Modern web UI is nice, but at the end of the day when it comes to mobile, apps are still king.
If the purpose of this is to replace the interaction we had on Yammer, a mobile app is a necessity. Ease of use is critical, and navigating via browser does not give the features and interactivity that the Yammer app does. App specific notifications for replies, quickly navigating to favorite topics/groups. Just because it can be used in a mobile browser doesnt mean it should.
I see lack of a mobile app as a real barrier to winning user adoption and getting the most participation possible based on the proven success of Yammer Office 365 Network.
66 Comments
- Allen
Community Manager
Status changed:NewtoUnspecifiedHi all,
I am changing the idea of this status to 'On Hold' we presently have no firm commitment to build a mobile application, for the reasons I gave previously in this thread.
I want to be very clear here, we are not saying no to a mobile app but I feel the idea being in a 'Under Review' state idefinately is also disengenous to you all.
Please continue to vote on it and I can assure you that as soon as we have something to share on this I will post it back here.
- For the love of God, have one of the MS developers make a techcommunity app.
This site is a pita to use from a phone, especially since this particular group is for a phone app.To let the Microsoft Tech community designer and tech lead know about the issue of the website on mobile, you should mention it in here:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Community-Info-Center/ct-p/Community-Info-Center
I was surprised to discover the official MS Launcher community also exists on Reddit. I don't want to create a Reddit account just to interact with Microsoft about their products, but if this forum offends you enough and you're already set up on Reddit it could be a good option until this forum is fixed. https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoftlauncher/comments/eo687b/announcing_microsoft_launcher_preview/
Hi,
for ideas related to Microsoft Tech community itself there is this place, it also has ideas section:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Community-Info-Center/ct-p/Community-Info-Center
someone already posted this suggestion and developers answered it
I was wondering whether a mobile client was in your roadmap for 2019?
Thank for the update Allen . Whilst I understand that investment as been allocated in other areas, continuing to excluding mobile is detrimental to the community.
I'm not surprised and baffled at the same time. I've never truly expected a mobile app anyway. I'm still surprised that Microsoft took a plunge on a platform while its vision said "mobile first". It's 2018 and Microsoft scrapped the "mobile first" vision, so at least that's consistent.
As a former, very active mobile, Yammer Network user, my usage here dropped to about 5% compared to previously. And I don't think it'll ever spike to Yammer levels, since there is no mobile engagement here. Many of the first pain points since launch still exist in the web version.
I've resorted to just reading the blogs here, mostly because Microsoft migrated them from blogs.office.com to here.
- Allen
Certainly, I have had some discussions with our partner, Lithium, to see how we can use their mobile SDKs to build a mobile app experience. The short answer is that there is no quick and easy way to build an app with the SDKs that takes into account our many customizations we have built over the last couple of years.
It looks likely that to build this app would require us to re-implement some custom work we have already previously developed and that requires time and a not insignificant sum of money to do so. Further implementing a mobile app would require us to implement login for the mobile app using the Microsoft oAuth2 methods and would require us to maintain this app and ensure we applied any security fixes or other changes to both apps and manage an app submission process for them.
Currently the Microsoft Tech Community team does not have sufficient resources to develop this app, especially since we already develop the existing web UI to work on mobile devices.
With this in mind we are not currently looking to develop a mobile app in Financial Year 18/19 - H1. We will continue to keep this idea under review and I will update you if the status of this changes.
Can we have an update for this idea?
Thanks for the update, Cian Allner. Can't wait for mobile experience.
Agreed David Leveille a mobile app is a must but Microsoft can only do with the platform permits and Lithium have been slow to provide an appropriate SDK making this difficult for now.
Lithium has made inroads with an Android SDK beta last year and an iOS SDK beta has just been released in the last month, so the signs are good, Microsoft will be able to use these in due course.
Honestly Cian Allner I think that if the Lithium platform (that this tech community runs on) had a mobile app that was lightweight and fast it would help. For now, the content creators cross-posting on Twitter and LinkedIn is how I am notified of new blog posts, etc. I think that without a mobile app - think Yammer, LinkedIn, Twitter - you are stuck getting emails or remembering to check the site on your own. I have calendar reminders to check every 4 weeks or so. Should check more often, but I honestly forget. The notifications feature shows me the 25+ messages/likes/comments when I log in. If I had a mobile app alerting me on my iPhone or Windows 10 machine(s), I would check more often.
