Hope you enjoyed the beautiful Easter weekend – I did! And so did these folks =) Last week, Joel Oleson had a great post about organizations upgrading to SharePoint 2010 for Mac Users.
Hope you enjoyed the beautiful Easter weekend – I did! And so did these folks =) Last week, Joel Oleson had a great post about organizations upgrading to SharePoint 2010 for Mac Users. It reminded me of Michael Gannotti’s video blog post Mac Integration with SharePoint.
Hope you enjoyed the beautiful Easter weekend – I did! And so did these folks =) Last week, Joel Oleson had a great post about organizations upgrading to SharePoint 2010 for Mac Users. It reminded me of Michael Gannotti’s video blog post Mac Integration with SharePoint.
Since I’ve been an active member of the “SharePoint + Macbook Pro Happy Together Club” (you know who you are fellow brethren) in the last 3 years, I’d like to carry on the SharePoint-on-a-Mac conversation and show you what you can do with SharePoint 2010 on a Mac, iPhone or iPod and iPad.
SharePoint 2010 on a Mac
We can’t deny the fact that there is a steady growth of Mac (desktop or laptops) adoption in the last few years. For example, an interesting Morgan Stanley study back in 2008 found that 40% college students plan to buy Mac.
Along the same lines, there has been a tremendous growth and adoption of SharePoint as well. In fact, during Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2008, Bill Gates touted SharePoint adoption in the education sector is equipping the next generation workforce:
Twynham School is a a great testament of how SharePoint is being leveraged in education as a learning gateway (here’s a great FREE ebook of how they did it).
This sounds all good but the problem is, SharePoint 2007 and prior versions is quite limiting on a Mac. A lot of out of the box features relies on ActiveX components found in Internet Explorer which obviously is not compatible with other browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Chrome. Because of this, Mac users find it limiting and frustrating. In addition, there isn’t a seamless SharePoint – Office integration experience with a Mac; the closest thing to this is by installing Document Connection Center (DCC).
With SharePoint 2010, the Mac rules have been rewritten! Almost all of the things you can do with SharePoint 2010 using Internet Explorer can be done with other browsers thanks to JavaScript and AJAX. Check out the screencast on how you can maximize SharePoint 2010 on a Mac:
I’m looking forward to what’s coming up on the horizon from the Mactopia folks at Microsoft.
SharePoint 2010 on an iPhone or iPod
With the iPhone or iPod (Touch), SharePoint 2010 can be leveraged from the Safari browser. Once connected, SharePoint automatically displays the site in a mobile optimized format.
In SharePoint 2010, the mobile site capability has been greatly upgraded. You have better control over which SharePoint site list or library you want to
make available on SharePoint mobile. Second, customizing the look and feel of SharePoint mobile is easier compared to the prior version.
From a user perspective, being able to access a SharePoint 2010 site from an iPhone or iPod allows the capability to look up information or documents while mobile. In addition, simple updates to lists can be achieved as well. Check out this screencast on how you can maximize SharePoint 2010 on an iPhone or iPod:
As I demonstrated in the video, you can also use iPhone Apps with SharePoint. I use RDP lite to remotely connect and manage the SharePoint server. And there’s also iShare, but I’m not sure if it’s compatible with SharePoint 2010 yet.
SharePoint 2010 on an iPad
Just to make sure I’ve got most of the Apple products covered (I am working on using SharePoint 2010 on the Apple TV), I’ve played around with SharePoint 2010 on an iPad and biy, it’s slick and sweet. Now if you’re questioning who would want to do this, did you here about PA University students to get iPads?
Apart from the education sector, I can see it being used in hospitals (doctors/nurses use an iPad with SharePoint 2010 instead of paper-based patient medical charts) or the construction industry (inspectors working with compliance checklists as they do a walkthrough). Check out this screencast on how you can maximize SharePoint 2010 on an iPad:
I got excited today after I saw that there’s a SharePoint app for the iPad that supports SharePoint 2010 called SharePlus. I’ll let you know what I think of it once I get the chance to test it.
Here’s a great resource on the SharePoint team blog on addressing browser limitations on an iPad.
So what do you think? If you ask me, the future looks awesome for SharePoint 2010 whether you’re a Mac or a PC.
Dux, does the iPad support Silverlight? This would be needed for some SharePoint features, like site creation.
Hi, Christophe – the iPad does not support Silverlight however, the create page in SharePoint 2010 still shows up. See the iPad video demo that I recorded and I showed the create page without using Silverlight
2010 still can not output an itunes compatible rss feed. Kinda hoped they’d adjust it so we could just serve our doc libs and lists as podcasts without messing with pks.
As always, great videos here bro! As much as I loathe the price of Macs, I’ve been an iPhone guy since day 1. Although I won’t be purchasing an iPad, it does look great on that screen.
Project 2010 sharepoint portal doesn’t work on a Mac (or pc/mac firefox for that matter). It tells us it requires IE7 or higher. I haven’t tried plain old sharepoint, but I know you focus on the two products together. We’re looking at having to install parallels + windows 7 on every mac here to get past this speedbump.
Just as a follow up to my above comment, I installed crossover and IE7 and it appears to work with Project 2010. Much easier than going the whole VM + entire OS route.
On the SharePoint Ipad video, you were able to open Excel through “Excel services” and forms through “forms services.” Is this part of SharePoint or do I need an app like Documents to Go to open MS Office files? Mostly, I’d like to be able to edit .docx files saved on SharePoint at home on an ipad.
Thanks! Great video – very helpful.
Hi. I am trying to use Sharepoint with a Mac and Office 2008. However, my document connection has the “Connect to a Sharepoint site” greyed out, and cannot do it… any ideas?
Camilo, maybe you have office 2008 student edition…and sharepoint connection is disable.
Great post!: I’ve been building a huge Knowledge, Asset, and Inventory Collaborative system using SP2007 in support of Robonaut 2 activities. Everyone here has iphones, uses chrome/firefox, I am waiting on a functional 2010 testbed. Has anyone seen what a datagrid view looks like on an ipad/iphone?
Check Filamente – SharePoint Client for iPad. http://tinyurl.com/Filamente (Full version). http://tinyurl.com/FilamenteLite (Free version).
Hi .. firstly awesome iPad & sharepoint video. Just have a small query and hoping someone could help me out. Im trying to get sharepoint and excel services to run on the iPad browser .. however i get an error File not found. When I acces the same file via a desktop broswer i’m able to view it. Does anyone know a fix for this??
Office Files and iPad:
That’s nice and edit a excel file is OK, but how do you edit a word file?
I have the problem that the keyboard do not appears, after I opened a word document with “edit in a browser”…
Another problem: After I activate the office app services I can’t open a PowerPoint presentation in the browser. Before I install the office Apps that work fine… the Browser open it and I can show the PowerPoint slides…
This article is a joke. Where is the information? Why didnt you just write “I like sharepoint and macs. They both work” and be done with it?
Yes you are right… regarding my own company there are a lot of users with Mac, iPhone and iPad and they want to use SharePoint because of it’s great (collaboration) features. Also our customers ask the questions if and how it works.
By the way: Great picture… a few years ago I thought Steve Ballmer would come and crush the Mac or iPhone with his feet. Now things have changed and the devices have to be considered…
I’m looking at using iPads with our SharePoint environment but I can’t seem to be able to connect to any sites with the iPad. I can connect to anything else on the network and I can connect to the sites from an iPhone 4 but not with an iPad. Is there any special setting that I need to look at to make this work?
Thanks
Tom
eat suggestions regarding getting a MAC to integrate better with SP. What exactly is the DCC- Document Connection Center? the Link goes to the Microsoft website but nothing. sepcific.
Dux,
We are starting to use the iPad and allow users to fill out InfoPath forms. We are finding that People Pickers don’t work very well. In particular, it seem that the People Picker works with the address book, if we are using a customized list, but in no other circumstances. For example, a form with a People Picker that had been dropped on it. Can you verify this pathological behavior? If so, do you know any workarounds?
Hi Dux,
Please help me in opening sharepoint 2010 site in safari.
I am using safari 5.1.7 on windows machine. I am not able to open sharepoint site. it always keeps prompting for user id and password even i am providing correct uid and pwd.
i added the site in trusted location.
i enabled auto login.
but nothing helped me. Please let me know your suggestions.
thanks a lot beforehand
—-
raj
This is one of the most interesting posts I have landed on internet and I learned a lot going through your article. Maximizing SharePoint 2010 on a Mac + iPhone or iPod + iPad is a great tool and tips in using the apple gadgets and it really helped me in setting up my phone. Thanks.