Microsoft on Tuesday announced the official release of a brand new application on the App Store, SharePoint. Available at no charge for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, the software is basically Microsoft’s long-expected iOS client for its SharePoint enterprise collaboration suite.
Billed as the Intranet in your pocket, the app lets enterprise users stay connected to their company’s intranet while on the go, navigate their company’s web sites and portals, access important content, information and people and more.
The app connects to SharePoint Online, SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013 and requires an Office 365 subscription that includes SharePoint Online, or an on-premises SharePoint Server. Hybrid deployments are supported by the app as well.
Here’s principal Microsoft engineer, Andy Haon, giving a walkthrough of the key elements that bring enterprise intranets into the cloud first, mobile first world.
The various tabs lined up alongside the app’s bottom—Sites, Links and People—let you quickly see internal site activities, access your recent and popular files, as well as view and arrange lists on your team sites.
Future updates to SharePoint for iOS iOS will deploy additional enhancements, such as support for cross-company news and announcements. SharePoint for Android and Windows Universal should release before the end of 2016, said Microsoft.
Key SharePoint for iOS features
Here are a few highlights of the app:
- Sign in to your SharePoint sites, whether they’re in the cloud or on-premises. The app works with SharePoint Online, and SharePoint Server versions 2013 and 2016. You can add multiple accounts, and easily switch between them.
- Quickly find your sites. Check out the Sites tab, to see the sites you frequently visit and the sites you follow. Tap on a team site to dive into it. See site activity, navigate using the familiar quick launch navigation, easily follow or share the site, and work with your lists.
- Check out recent and popular files. In a team site, get to your recent or popular files quickly to view or share them, and have full access to your document libraries using the new integration with the OneDrive app. Edit your files easily using Office Mobile apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
- Use the Links tab to find promoted links for your organization. Curated by your SharePoint admin for all employees, these links get you to the organizational resources and sites that you care about.
- Search. Enterprise Search is available throughout the app and results are organized into sites, files and people.
- Find and browse for people you work with. Tap on a user to get to their contact card and to see who they work with and what they are working on.
To learn more about Microsoft’s new vision for the future of SharePoint, read this post on the official Microsoft Office blogs.
Pricing and availability
SharePoint for iOS requires an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 8.0 or later. To sign in to SharePoint, your company must have an Office 365 subscription that includes SharePoint Online, or an on-premises SharePoint Server.
The app is localized in English, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.