Salesforce.com provides multiple ways to connect into and extract data for Mobile Apps. The three options are:
- The standard salesforce.com Mobile app
- The newly announced Touch Interface
- The Salesforce.com SDK
Deciding whether to develop a custom app or use an out of the box solution such as Touch or the standard mobile app can be confusing. I’ve shared some scenarios to demonstrate when it makes sense to create a custom mobile app OR just use the out of box capability.
Let’s walk through a couple of scenarios:
1. You need the ability to view and edit just accounts, contacts and opportunities.
If you need Online Only you can:
a. Use either the smartphone app from Salesforce
b. Use Salesforce Touch interface for viewing and editing
c. Create a VisualForce page that is mobile friendly and access it via container using the Mobile SDK
If you need Offline you:
a. Have the ability to leverage the smartphone app with limited offline data capability
b. Can create a custom app using the Mobile SDK that allows you to download as many records as possible
2. You want to add accounts, contacts and opportunities with custom branding.
If you need Online Only you can:
a. Create a VisualForce page that is mobile friendly and access it via container using the Mobile SDK.
b. Create a custom mobile application using the saleforce.com Mobile SDK.
If you need Offline:
a. The only option is a custom mobile app using Salesforce.com Mobile SDK
3. You want to add signature capture and order entry on top of the 3 standard objects.
If you need Online Only you can:
a. Create a VisualForce page that is mobile friendly and access it via container using the Mobile SDK.
b. Create a custom mobile application using the saleforce.com Mobile SDK.
If you need Offline:
a. The only option is a custom mobile app using Salesforce.com Mobile SDK
Given some of these scenarios, if you are considering online only solutions, the standard offerings from salesforce can help you do things out of box especially if branding and a full custom UI is not as critical. But, once we start to look at offline as a requirement, a Custom solution using the Mobile SDK becomes imperative.
Ultimately, what one needs to take into account is the end user experience the organization wants for their employees. For certain business critical tasks, having a UI/UX specific to the business process that makes it really easy and quick to use in the field is really important. Even if there are standard options, one should look at building a custom app as it will not only help with overall adoption, but gives a way to promote the brand as well as getting the field reps more productive.
Hello: very helpful summary.
1 How can one tell what technology was used to design the iphone app e.g. some are really slick (appfire’s app that find free apps) or (seek’s app with the left hand side pop-out menu)… and some are really bad.. like they were designed 10 years ago (book crawler)
2 do u have a link for gallery of cool UI, so one learning can see options, see what works and doesn’t?
3 I am looking for an app that embraces the “activity stream” concept e.g. each person in the enterprise has a bundle of things to “get done”, and much more intuitive than force.com workflow, it drops these activities into each person’s activity stream. This activity stream is fully personalisable on the device of the choice.
Seen anything remotely like this?
4 I stumbled on Accenture’s infographic of mobile technology stack. It did not wow me, but it made me think, would be cool to have a current technology stack of mobility e.g. google as platform, force.com as platform, REST API or others you can mashup. Have you seen anything?
Accenture link for their “superstack” infographic is:
http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insight-competing-high-tech-industry-superstack.aspx
thanks
@pure
1. Do you mean HTML vs. Native? If it is a standard HTML Web app, you can tell just by looking at the browser navigation controls.
The challenge with Hybrid apps is that the HTML piece can be within the UI itself. so you can have Native navigation paradigm with a HTML interface for other pieces. It depends on how its developed really. Obviously, if the UI/UX does not follow the native UI paradigm, you know its a web app.
2. Take a look at some of the Model Metrics ones we have done under showcase. Take a look at this for other examples:
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/awards/
3. Yes, we’ve done some concepts on this and done similar custom apps for our clients. I can’t think of something like that out of box.
4. Nothing that actually lists them out. Certainly, each platform developer is trying to position themselves as that best platform to develop on. I think the key is going to be all of them being Open enough and easily being able to integrate across them to create some unique and productive applications.