MobilePhone and Tablets are very important aspect of life and the need for Mobile Applications are rising continuously. Salesforce force.com platform we all know is a very strong application development platform where variety of applications can be build in short span .
Along with the web based application customers frequently look for equivalent mobile applications that can enhance there business .A common example is the need of a mobile application for a field service agent to locate the customer location and resolve the case or an application for a sales rep to maintain and calculate his inventories or generate quotes .
Out-Of-Box Mobile Application Provided By Salesforce and there advantages and disadvantages :
1)Salesforce Touch:
Salesforce Touch is an excellent application the salesforce provides for free.The User record has a checkbox to identify the user as Touch User .
Where it Lacks:
1)Presently this application runs well on IOS platform and one can download from App exchange .No support for Android yet .(Cross platform support is not available as on the date i wrote this article)
2)No support for Offline .
3)Reports and dashboards are not available .
4)There are list of objects that are not supported yet.
2)Salesforce Mobile :
This is an excellent add on and available straight out of box for free.There are little manual configuration steps involved to get it up and running.
The above guide from salesforce gives indepth knowledge on configuraion and its usage .
Currently there is support for Blackberry,IOS ,Android ,Windows,Etc (Please refer salesforce guide to explore more).
Features:
1)Support for offline available
2)Supports cross platform
Where it Lacks:
1)Salesforce has stopped adding additional features to this .(As per winter 13 guide )
2)Running on Ipad and tablets not compatible(One has to switch the Ipad to Iphone compatibility mode to run this properly )
3)Limited support for dashboards and Reports .
The above small limitations opens the door for need for developers and for developers its vital to learn the Salesforce SDK .SalesforceSDK is free source and we will discuss in detail in my next post.
Differences Between Salesforce Touch and Touch Platform
There are confusions frequently around this .
Salesforce Touch:This refers to touch application provided by Salesforce.com .This can be obtained for free from app store
Salesforce Touch Platform:This refers to the platform salesforce allows for the developers to develop the mobile application using force.com components like apex,visualforce and Salesforce SDK .I will further elaborate more on my next post.
Hope you enjoyed Reading!!Feel free to leave a comment below for suggestions ,critics and feedback!
