Mobile App Development Archives

Aug 17, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Making the Right Choice for Mobile Salesforce Community Applications

The Salesforce Community Cloud allows organisations to bring together employees, partners, third-party workers, B2B customers, and even consumers. This article will explore three different approaches to delivering mobile Salesforce community applications, and will help readers choose the most suitable option.

What is a Salesforce community?

A Salesforce community is an online platform for organisations to connect employees, partners, and customers, while providing seamless access to the data and records they need to get work done or complete tasks.

Built on the Salesforce Community Cloud, they offer real-time engagement and the ability to share any file, data, or record anytime and from anywhere.

Jul 26, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

How Non-Functional Testing Enables the Delivery of Defect-Free Salesforce Mobile Applications

All applications need rigorous testing, and non-functional testing is often viewed as the less important half of a whole when compared to functional elements. In reality, though, non-functional testing is crucial for creating a defect-free mobile app. This article will highlight the importance of initial non-functional testing and offer advice for carrying out the necessary processes.

non_functional_size It’s common to focus on functional requirements and usability when testing an application, areas which are often where most of the effort is spent once an app has moved into the testing, QA, and UAT phases of a project.

Before even thinking about any functional app code, though, it’s important to test all the app’s non-functional elements first. If those aren’t prioritised, not only will it have a knock-on effect on all other testing, it will also impact the app’s ability to function once deployed.

Defining, and clearly understanding, non-functional testing processes is the key to releasing a defect-free mobile app into production. When separated into two groups, these can be referred to as ‘initial’ non-functional tests, and ‘running app’ non-functional tests. But before we go into more detail, it’s necessary to understand why non-functional testing is unique for mobile.

Jul 25, 2017 Justin Halfpenny No Comment

July 2017: What’s New with MobileCaddy and Your Salesforce Mobile Apps

One of the most exciting things about our Application Delivery Framework (ADF) is that it’s constantly growing and evolving, to allow our partners and customers to push the boundaries of what can be achieved with mobile apps on the Salesforce platform. As such, it’s vital that we help our community stay abreast of all the new MobileCaddy features and updates as they’re released.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to record and publish my regular discussions with Paul, our CTO, Todd, our Chief Mobile Technical Architect, and Frank, our Lead Product Engineer. In these sessions we’ll be covering what’s new with MobileCaddy, and will be sharing this with you to provide a first-hand look at everything we’ve been working hard on to improve.

So what’s new with MobileCaddy this month?

Jul 17, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Keeping Your Salesforce Mobile Apps Working Through OS Version Updates

Changes frequently occur to mobile operating systems outside your control, and your awareness, which can cause serious problems for your applications. When those apps are supporting critical business processes, it’s vital you’re constantly testing to ensure their performance is never compromised. This article will outline an approach to prevent OS version updates, upgrades, and other environment changes from affecting your enterprise mobile apps.

Apple_Android Operating and supporting any enterprise application in the context of mobile is challenging, because you don’t have control over that app’s underlying operating systems, nor can you predict new updates, upgrades, or patches being released.

This presents a problem for those responsible, because changes to an OS can cause mobile apps to suffer in their performance, or even stop working entirely. When those apps have been deployed into functions which are critical to the daily running of the business, that effectively renders the employees or community users relying on the app incapable as well, which simply can’t be allowed to happen.

So, firstly… Understand your app

You need to be aware of all the various components which make up your application, how they interact with each other, and what relationship they have with the OS.

Any number of things within your app can change without your knowledge, and the various elements and supported systems mean that continual testing is an absolute necessity to avoid app failure. This becomes even more important when applications are supporting business critical processes and workflows.

Jul 5, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Empowering a Nationwide Nonprofit Service with the Salesforce Community Cloud

Street-Link-cover

StreetLink is a UK-based nonprofit service which allows members of the public to alert their local authorities to rough sleepers in their area. The service has helped thousands of people find support and shelter thanks to a number of available channels of communication.

Those channels of communication function through various technologies, with a phone line, website, and mobile app each enabling members of the public to contact StreetLink, who then pass the information to the local outreach teams to locate and provide rough sleepers with assistance.

Jun 19, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Exploring the Developer Skills Needed to Build Apps with MobileCaddy

The MobileCaddy framework removes a great deal of the hard work for developers tasked with building sophisticated enterprise mobile apps. This means the business investing in the app won’t need to seek new developer skills or spend to recruit new team members thanks to MobileCaddy, and the developers can focus entirely on delivering the app itself. This article will detail the many ways the framework makes this possible, giving the business complete confidence it will be getting the app it needs.

appdelivery_small

You’ll always need capable, competent people to build a mobile app which can add value to an organisation beyond the obvious improvements to basic worker productivity. That’s why finding a solution which allows the people you already have to rely on their existing skills and focus on delivering that app, rather than working on tedious, time-consuming development, is so important.

With the MobileCaddy Application Delivery Framework, developers can quickly and easily build these more advanced mobile apps using a familiar set of skills, as the solution removes the need for specialist development, and provides helpful guidance across all stages of the project.

Here, we’ll answer key questions our partners and clients ask us about the skills needed to begin a mobile project on the Salesforce platform using the MobileCaddy Application Delivery Framework.

Jun 12, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Evaluating Technology Solutions for Successful Salesforce Mobile Apps

The success of a mobile application within a business will rest entirely on the choice of solution to develop and manage that app. This article will break down the most important stages of the decision making process when evaluating the wide variety of technologies capable of delivering Salesforce mobile apps, for businesses in this position.

App-Evaluation An organisation has decided it wants to invest in a mobile app for its employees – so what next? This decision is becoming increasingly common in the modern business landscape, as mobility continues to drive productivity, efficiency, and cost savings.

With a growing global workforce of ‘deskless’ employees, apps are actually fast-becoming more of a necessity than something businesses can choose to have or not have. With up to 37% of office-based workers now spending an average of eight working days in a typical month away from their desks, that additional rising demand will also be pushing businesses to invest in mobile.

So, the next decision the business will typically look to make is how to deliver the app it wants. However, there are a number of crucial factors which must be carefully considered, and fully understood, before investing in a technology solution to build an enterprise mobile app. When it comes to Salesforce, these considerations are even more important, thanks to the vast number of partner technologies and platform capabilities within the ecosystem.

Unfortunately, many businesses launch into their efforts to mobilise internal systems without taking the necessary steps in determining the class of technology solution their apps will require – a mistake which inevitably results in the app failing in some capacity.

May 30, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Top Mobile Tech Takeaways from the 2017 Salesforce World Tour London

Salesforce-World-Tour Each year the Salesforce community gathers in major cities around the globe for the Salesforce World Tour. These events allow those in attendance to come together and discuss, learn from, and celebrate each others’ hard work.

This year’s event drew well over 10,000 people to the ExCel Centre in London.

The MobileCaddy team went along to explore the new and exciting technology on show, and to understand how some of the world’s leading brands are using Salesforce to set new standards for success.

Better tools for employees to better serve customers

One of the main goals Salesforce sets itself each year is to help businesses provide the best possible customer experience through technology innovations. In the digital age, businesses are better equipped than ever to serve their customers, and this year’s World Tour focused on the convergence of cloud, social, mobile, IoT, and AI technologies as a game-changer for those who embrace it.

At MobileCaddy, we obviously have a keen interest in the role mobility is playing in redefining how businesses operate, regardless of size or resources, stretching across all lines of business and industry verticals.

With mobile being a key pillar of Salesforce’s core technology offerings, we’ve listed a number of interesting examples from the 2017 event below.

May 17, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

Removing the Risk from Salesforce Mobile Apps with MobileCaddy

MobileCaddy, as a comprehensive Application Delivery Framework, contains many components and features which are beneficial across all the various phases of a Salesforce mobile app project. In this latest article, we’ve highlighted some examples of the ways in which using MobileCaddy reduces, or in some cases removes, significant risks from the challenging process of building a successful enterprise mobile app.

MobileCaddy

Earlier this week, we explored the ways in which the MobileCaddy framework can be used to accelerate mobile app development on the Salesforce platform. By speeding up the development process with a solution such as MobileCaddy, developers can overcome a common obstacle standing in the way of making their projects successful.

Another significant challenge which often surrounds mobile app projects is that of risk. Many businesses are still reluctant to develop enterprise mobile applications because they believe there is simply too much risk involved, whether that’s related to their employees, their data, or their need to guarantee a return on investment.

As with the ability to save time on development, though, solutions such as MobileCaddy can remove many of the risks as well. Once this is achieved, it allows both end user businesses and consultancy practices alike to approach the formidable mobile landscape with full confidence that they’ll succeed. Here, we’ll touch on three specific examples that are included within the MobileCaddy package, to give readers an idea of some of the ways the risks and challenges can be removed from Salesforce mobile apps:

May 15, 2017 Robbie Westacott No Comment

5 Ways MobileCaddy Accelerates Salesforce Mobile App Development

MobileCaddy The benefits of using the Salesforce platform to develop enterprise mobile apps are extensive, but there simply aren’t anywhere near as many enterprises doing so as you might expect. The reason for this is, in many cases, that it’s simply too challenging, too costly, or the expertise just aren’t available.

However, there are solutions within the global Salesforce ecosystem designed specifically to ease the pain of mobile app development for both end customers and consultancy firms alike. Once these inherent challenges are removed, the advantages of having mobile applications supporting business critical processes move into focus. These positives vastly outweigh the negatives, making those complementary partner solutions well worth searching for.

One of those negatives is the time mobile app development projects can take when approached without the necessary tools or understanding. Looking specifically into the need to accelerate the development process for those tasked with actually building mobile apps, we’ve highlighted five advantages the MobileCaddy package offers:

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Post Tagged with: "Mobile App Development"