Anyone who has tried to login to their CiviCRM database via their phone knows the feeling: utter helplessness. You would even be forgiven for thinking CiviCRM is actively hostile to the small screen.
This initial experience of the un-initiated CiviCRM user on the phone will probably remain until the eventual adoption of the Bootstrap framework (a CSS framework with built-in mobile/responsive elements).
What may be surprising to many, however, is that CiviCRM today is quite mobile friendly in all the important areas. You just have to put the pieces together.
After a long discussion on the Civi Partners list of the myriad ways CiviCRM developers have been integrating Boostrap into their projects, Allan Dixon started a page documenting them.
The Bootstrap page includes both the...
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As we are living in an increasingly mobile-focused world, how can CiviCRM can be integrated with mobile and leverage features native to mobile? During the recent CiviCRM Sprint in Colorado, a group of us got together to discuss what currently exists, what's in the works and new features that would be helpful to include in the future.
We started off by discussing CiviMobile, a web app developed with the jQuery Mobile framework by Peter McAndrew in December 2011. The web app focuses on three main areas: Events, Contacts and Surveys. Click here to see some screenshots included in a previous blog post. CiviMobile currently works with CiviCRM 4.3, but the core team is working on the new release that will work with CiviCRM 4.6.
Here's the feedback and requirements we worked on as a result of the...
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De Goede Woning (our biggest and oldest CiviCRM client) have expressed lots of interest in CiviMobile. For them the main focus is on Activities and Cases. It is really important for the workers to be able to access and maintain data whilst on the road visiting and helping customers and stakeholders. So here is my first draft of what is required functionally, any thoughts and comments much appreciated!! We will probably start developing this stuff in October. The generic idea is that we keep the mobile functionality limited to the bare minimum as we expect the more involved tasks to happen in the back office.
Generic Navigation
When accessing CiviMobile for the first time the user will have to login to CiviMobile. Ideally this should only be done the first time and then be automatic, but only if we can find a way that is secure enough.
The user should then see the Home menu. This menu should also be available with a Home button from any spot...
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It's been quite a while since my last CiviMobile update but that's not to say that I haven't been busy :)
While we were working hard on a number of applications for free and open source market one of the application which was released by us was the CiviSync Mobile app for Android. You can download it from Google Play on your phone or here.
The App currently only supports read only mode and allows you to check your contacts, organisations, households, activities and groups. The app is developed using PhoneGap and hence it is easy to convert the app to an iPhone, Windows Mobile or Blackberry app when the need or the requirement comes from the market.
Once again the first version relied a bit on our extended API provided by CiviSync CMS component for Joomla and Drupal but in the next version we have moved away from using CiviSync CMS and towards using the native API for the search results.
In order to use CiviSync Mobile you need the following details:
- ...
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Although the weather has not been that great during the sprint we have not let that get in the way of our CiviMobile testing. As you'll see, the sprinters have been using CiviMobile at every opportunity possible. The picture below shows us leaving for the Goede De Woning offices on our 6-person rickshaw, tapping away at our phone screens.
We had the pleasure of being joined by the Prince of Object-Oriented API, Xavier Dutoit, for the past two days, who was working with Erik Hommel on the new Object orientated API and also making Selenium testing easier and faster to setup.
My dear brother, Michael McAndrew has been working on getting the Flossmanuals CiviCRM guides published on civicrm.org so that they’re nicely integrated with the site. He'll be posting to the blog soon, so keep an eye out for info about a sleek new addition to the site....
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The CiviMobile web app is now underway and being developed with the jQuery Mobile framework (HTML 5).
The app is Based on the prototype that Xavier and Kyle created, and is beginning to take shape, the functionality in place at the moment includes contact/activity search, add contact and view list of events. It’s intended to be used by an organisation’s staff, as a tool for them to use on the move.
During the EU code sprint next week my focus will be on getting phase 1 completed and giving a demo to some potential funders. Checkout the wiki for the full spec. Once its ready I will be looking for some volunteers in the London area who'd like to do some user testing at my university within their interaction lab, which involves cool eye-tracking equipment!
We are also going to use phase 2 of development to test out a new PHP framework:...
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As part of my final year studying Computer Science at uni I'm required to take on a 400 hour project. I've been wanting to create a mobile app for a while now and given that CiviCRM is lacking such a feature I thought it would be a good idea to embark on developing one. Hopefully the end result will be good enough to incorporate into core! I've started a specification here: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CiviMobile+Specification I'm required to have the project finished by May 2012 which sounds like a long time but given that I'm working and studying full time 400 hours is a lot of weekends! I'm plan to iterate 2 development phases as detailed in the spec. The first will consist of some simple features contact search, event check-in, etc... The second stage will implement some more advanced features integrating with CiviPetition & Campaign, providing the ability to collect...
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