Can I use iPad/iPhone with SharePoint 2010?
08/26/2011 Update: Here's the official iPad support informarion from SharePoint team - https://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blog/Pages/BlogPost.aspx?pID=960
A quick answer to this question is: Yes, but that depends on how you access SharePoint.
To understand the myth, we need to go through some details…
How to access SharePoint content from iPhone/iPad?
Okay, we got two methods apparently. The first one is to use a browser like Safari on the iPhone/iPad to browse the pages directly, just like how you use that on the desktop. The second one involves Apps.
How about the browser way? Is it supported?
Good news is, it works most of the time. Bad news is, there is something that’s not supported by Mobile Safari currently. Although we do support all mobile browsers, that’s in Mobile View of the pages. Mobile Safari can handle those pages pretty well, but not all the full version of the pages.
What is the problem and why can’t you fix it???!!!
The most obvious problem is that Rich Edit controls won’t work with these iOS devices (current verison: iOS 4.0). If you dig deeper into the issue, you will find that iPhone/iPad actually won’t work with any Rich Edit fields on the internet nowadays. The problem is Mobile Safari does not support enough features as Safari does. It’s a trimmed down version of Safari, one of the attribute it does not support is contentEditable. This attribute is widely used in SharePoint, in Google Docs, in TinyMCE(One of the best WYSIWYG editor)…
So until Apple improve their Webkit code on these devices, the only way to get around of this is to add detection code to remove Rich Edit experience for iOS devices, just like to switch to the Mobile View. There’s no way for the whole internet world to “fix” what Mobile Safari is missing.
In SharePoint, that means things involves editing in a Rich Text way will not work: Office Web Apps Edit Mode, Page Edit Mode, etc. Viewing pages and content are good.
Why does this contentEditable matter?
This attribute is introduced by Internet Explorer 5.5 more than 10 years ago, and is widely supported in all modern browsers like Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. It is a fundamental of creating those rich edit experience within browsers instead of a separate RIA so gradually it’s also accepted in HTML5 standard.
Further reading on HTML5 & contentEditable: https://blog.whatwg.org/the-road-to-html-5-contenteditable
How about the Apps way?
There’re several Apps in App Store currently for SharePoint access. Just search for SharePoint, and you can find them. The experience varies, but in general they do the job. Currently there’s no client from Microsoft does that – if you need, you may want to consider a Windows Phone device.
What’s the conclusion?
If you need to use these iDevices’ browser with SharePoint, you need to test your usage scenario first since Mobile Safari is not in the supported browsers for full page views anyway. You are responsible for the customizations to make unsupported browsers work. Or you can wait until Apple release some fix for their iOS to reduce the problem. No idea if their new 4.2 will do something on that currently. Apps is good to check out, but may not meet all the needs depending on how you want to use it. I don’t have a recommendation here.
Jie.
Comments
Anonymous
September 01, 2010
Thanks for the official note on iPad/iPhone support. Hope Apple fixes its browsers with contentEditable support soon!Anonymous
September 03, 2010
Here are demo videos of SharePoint 2010 on a Mac / iPad / iPhone : http://bit.ly/anQnt2Anonymous
September 05, 2010
Which ones have you tried? Have you tried Shareplus?Anonymous
September 29, 2010
Check out the youtube video for SharePoint client for iPad, Filamente - www.youtube.com/watchAnonymous
December 26, 2010
SharePoint IPhone Access provides an add-on to SharePoint, http://www.sharebyphone.comAnonymous
February 18, 2011
I'm using an App called iSMEStorage on the iPad for accessing my hosted SharePoint server. It works really well and it supports NTLM authentication.Anonymous
March 03, 2011
We use Moprise to access our SharePoint sites. Free, easy, and great security features. Just noticed a video of it: www.youtube.com/watchAnonymous
March 08, 2011
I just tried Opera for ipod and it does some basic things, not much, but at least more than what Safari does.Anonymous
April 26, 2011
I am having trouble to use iPhone to view videos have that been hosted on SP (even with direct URL access). We have seen some inconsistent behavior (e.g. different libraries with same settings - one of them works while the other one cannot). is there any known issues of iPhone accessing SharePoint videos?Anonymous
April 26, 2011
additional information... we are using SharePoint 2010 to host a public website and are trying to host videos on the said website.Anonymous
May 08, 2011
Have these restrictions in mobile Safari been addressed in iOS 4.3 which I believe is out now?Anonymous
June 20, 2011
Also, Coaxion is an app that gives SharePoint access. It's in the app store on your iPad and iPhone, and it's the latest from Moprise, mentioned below.Anonymous
January 31, 2012
The latest version of Filamente has a built-in Rich Edit controls that provides Rich Edit experience for iOS 5 devices. Check it out at itunes.apple.com/.../id390052009Anonymous
February 17, 2012
The SharePlus app provides a rich native SharePoint experience on the iPad/iPhone: blogs.infragistics.com/.../enrich-your-mobile-sharepoint-experience-with-shareplus.aspxAnonymous
May 04, 2012
You might want to check out Azurati's new SharePoint2Go solution that provides secure access to SharePoint on any smartphone or tablet: www.azurati.comAnonymous
September 26, 2012
I use Colligo Briefcase for accessing SharePoint on my iPad and I'm happy with it. They have a promo of $2.99 for the app until the end of September. You can download it here ... www.colligo.com/.../colligo-briefcaseAnonymous
November 13, 2012
I use the Sharekami app for accessing SharePoint, which is free: appmersive.com/sharekami.htmlAnonymous
March 22, 2013
Great post thanks!Anonymous
August 25, 2013
Sharepoint ios mobile android software site , www.sharepointiosandroid.com