harmon.ie Delivers Native Office 365, SharePoint App for BlackBerry 10

You have to love technology. Going through an 800 number in Boston, my BlackBerry Z10 connected with Yaacov Cohen’s Z10 in Israel. Who is Yaccov Cohen? He is CEO and co-founder of harmon.ie. The company’s challenge is to create universal and uniform access from wherever business users spend their workday.

More companies are allowing their employees to bring in their own devices (BYOD) to work. Personal smartphones and tablets are being used at an increasing rate in the business world. Yaacov wants to take the idea of BYOD and turn it into Use Your Own Device (UYOD).

You can bring your personal mobile devices to work, but if there are no applications that make your job easier or benefit the company, then what’s the point? harmon.ie is doing what it can to resolve this issue. At BlackBerry Live 2013, it is announcing the release of harmon.ie for BlackBerry 10.

The harmon.ie app provides full-featured Office 365 and on premise SharePoint functionality. This includes secure connectivity and offline document access. The combination of Office 365’s productivity with a native BlackBerry 10 app enables anyone using a BlackBerry 10 device to be productive.

Regardless of where you are, you can look at documents and spreadsheets. By using the native Office 365 app, you can make changes in these files and save them in real-time. You no longer have to upload a copy of the file and then wait until you get back to your office to make changes that can be seen by the rest of the team.

Users also get real-time updates as their associates make updates to important documents. They can then follow those documents with an intuitive activity stream of collaboration activities. Workers can save Office 365 documents on their device so they will be available offline, and upload documents received as e-mail attachments onto Office 365 to device and from device to Office 365. This keeps the device secure.

Last week I mentioned that there were some compatibility issues with apps running on the Q10. Since it has a physical keyboard, real estate for the display is smaller. You are working with a 3.1-inch square screen. That means that certain compensations need to be made. harmon.ie has already taken this into account.

The release this week will include a version for the Z10 as well as a separate version designed to work on the Q10. When BlackBerry 10 is available for the PlayBook, the app will also work with the tablet.

Some of the key features are:

• Find Documents – harmon.ie lets you find SharePoint documents by performing a search, browse, sort or “go to location” operation, making it easy to find the information you need while away from your desk.
• Author Documents on the Go - Perform check-in, check-out and manage SharePoint metadata fields when you author documents. Users can also update document content using their mobile device and harmon.ie will prompt to save those changes to SharePoint.
• Share SharePoint Documents with Colleagues – Send documents to colleagues as links or attachments.
• Simplify Navigation - Mark a document and library location as favorites using “breadcrumbs” and view a list of recently visited locations.
• Paste Image Support - Upload pictures from mobile device to SharePoint.

Some of the key benefits to these features are:

• Access to SharePoint on the Go – Access and navigate SharePoint sites from your mobile device, anytime, anywhere.
• Improved Project Management – Get real-time updates as colleagues edit important documents such as proposals and contracts. Reach out to the last document contributor with one click. No more need to call or e-mail to check on project progress.
• Significant Productivity Boost – No need to wait till you are back at the office. Accessing the information you want and share it with colleagues from the road.
• Drive Adoption of SharePoint Social Networks – Users can access their social network by locating colleagues from their SharePoint and local mobile device contact lists.

The combination of the full product suite of Microsoft Outlook also makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues. You can use Microsoft’s cloud services to stay in touch with your co-workers, and Microsoft Lync will keep you in constant touch with everyone that needs to work on a project, increasing your productivity.

Beta testing for harmon.ie’s BlackBerry 10 app has been taking place in Europe for a few months now. Several companies in Europe have been involved with the beta testing and they are all very pleased with the results.

Several other companies in Europe have been beta testing harmon.ie’s BlackBerry 10 app, and they are all very pleased with the results.

Yaacov added, “We are thrilled to strengthen our partnership with BlackBerry as they continue to enhance their enterprise app offering. Users demand the same productive experience from their applications wherever they are, and on whatever device they are using. With these newest BlackBerry 10 smartphone apps, harmon.ie is targeting the busy information workers who want to actually ‘use’ their device and not just ‘bring’ it to work. Now, these workers can securely and efficiently access, edit and share documents from the cloud and collaborate in real-time in a social environment.”

According to Martyn Mallick, vice president of Global Alliances and Business Development at BlackBerry, they feel the same way. “BlackBerry has always been invested in providing enterprise customers with effective tools to get business done. We are thrilled to have harmon.ie bring both SharePoint and Office 365 to the BlackBerry 10 platform and are confident BlackBerry customers will appreciate the social nature of these business solutions.”

harmon.ie is doing what it can to realize the dream of turning BYOD into UYOD. It looks like the company has a great jumpstart with its native Office 365 and SharePoint app for BlackBerry 10.