SharePoint 2010 and iOS 5 ~ Blog moved to www.jasperoosterveld.com

I have written multiple articles about the integration between the iPad and SharePoint. I dedicated two articles to the subject 'What can and can't you do?'. You can find these articles here:

That iPad and SharePoint - What can and can't you do - part 1

That iPad and SharePoint - What can and can't you do - part 2

Since last week the OS of the iPad has been upgraded to iOS5. I thought it would be a good idea to review my articles again and see what has been improved.

Office documents

Word

I am first going to open a Word document in the browser. Unfortunately there is still no Silverlight support. It´s now possible to scroll through the document without the use of the next and previous buttons. That is good news. Let´s see what happens when I want to edit the document in the browser...it works! The keyboard appears. This did not happen in the previous version. I only advise not to get to excited because everything got pretty unstable from here...sometimes the text appeared and other times I was not able to type anything. I have to admit it's a lot better then last time.

PowerPoint

I opened a PowerPoint presentation and this actually works a lot better. I can edit the slides with the keyboard and also add new slides. This is a good improvement and everything seems to work fine.

Excel

In Excel I can add text to but just as the Word document it is pretty unstable. I am also still not able to see all the Excel rows.

OneNote

In OneNote I can type text but again...really unstable.

The only real improvement I could see was with PowerPoint. This actually works fine. I just recommend to keep using the interface applications for working with Office documents.

Browsing

I talked about the issue with the drop down menu in my previous article. It´s almost impossible to select a sub site from the drop down menu because the main site loads immediately. I can see all the content on a page because it´s possible to scroll down the entire page! This is another good improvement. It´s also easy to select libraries or lists. This actually works fine and they way you expect it to work!

Social Features

I still have to enter my credentials again when I want to access the My Site. That is pretty annoying. The keyboard presence also improved the My Site because I can now actually leave a status update! I can also leave messages at the note boards of my co-workers. Nice! I am now also able to create tags and notes. This is a real improvement and makes the My Site a lot more usable with the Safari browser.

Creating items

In the previous version the absence of the keyboard made it impossible to create new items but now that it's back you can also create new SharePoint items. The ribbon also works pretty smoothly. Impressive!

Conclusion

I am surprised by the improvements in iOS5. The presence of the keyboard makes it a lot more user friendly to use the Safari browser to access your SharePoint portal. Only working with Office documents is still a pain. I also think that working with the interface applications is a more efficient solution. It's faster and easier to use but we are getting close to a workable solution! I am excited to see what the future will bring us :)