SharePoint 2007 site on your Smartphone. The use of a Microsoft Tag to get to your mobile SharePoint site, or any other mobile site for that matter, is really cool and something you should try. The application of this technology is boundless (that ‘quilt’ looking graphic is the Microsoft Tag). Load some software on your Smartphone, use the camera to snap a picture of the Tag and your mobile browser opens the web site URL that you previously linked to the Tag. It couldn’t be any easier…and the use of the Microsoft Tag is free!
I can imagine placing Tags on documents that I am printing and sending out to people, tagging marketing materials, placing the Tag graphic in my e-mail signature or maybe even placing one on the back of my business card. Visit the site at www.microsoft.com/tag or watch my video to check out my explanation of the use of Microsoft Tags with SharePoint 2007 mobile views. A quick shout out to Mike Gannotti for blogging about the Microsoft Tag Beta (where I learned about it) and for all he does to promote the SharePoint platform.
How might you use this tagging technology with SharePoint? Share your ideas and let’s learn from one another!
Author: Lee Reed ThoughtBridge, Atlanta, GA
Lee Reed is an expert in collaboration and user adoption on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform. His consulting with companies large and small throughout the East Coast has resulted in many successful collaboration environments and increased user adoption.
Lee is currently the Director of Business Process and SharePoint Education for Thoughtbridge, a Microsoft Gold Partner focused exclusively on the Microsoft SharePoint 2007 platform.
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I have a question about this. If I use [url]+/m I will get an error that the webpage cannot be found. But if I use the [url]+_layouts/mobile/mbllists.aspx it does find the webpage. Any thoughs on how this can be?
Hi Benjamin,
When the user uses the /m your browser should resolve to the /_layouts.. page when used at the site level. In other words, if you were to type “www.myspsite.com/m”, SharePoint should redirect to the /_layouts.. page.
If you type the /m while on a list page, “www.myspsite.com/status%20Reports/Forms/m”, then the mobile view will fail.
If you are doing the /m after the domain name and are receiving the failure then there may be an issue with your SP setup.
Lee
Can you only use the mobile view at the site level? I’d like to be able to link my tag to a list.
Karen,
While you open the mobile view of your SharePoint site using the /m, all of the SharePoint lists that you have permissions to will show in the mobile view.
1. My suggestion would be that, using your browser on your PC, go to your site’s /m presentation.
2. Click on the link to the list that you wish to send users to directly.
3. Once there, copy the URL from the address area in the browser and use that to create your tag.
This will allow your users to go directly to the mobile view of your SharePoint list using the Microsoft Tag.
Are there certain kinds of lists that won’t show up in the mobile view? When I look at the mobile view of my page the Announcements and Discussions do not show up in the mobile view.
I have worked out the tag with my Blackberry and it is really cool. Even if I can’t see everything in my site, I can view contact lists. I can see adding the tag to a presentation for people to easily look up contacts using their smart phone, especially if they are offline with a printed copy.
I like your idea, Karen, regarding putting the tag on your presentations. That would make it very easy to look-up additional information regarding comments made during the presentation or maybe even a discount code that retailers could provide to their shoppers.
You should be able to see your announcements. If not, check the following:
Go into your Announcements list default view and choose “Modify this view”, just as if you were going to add another column to the default view of the list.
Scroll all the way to the bottom of the view’s configuration page and click on the plus sign (+) next to “Mobile”.
See if there is a check next to “Make this a Mobile View” and “Make this the default mobile view”. If there is not a check, place a check next to both of these items and try your mobile view again.
If it doesn’t work, something else is going on within your environment.
Lee
Thanks Lee! The address for the specific view is also listed in this section of the view configuration. Very convenient.
Lee –
Our sharepoint site (non-enterprise version of WSS) is on a secure server (you must sign in with your user name and password). I sent our link (http://sharepoint/sites/UA/m) to two users to test it.
The one w/ a Blackberry sees an error message indicating “unauthenticated scheme” and never gets to the point where he can log on.
Is this something that could be avoided w/ the proper setting?
Secondly, the person w/ an iPhone is able to log in, though. However, she is able to view documents w/ a .doc suffix, but not those w/ a .xps suffix.
Aside from announcements and word documents, what sharepoint document types should be viewable via the mobile version?
Thanks,
Pat Harris
Director of Advancement Services
John Carroll University
[email protected]
Hi Pat,
It appears that you are asking two questions:
1) Why can’t the Blackberry user get to the SharePoint mobile site?
2) What do you need on your smartphone to read documents stored on SharePoint?
1) Blackberries utilize a server called a BES server (Blackberry Enterprise Server) that handles the delivery of e-mail to the BB. Oftentimes, the BES server is not connected to the internal network (too many details about this to recount here, just stick with me a sec) due to security reasons. Given your troubleshooting, I would say that, while your BES server can see your Exchange Mail server, the BES server probably cannot see the SharePoint server. This would explain your user’s experience. I recommend going and talking to your network administrator and ask them if they can allow the BES server to ’see’ the SharePoint server. This should resolve the problem.
2) Most current SmartPhones should be able to read documents from with MS Office 2003 extensions (.xls, .doc, .ppt). It would need to be a REALLY recent SmartPhone (and probably a Windows Mobile-based phone at that) for it to be able to open Office 2007 documents (.xlsx,.docx,.pptx). I say this mostly for the benefit of others that would read this….your iPhone challenge is slightly different.
While it appears that your iPhone toting co-worker is able to view Excel spreadsheets, they are unable to see the XPS extension documents on your portal. XPS is a ‘PDF-like” technology that is used to present information in an ‘openly available’ format. I recommend you using PDF documents, which the iPhone will be able to open while still not allowing people to modify the document.
There’s some free consulting for you. I hope my suggestions work.
Lee Reed
Just as FYI on the comment from Pat. The SharePoint mobil on a Blackberry requires the Internet Browser instaed of the default Blackberry browser, otherwise the request for credentials is not made. The easiest way to fix this is to add a bookmark, and in the bookmark settings change the browser to ‘Internet Browser’, then the login dialog pops up.
Peter Wells
I just started trying out the mobile views. I created a KPI List with a corresponding view. When I look at the view on my computer it is formatted nicely and shows a Green/Yellow/Red circle for the KPI Status. However when I look at the view through my phone the formatting is cumbersome and the Green/Yellow/Red indicator is missing. is this a limitation of sharepoint? Running SharePoint Server 2007.
Thanks
I have just recently begun using Sharepoint and have a question regarding viewing PDFs from our workspace site from a blackberry. I created a custom workflow that sends out an email whenever a new PDF is loaded to a particular library. The email contains a link (absolute encoded URL) to the document itself so users can open it directly from their blackberry.
I’ve gotten a handful of users to the point that they’ve bookmarked the mobile site address and are able to open the file; however, what they see is just a bunch of text and numbers all aligned to the left with none of the formatting, tables or graphs that are in the PDF file.
While I’m waiting for IT to come back, I just wanted to get someone else’s feedback. Is this an issue with the blackberry software?