New in Android Client in SP3

With the latest release from SAP Mobile Client Document i.e. SP3, Android Client gets enriched with many interesting and useful feature.

In this blog I will take you through my favorite ones:

Login via certificate from Android Key Store

In my blog Using Certificates in SAP Mobile Documents Android Application, I described the steps to import certificates into SAP Mobile Documents Android client. The process was a bit time consuming and not the standard one for android users.

In android devices, users will often import the certificate in android key store and will wonder why they have to import it again for SAP Mobile Documents.

Now, the Android client has simplified login via certificate experience. If the certificate is imported in android key store, user can choose “login via certificate” option in login dialog and select the certificate from the key store itself.

The new steps are described in more details here Simplified login via certificate experience in SAP Mobile Document Android App

Faster Encryption and Decryption

Earlier the android client was using the encryption mechanism provided by android platform. The 1.3.0 version it is based on SAP own encryption algorithms. This has resulted into ~10-15 time faster encryption and decryption.

Setting to prevent accidental App Exit

While navigating in a hierarchy, you want navigate back in the hierarchy.

On our android devices, we uses back button to navigate back in hierarchy. Quite often this results into cases where we press the back button multiple times and we are out of the application.

Now, there is a setting in android client “Confirm on App Exit” which when enabled prompts the user for confirmation to exit the SAP Mobile Document app.

Skip passcode

When you start the App for the first time, you are asked to set a passcode for the app. The passcode was enforced by the app, even if administrator might have not enforced it.

Now, you can skip it. If administrator has enforced it, the app will prompt to set the passcode later.

Selecting items is more Android like

From the list of documents, now you can long press to select any document.

For the selected documents, relevant actions are visible in the action bar on top. This behavior is closer to android guidelines and more intuitive for users coming from other apps on their android devices

Support for Pushed Repositories

SAP Mobile Documents from SP3 gives a cool feature called “Pushed Documents”. This enables administrators to mark some corporate repositories as pushed.

The android client automatically syncs these documents from these repositories. By default these documents are marked as unread. The unread status is reflected by a small blue dot on left side of icon for the document.

Support for SAP Workforce Performance Builder

SAP Mobile Documents had integration for SAP Workforce Performance Builder on the iOS app. Refer the blog SAP Mobile Documents & SAP Workforce Performance Builder Integration for more details.

Now, the android app also has the integration for SAP Workforce Performance Builder. The user flow is exactly same as described the blog above.

Sorting

You can now sort of documents with different criterias. In each list of documents, the current sorting type and direction is displayed on the top.

To change the sorting criteria, simply tap on sorting type. You can reverse the direction of sorting by taping on the sorting direction.

Search

With SP3, SAP Mobile Documents supports searching as described in the blog Easily search your documents in SAP Mobile Documents. The android client also enables users to trigger search and view the results. The experience to trigger search and view results is kept as close to standard android guidelines to keep the experience seamless.

You can refer to complete list of new improvements here