I currently have an mvc site my company's employees can access for internet company related tasks. Now however, I need to allow our sales team to access forms, presentations, and checklists within this mvc site, while they're on the road speaking with customers.
The problem however, is they're accessing these items from mobile devices (usually ipads and android tablets) that don't have internet connectivity unless the customer has an open wifi. So I need to come up with the following, but I'm not sure where to start:
Sales rep can pull up a selection of forms, checklists, presentations & questionaires while on site with a customer with no internet connection
The sales rep can fill out the questionaire offline with the customer. Then once they're back in the office on wifi, they can upload that data to our system
The only thing I can think of is custom developing separate ipad/iphone & android apps but since I don't know how to develop mobile apps, I wanted to see if there were any microsoft technologies I could look into 1st.
Sales rep can pull up a selection of forms, checklists, presentations & questionaires while on site with a customer with no internet connection
This information must be on the sales rep's system. You, and the sales staff, are in the best position to know what the information is at any given time. Come up with a strategy to load the appropriate information in the sales person's machine when there
is an internet connection. Perhaps in the morning before heading out for a meeting.
Goalie35
The sales rep can fill out the questionaire offline with the customer. Then once they're back in the office on wifi, they can upload that data to our system
This is a basically transferring or exporting data from the sales rep's system to central storage. This is basic batch processing which been done for many many years. The exact steps or process something that you have to design. The process might be as
simple as exporting a CSV file from the sales rep's machine. Or it might be many files and complex processing.
Goalie35
The only thing I can think of is custom developing separate ipad/iphone & android apps but since I don't know how to develop mobile apps, I wanted to see if there were any microsoft technologies I could look into 1st.
I agree. A mobile application will be built. Xamarin is Microsoft technology for building mobile apps. There are also PWAs.
as you need offline support you will need to create a mobile app. if the sales work for your company, you should first see if you can standardize on the mobile devices. I'd suggest iPad's as this will limit the number of variations you need to support. if
you do android tablets there are several version of the android o/s you will need to support and test. Limiting to just iPads will reduce development and testing costs.
you should probably get a Mac to do development work as its supports all iOS and android devices. also most tutorials will assume a Mac.
visual studio for the Mac has good support for building and debugging iOS and android applications written in c#.
you other option is to use react native. while you can develop on windows you will still need a Mac to build iOS versions. I find its easier to just a Mac for all development.
don't overlook the testing costs. you will need sample mobile devices for device/os combination you will support. Microsoft azure has remote ci/build that you can use to deploy builds to your tests. if not you will need to register all your test devices
to a build machine and manually side load.
your final option as suggested is to write a PWA. you will be stuck with lowest common features for this. you will need to review the PWA support for all your devices. the key to PWA is the service worker support in the browser.
the final option is upgrade the mobile devices to have cell data support. you will still need some offline support but can probably get away with just caching in local storage. you would need to write an SPA app for this.
Thanks for your advice. It's greatly appreciated. I think I'm going to look into setting up a basic pwa. I still need to review this further to determine how to store saved data on their tablets, then upload once they're back on wifi, but I don't think
it'll be too difficult.
Member
65 Points
206 Posts
I need to setup forms that can be accessed via any device both online and offline, but not sure w...
Mar 25, 2021 06:14 PM|Goalie35|LINK
I currently have an mvc site my company's employees can access for internet company related tasks. Now however, I need to allow our sales team to access forms, presentations, and checklists within this mvc site, while they're on the road speaking with customers. The problem however, is they're accessing these items from mobile devices (usually ipads and android tablets) that don't have internet connectivity unless the customer has an open wifi. So I need to come up with the following, but I'm not sure where to start:
The only thing I can think of is custom developing separate ipad/iphone & android apps but since I don't know how to develop mobile apps, I wanted to see if there were any microsoft technologies I could look into 1st.
Thanks
All-Star
53721 Points
24054 Posts
Re: I need to setup forms that can be accessed via any device both online and offline, but not su...
Mar 25, 2021 06:48 PM|mgebhard|LINK
This information must be on the sales rep's system. You, and the sales staff, are in the best position to know what the information is at any given time. Come up with a strategy to load the appropriate information in the sales person's machine when there is an internet connection. Perhaps in the morning before heading out for a meeting.
This is a basically transferring or exporting data from the sales rep's system to central storage. This is basic batch processing which been done for many many years. The exact steps or process something that you have to design. The process might be as simple as exporting a CSV file from the sales rep's machine. Or it might be many files and complex processing.
I agree. A mobile application will be built. Xamarin is Microsoft technology for building mobile apps. There are also PWAs.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Introduction
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps
All-Star
58484 Points
15801 Posts
Re: I need to setup forms that can be accessed via any device both online and offline, but not su...
Mar 26, 2021 01:39 AM|bruce (sqlwork.com)|LINK
as you need offline support you will need to create a mobile app. if the sales work for your company, you should first see if you can standardize on the mobile devices. I'd suggest iPad's as this will limit the number of variations you need to support. if you do android tablets there are several version of the android o/s you will need to support and test. Limiting to just iPads will reduce development and testing costs.
you should probably get a Mac to do development work as its supports all iOS and android devices. also most tutorials will assume a Mac.
visual studio for the Mac has good support for building and debugging iOS and android applications written in c#.
you other option is to use react native. while you can develop on windows you will still need a Mac to build iOS versions. I find its easier to just a Mac for all development.
don't overlook the testing costs. you will need sample mobile devices for device/os combination you will support. Microsoft azure has remote ci/build that you can use to deploy builds to your tests. if not you will need to register all your test devices to a build machine and manually side load.
your final option as suggested is to write a PWA. you will be stuck with lowest common features for this. you will need to review the PWA support for all your devices. the key to PWA is the service worker support in the browser.
the final option is upgrade the mobile devices to have cell data support. you will still need some offline support but can probably get away with just caching in local storage. you would need to write an SPA app for this.
Member
65 Points
206 Posts
Re: I need to setup forms that can be accessed via any device both online and offline, but not su...
Mar 26, 2021 06:14 PM|Goalie35|LINK
Thanks for your help! I've started looking into PWA's as an option and I believe this is the approach I'll take.
Member
65 Points
206 Posts
Re: I need to setup forms that can be accessed via any device both online and offline, but not su...
Mar 26, 2021 06:21 PM|Goalie35|LINK
Thanks for your advice. It's greatly appreciated. I think I'm going to look into setting up a basic pwa. I still need to review this further to determine how to store saved data on their tablets, then upload once they're back on wifi, but I don't think it'll be too difficult.