SharePlus SDK allows you enhance the user experience by integrating web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into the native User Interface. With that goal in mind, SharePlus SDK has three major extension points:
The start screen – When you open the Application Home module
Sites – When you navigate to a SharePoint site within SharePlus
List items – When you add, edit, or visualize an item of a SharePoint list.
All the three extension points allow you to present a custom view to the user, which is developed using the technology described above.
SharePlus SDK is not difficult to learn and you don’t need further knowledge besides HTML5 and JavaScript. Also, you can use SharePlus Mobile Workspaces in combination with S+ links and in that scenario you don’t even need JavaScript.
You can develop HTML-based packages by leveraging modern standard client-side web technologies like HTML5 and jQuery. Because of this, high quality interactions can be achieved by using CSS and JavaScript frameworks. HTML-based packages can communicate with the app through two means:
Invoking native SharePlus actions by using S+ links (SharePlus custom URL schema).
Reading/Writing SharePoint data using SharePlus’ JavaScript API.
Building HTML ZIP packages is especially powerful, as you can create rich HTML pages including markup, images, CSS, and JavaScript frameworks like JQuery, to present the user with virtually any content you want to display. You can display customized screens in the three major extension points previously described.
Use SharePlus JavaScript APIs to build complex scenarios with full access to SharePoint content. You could achieve many scenarios, including:
Adding, editing, deleting, or retrieving an item or document from SharePoint.
Getting all the items from a SharePoint List.
Getting user information of a SharePoint site.
Managing the source and custom settings from SharePlus Mobile Workspaces.
Downloading a resource from an URL and making it available when working offline.
Checking whether SharePlus is online or not.
Your ZIP packages can be deployed using a centralized location, allowing a quick and easy distribution to all company devices. The content can be loaded either from an external URL or a local path inside the application.
In addition, your file can be downloaded from a static URL specified in the Configuration File. The URL location must be public or otherwise located under the same Domain as the Configuration File to share its credentials. Your ZIP package can be available offline, and will later synchronize with the URL every time you start SharePlus. Caching is used to avoid downloading the same resource that is referenced by the URL every time. However, the source file is downloaded again when there are changes.
For HTTP, caching is not expected to take place. This might cause a performance impact, given that caching prevents the Mobile Workspace from being downloaded again if there are no changes. It is therefore recommended to place the Mobile Workspace in a list/library that supports caching.