#bimobilead

A video tutorial for creating a new Xcode 5.x project using the Oracle BI Mobile HD Security Toolkit.

This video goes along with our document for the Security Toolkit that can be found here:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-enterprise-edition/building-the-bi-mobile-hd-app-1993081.pdf

You may have noticed a new BI Mobile HD update over the weekend, and if you upgraded you will notice that it is mostly is about iOS7.   There were a number of bug fixes to make sure things look and work correctly with iOS7, but there is one cool feature you may not notice out of the gate:

You can now open BI Mobile App Designer content in the HD app.  So why is this cool?

Users can now consume 'traditional' dashboards along side purposeful apps.

Users can launch MAD Apps with a native client instead of in the browser.

Your IT organization can create a secure Mobile HD distribution using the BI Mobile HD Security Toolkit, and MAD Apps can be consumed using the secure client.

So how does it work?

Open MAD Apps just like you would a dashboard (search or browse).

Favorite MAD Apps and have them displayed as a favorite next to other MAD Apps or 'traditional' dashboards.

Mobile HD toolbars get out of the way when you open a MAD App.  Just tap the status bar or swipe from the left to get the HD menus back.

If your mobile BI strategy does not include the phone it is time to re-think things.

I know that is a bold statement but it is simply true.  In working with customers every demo and most rollouts are focused on the tablet, but it seems to be for the wrong reasons.  Most of the time the focus is on the tablet because it demos really well and visualizations are great on the full 9" display.  

This, however, does not mean you should forget about the device that is truly mobile (the phone).  Lets just put aside the numbers and think about these facts.

No one leaves without their phone - You are simply way more likely to ditch the tablet depending on where you go. 

Most tablets only have WiFi, so are they really mobile?  The phone is almost always connected.  http://www.localytics.com/blog/2012/only-6-of-ipad-app-sessions-on-cellular-connection/  

Many of your favorite apps don't have tablet versions leaving you with only the browser.

I know there are probably 100 blogs that point the other way, and I am not saying you should stop delivering BI on the tablet, but at least stop ignoring the phone.  

Oracle BI Mobile offers BI Mobile HD for the iPhone allowing you to leverage your existing BI content and you can create new custom phone (and tablets) experiences using BI Mobile App Designer.  

So take a look at these reports (actual content) and tell me your users don't need this...

If you were at Oracle Open World BI Mobile App Designer may be old news, but either way you need to read on.

So here is the scenario; you are BI author and you have built some great dashboards and maybe you are even deploying those dashboards using the BI Mobile HD app. 

Now you want to build a purposeful mobile app to meet the specific needs of some of your BI consumers, but custom, Objective-C, Java, HTML5; OUCH, not quite ready for that.  Well, give BI Mobile App Designer a try and leave all that crazy coding to us.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/bi-foundation/mad-trial-2019918.html

With the trial edition you can give this simple authoring and mobile deployment experience a try on your desktop and device prior to getting IT and other approvals.  This way you know the amount of work it takes and the types of app you can create prior to doing a full deployment.

OK that was a joke and of course you know this.  The real question is how will the BI Mobile HD and the BI Mobile App Designer apps handle this. 

The answer is 'just fine'.  We have been running and testing our BI Mobile HD app on iOS7 for months now and things work just fine.  

For BI Mobile App Designer you have even less to worry about.  The end user experience is a responsive HTML5 experience that will work across iOS versions and across different mobile OS's like Android or Windows Mobile.  BI Mobile App Designer even has a built in 'white' skin so your apps can match the lighter 'iOS' look and feel.