One of the selling points of SharePoint Online is that you can access it anytime, anyplace, anywhere – where you have an internet connection. Not just in the office, but also on the train, on your couch at home. And in the board room. That flexibility rimes with iPad for many people these days.
I’ve heard from several executives that they prefer to work on their iPad. They don’t want to waste money and trees on paper prints and they also don’t want to lug around a heavy laptop. So they asked their teams to send documents for meeting as pdf by e-mail, allowing them to read on their iPad. But sending documents by e-mail is soooo last century. We prefer sharing such information in SharePoint teamsites.
My question then was: can you actually use a Microsoft SharePoint site on an Apple iPad or do they just clash?
The answer fortunately is: quite a lot actually works, though not everything.
Documents
On the iPad, I see the document library and I can read a document in the browser. But I was unable to upload a document.
Homepage of an out of the box teamsite on the iPad
Read an Office document in the browser
Uploading a document did not work
Task list and calendar
I can add and edit items in lists like Tasks and Events on the iPad. The interface in the pop-ups looks a bit different, but they seems to work anyway.
Adding a task that depends on a selected predecessor
Adding an event to a calendar
Comments and notes
I can read a blog post and its comments, and also comment on a blog post. On the My Profile page, I can update my status. But I cannot publish a note in my Note Board.
Commenting on a blog post
Updating my Profile status works, but adding a note to the Note Board not.
No silverlight
The one gaping hole on my iPad is Silverlight. Because of that, I cannot play video in the official video web part. And I cannot view the spiffy version of the organisation chart in My Profile. The page does offer me a link to download and install Silverlight, but that soon hits the ‘Download failed’ wall, as there just is no Silverlight for the iPad.
I cannot install the Silverlight required for the nice organisation interface
The video web part requires Silverlight, so the video is not played within the page but opened on the iPad itself via the link.
Also, my iPad only plays videos in mp4 format. I know there must be apps that allow me to view wmv videos for example. But until then I am restricted to mp4.
