Innovapptive Partners with SAP to Deliver Top Quality Enterprise Mobile Products – The mPower™ Apps Suite & Rapid Deployment Solutions (RDS)

Innovapptive Inc. is a leading SAP certified mobile application development and services partner, with global reach. The company provides end-to-end SAP mobile solutions through a wide range of pre-packaged enterprise mobile products and flexible and agile delivery models. Innovapptive’s core product offering is the mPower™ AppSuite and it’s partnership with SAP to ensure all pre-packaged mobile apps complete a rigorous SAP certification process. The SAP certification process allows Innovapptive to deliver products of top quality, trust and assurance and our collaboration success story was featured by SAP. The certification has made it easy for Innovapptive to support market-leading solutions from SAP and offer integrated solutions to its customers.

Click here and Read the detailed article on how Innovapptive and SAP are partnering together to deliver a suite of top quality pre-packaged mobile applications.

Why is SAP Certification important to Innovapptive?

Certification supports services around third-party software integration into SAP, which helps Innovapptive to aim at their top strategic objectives to empower people anywhere and anytime with simple and real time access to information and processes. With a certificate of assurance of quality from SAP, deploying developed products and managing customers are easier. Successfully engaging in the certification process offered by an enterprise mobility leader such as SAP helps Innovapptive validate internal best-practice and quality standards.

Innovapptive SAP Partnership

Benefits of Certification to Our Customers

Increased trustworthiness of customers as the SAP certified products provide a seal of trust and assurance to deploy our mPower™ Apps Suite.

Through long–term strategic planning in co-relation with SAP, Innovapptive is well positioned to delivery top quality enterprise mobile products and services to our customer base.

Innovapptive not only certifies its mPower Apps Suite with SAP, but also certifies its proprietary tools, accelerators and rapid deployment methodologies with SAP. The unique combination of certified enterprise mobile products and services from SAP helps Innovapptive delivery high value business outcomes for our customers. SAP Integration and Certification Center has helped drive higher customer adoption of both Innovapptive products and services and has enhanced credibility as a leader of enterprise mobility solutions.

Innovapptive’s 2014 Outlook with SAP

Innovapptive is aiming at strengthening quality standards and integration of functionality of our entire mPower™ Apps Suite.. Innovapptive currently has over ten mobile apps certified by SAP and is focused on certifying an additional twenty mobile apps in 2014, making Innovapptive a distinguished SAP partner with the highest number of certified mobile apps in the SAP store. Innovapptive, in 2014, strives to continually make a distinguished presence at the SAP store, making remarkable change in capturing potential customers, who opt for the quality certified apps. With a clear road map, gigantic support, certification and partnership, Innovapptive is committed to delivering high business value and accelerate our customer’s time to market with its innovations in 2014.

How to migrate app to iOS 7 using Appcelerator

Apple’s recommended steps to update your application to iOS 7. iOS 7 introduces many UI changes, such as borderless buttons, translucent bars and full-screen layout for views.

THINGS EVERY APP MUST DO:

• Update the app icon. In iOS 7, app icons for high-resolution iPhone and iPod touch are 120 x 120 pixels; for high-resolution iPad, app icons are 152 x 152 pixels. (To learn more about all icon sizes, see “Icon and Image Sizes”.) Note that iOS 7 doesn’t apply shine or a drop shadow to the app icon. And, although iOS 7 still applies a mask that rounds the corners of an app icon, it uses a different corner radius than earlier versions of iOS. See the iOS 7 Icons section below.

• Update the launch image to include the status bar area if it doesn’t already do so. This is a difference of 20 pixels in height, that is, the image is stretched 20 more pixels if you do nothing.

• Support Retina display and iPhone 5 in all your artwork and designs, if you’re not already doing so.

• Titanium.UI.iPhone.createNavigationGroup

• Titanium.UI.iPhone.NavigationGroup

• Titanium.UI.iPhone.setStatusBarStyle

• Titanium.UI.iPhone.setStatusBarHidden

• Titanium.UI.iPhone.showStatusBar

• Titanium.UI.iPhone.hideStatusBar

• Titanium.UI.setOrientationModes

How to migrate app to iOS 7 using Appcelerator ?

IOS 7 BEHAVIOR CHANGES:

Button Bar and Tabbed Bar:

On iOS 7, Apple changed the style of segmented controllers, which effects what can be customized for the Button Bar and Tabbed Bar objects in the Titanium SDK. You can no longer set the background color or style of these objects. iOS 7 only supports one style and setting the tint color.

In Release 3.1.3 and later, with iOS 7 and later, when you set the background Color property for these objects, you will be setting the tint color, and the style property is ignored. For iOS 6 and prior, the background Color and style properties still works the same since these are supported on older version of iOS.

Navigation Transitions:

On iOS 7, when transitioning between two windows in a navigation stack, the bottom window slides half way off the screen,  pauses then the top window appears. This is noticeable if you do not specify a background color for your top window, which makes it transparent. As long as you specify a background color for the top window, the application will appear to transition the same as previous iOS versions.

On iOS 6 and earlier, the bottom window would slide off screen as the top window appears on screen at the same time.

Lightweight Windows:

On iOS 7 and later, all lightweight windows, including the first root window, are displayed as full screen with a transparent status bar. Lightweight windows are windows without a navigation controller, that is, not contained in a Navigation Window or Tab Group. Any view objects added to the top of the window appear behind the transparent status bar. If your UI layout relies on the top property, you may need to readjust your layout.

You can also either set the full screen property to true to hide the status bar or set the top property to 20 to move the window below the status bar to compensate for this behavior change.

Status Bar:

In Release 3.1.3 and later, the status bar is controlled by the current window that appears on screen. By default, the status bar is displayed unless you specify the Window’s full screen property to true before opening the window. You can also control the appearance of the status bar using the Window’s status Bar Style property (new API element for Release 3.1.3). These properties can also be set on any top-level container, which include Navigation Window, Split Window and Tab Group objects.

Prior to Release 3.1.3, if you created a full screen window then opened a window without specifying the full screen property. The recently opened window would also appear full screen. In Release 3.1.3 and later, since the default value is to show the status bar, the recently opened window displays.

On iOS 7, the status bar cannot be controlled on the fly with Titanium.UI.iPhone.setStatusBarStyle, Titanium.UI.iPhone.setStatusBarHidden, Titanium.UI.iPhone.showStatusBar or Titanium.UI.iPhone.hideStatusBar. You need to either set the fullscreen property to hide the status bar or statusBarStyle to change the status bar style before opening the window. In Release 3.2.0, you can use the statusBarStyle property to change the status bar style on the fly.

iOS 7 also introduces a new light content status bar style that is exposed as the Titanium.UI.iPhone.StatusBar.LIGHT_CONTENT constant in the Titanium SDK. Use this constant to specify a status bar for use with a dark background. If you want the entire application to use this style, add the following key to your tiapp.xml file.

The following API elements are obsolete or do not work on iOS 7. These elements are deprecated in Release 3.1.3 and removed in Release 3.2.0 except the setter methods.

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas”

Limiting orientation modes for Appcelerator app

You have a few options for handling device orientation:

• Lock orientation for the whole app
• Lock the orientation for a given window
• React to orientation changes.

Before we begin, it’s important to cover some caveats and subtleties on Android. With that platform, it’s important that you keep in mind that the orientation values you set don’t match those you get. With Android, you can set the UI orientation to any of four possibilities: portrait upright, landscape right, portrait upside-down, and landscape left. But, when you request the current orientation, you’ll get one of two values: portrait or landscape. This is a platform feature, not a Titanium implementation issue.

A further consideration is that portrait and landscape vary between phones and tablets. A phone is in portrait mode when its “top” is at 0 degrees (hardware buttons at the bottom) and landscape when the “top” is at 270 degrees. A tablet is in landscape mode when its top is at 0 and portrait when its top is at 90 degrees. (Based on sensor degrees.) These portrait/landscape values are what you receive when you get the devices current orientation.

ORIENTATION DESIGN PRINCIPLES:

Apple’s Developer documentation says: “People expect to use your app in different orientations, and it’s best when you can fulfill that expectation.” In other words, don’t look at handling orientation as a bother but an opportunity.

Apple further recommends that when choosing to lock or support orientation, you should consider following these principles:

On iPhone/iPod Touch – don’t mix orientation of windows within a single app; so, either lock orientation for the whole app, or react to orientation changes.

On iPhone – don’t support the portrait-upside-down orientation, because that could leave the user with their phone upside-down when receiving a phone call.

On iPad – you should support all orientations because that matches how people use those devices.

These same principles apply to an Android app as well.

ORIENTATION IS AN OPPORTUNITY:

Rather than considering orientation a “necessary evil” to handle, think of it as an opportunity. When a user rotates their device, you could display different content. Consider a recipe app that shows a list of ingredients when in portrait mode but shows cooking directions when the device is in landscape mode. Some handsets mute the speaker when the device is face down. You can probably think of other interesting ways your app could react to an orientation change.

LIMITING ORIENTATION MODES SUPPORTED BY YOUR APP:

You specify the orientations your app can support by modifying the tiapp.xml file. This type of configuration controls the splash screen orientation possibilities. And it constrains which orientations the windows of your apps could possible show in, but not necessarily the orientation of a specific window.

The techniques for iOS and Android vary, so we’ll look at them separately.

LIMITING ORIENTATION MODES ON IOS:

On iOS, you specify the orientations your app supports with values in the tiapp.xml file. By removing an orientation from the list, you prevent the app from displaying in that way. For example, to support only portrait on the iPhone, but support all rotations on the iPad, you’d use this XML in your project’s tiapp.xml file:

CODE:

<iphone>
<orientations device="iphone">
<orientation>Ti.UI.PORTRAIT</orientation>
</orientations>
<orientations device="ipad">
<orientation>Ti.UI.PORTRAIT</orientation>
<orientation>Ti.UI.UPSIDE_PORTRAIT</orientation>
<orientation>Ti.UI.LANDSCAPE_LEFT</orientation>
<orientation>Ti.UI.LANDSCAPE_RIGHT</orientation>
</orientations>
</iphone>

LIMITING ORIENTATION MODES ON ANDROID:

CODE:

<android xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<manifest>
<application>
<activity
android:name="org.appcelerator.titanium.TiActivity"
android:configChanges="keyboardHidden"
android:screenOrientation="portrait"
/>
<activity android:name="ti.modules.titanium.ui.TiTabActivity"
android:configChanges="keyboardHidden"
/>
</application>
</manifest>
</android>

“Try to be like the turtle – at ease in your own shell.”

Appcelerator Cloud Services Impact on Mobile Server-Side Development

The cloud is truly redefining the way we work and play. In it we store our music, our pictures and movies, and our enterprise data. From it we access all of that information from laptops, tablets, smart phones, cars and TVs anywhere anytime. Of course, the mobile revolution is also delivering its fair share of transformation

When we speak with enterprise customers all the time and what we commonly hear goes something like this:

“We have many mobile initiatives and expect to roll out [tens/hundreds/thousands] of apps across multiple platforms over the next few years”

“The apps need to be of high utility and value to our [employees/partners/prospects/customers] and they need to access data from many sources including social networks, public data sources, enterprise data systems like ERP, CRM, SFA, and our custom apps”

“Our competitors have already published something similar, so we need the apps out ASAP”

“But we don’t have the time/money/resources/skills to build all the permutations of mobile client apps as well as the server-side components to support them”

“How can we prioritize one over the other, when we need both. What should we do?”

To answer this question, let me take a slight detour. Remember the good old days of client/server? Life was relatively simple then. We created a database instance with a bunch of tables and fields, hooked it up to a thick client with GUI controls and widgets, and before you knew it, our app was out the door (or more appropriately, on the desk). Network connectivity was not really an issue with LANs and the apps gave us access to the data in an acceptable form factor, on a not-so-portable, big screen, with more than enough room for extras.

But today’s mobile apps are now a complex mash-up of data from many different sources.Today’s apps need to not only look delightful on a multitude of different and smaller-sized screens, but they also need to feel great. They have to support device specific gestures and menus. They have to be cool and engaging. They need to integrate into the user’s life, so they can’t even imagine what it was like before they downloaded it.

In order to do that, an app needs automatic push notifications to update us even when we’re not in the app. We need status updates and feeds from other users so we know what’s happening. We need to “Like” things and share comments so our friends and colleagues know what we’re up to. We want to upload photos so we can share the moments of our lives. Our employees need supply chain data from the SAP system, financial data from the Oracle system and employee data from the HR system, so in that moment of need, in front of a customer or prospect, they can deliver real-time information.

So essentially what we have now are two very different sets of competing requirements – client-side applications and server-side services – both with different success criteria, different development tools and different skill sets.

And therein lies the problem – other than the biggest mega-companies on the planet who don’t have the constraints of money, people, skills, etc, the rest of us are faced with what seems like an impossible predicament.

I would suggest that of the two, the no-brainer winner has to be the client-side app. I don’t think anyone even questions the value of the user experience any more. Look at Apple. They epitomize that maniacal focus in all their products. So too does Google and Amazon.

So that leaves us with the displaced backend server-side. In order to deliver many of the above-mentioned required capabilities, “do-it-yourself” server-side development is perceived as the only solution, where you develop custom software and architectures made up of web, app and database servers to deliver these services and then integrate them to the different client apps. Then you build or provision a new infrastructure to support it all. Then wash, rinse and repeat for every new app and every time one of those data sources changes.

Fortunately there is a way out, and mobile cloud-based services offer a welcome solution. Such backend services provide the core capabilities required, over the cloud, so you can continue to focus on the client-side experience while simply consuming the backend services as needed on the cloud.

At Appcelerator we have Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS) which offers a fast, easy, and simple way of building next generation mobile apps. With a proven set of ready-to-consume APIs, you can build beautiful apps in a fraction of the time from any mobile toolkit (of course there are numerous benefits if you use Titanium Studio too). ACS is also extensible, so it can integrate with other public services and private corporate apps to shield you from that complexity on the client.

Appcelerator Mobile Cloud Services

What if you could build out your next generation mobile cloud at a fraction of the time and cost,using the development resources you already have, with lower risk, that can reliably scale with your user adoption?

Appcelerator Cloud Service(ACS) is a cloud based service that offers a fast and easy way to build connected mobile applications. Just like SaaS offerings provide ready-to-use applications over the cloud without installing any software, ACS o!ers ready-to-use services that can be consumed by the mobile apps in a similar manner. ACS also shields you from managing server hardware and storage or dealing with virtualization and networking.

ACS also provides numerous other benefits:

1. Library of pre-built, commonly used services

These proven, robust services provide commonly used mobile application services which reduce both integration time and risk, while enabling you to build your next generation apps.

Popular services include:

-User Management – which allows the application to create usernames and passwords, authenticate users on login and manage sessions

-Push Notifications – which enables the delivery of popups and messages to different users

-Check-Ins and Status Updates – which allows users to associate a time and place with information such as a photo or comment

-Photos – which enables the uploading of photos and the automatically resized delivery to devices

-Custom Objects – which facilitates the creation and management of your own custom objects (e.g product, SKU, car, etc.) along with attributes which can be stored and queried

-Social integration – which helps you connect your users with popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn

-Access Control – which provides fine-grained control over which app users can read and write data stored in the cloud.

2. Client-side APIs for any development platform

All API services are exposed (and fully documented) via a REST API and SDKs for iOS, Android, and JavaScript, making the invocation quick and easy from the client-side, regardless of the underlying mobile platforms. This allows organizations to take advantage of the more pervasive skill sets of web and native application developers rather than the less common and more expensive server-side developers.Although you can use ACS with any mobile development platform, you can realize significant benefits by using Titanium Studio, including:

-Richer application functionality due to the 5,000 APIs and Marketplace modules.

-Increased productivity due to a single environment for both client development and

backend services.

-Reduced cost of development by leveraging common JavaScript skills.

-Reduced training and support costs.

3. Extensibility, to build your own custom services for all your mobile apps

There will likely be instances where you need your own custom services, for example to access your internal corporate enterprise systems and data sources. ACS provides you with the ability to easily create these services. Once created, they act like any of the pre-built services and are consumed in exactly the same way as detailed above.Tailored extensions can be built that are industry specific (e.g., telco, finance, insurance, government, travel) or technology specific (e.g. security, ERP/CRM).Since these capabilities are enabled via Node.js,development of the services is done using JavaScript, one of the world’s most popular programming languages. Using Titanium Studio therefore provides users with a unified mobile development environment for both the client side apps as well as the backend cloud services, which o!ers significant benefits regardingproductivity, skillset re-use and training time.

4. Elastic scale to support user adoption

ACS automatically distributes the load from the mobile application tra”c to ensure a highly elastic environment. As your user adoption grows the back-end will transparently ensure the right amount of resource are allocated.

5. Flexible delivery models

ACS can be consumed in a variety of ways depending on your organization’s desired level of security and control.

-ACS Public Cloud: The back-end is hosted and managed by Appcelerator in the cloud

-ACS Virtual Private Cloud: The back-end is hosted and managed by Appcelerator in the cloud, but with dedicated infrastructure and VPN access for increased security and control

-ACS Private Cloud: The back-end is hosted and managed on your premises or data center, for maximum control and access to local data sources.

Enterprise Mobility: Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry

Massive Urbanization and Expanding Market place – Wide scope for Cement Industry

The massive urbanization in  the countries across the globe, particularly the densely populated countries has increased the scope for cement companies enormously. CW Research says there is an expanding demand between 3.5 and 4 percent per year for the coming years, expanding from 3.99 billion tons in 2013 to 4.78 billion tons in 2018. Meeting the demand with and efficient supply chain cement companies search innovating and adopting new technologies. As modern Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry create agile business procedures and improved dealer network accelerate sales and help meeting supply-demand in an expanding market place.

Identifying the challenges field employees face  

With the growing demand, companies face the challenge of Inventories rapidly moving in and out of the company.  Tracking inventory data is overwhelming with traditional methods, what follows is inaccurate inventory records, shipments and customer service issues.  Quality inspectors, managers and operators are challenged with manual processes to capture accurate inspection lot quality issues.  Field employees such as engineering and construction or sales reps face delay in Purchase Order and Purchase Release approvals due to slow manual processes. Fast technology advancement is now questioning traditional techniques in the cement industries.  Adopting to  new Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry that can bring operational excellence in business processes can help in addressing the situation.

ERP software solutions provide integrated businesses solutions. SAP is a neatly integrated ERP software, providing industry specific solutions for different industries with easy integration among all the departments. SAP solutions are most preferred as it provides solutions for large, mid-sized and small companies world-wide. It is most popular and flexible ERP solutions, which is 25% of the ERP solutions used by the companies world wide.

Does it make a difference Implementing Enterprise Mobility in the Cement Industry ?

Enterprise Mobility in today’s world has changed the dynamics of customer relationships. People today are digitally connected and informed through social media. Going mobile is a must for enterprises to provide improved services. Empowering employees with mobility enables them to update information from anywhere. Implementing Enterprise Mobility’s latest Trends & Developments in the Cement Industry improves dealer network.  Enabling access to accurate information to sales teams using Mobility helps them to answer customer queries, avoids down-time and increases customer satisfaction.   And it is not overwhelming that, the report via visage says the global enterprise mobility market will take in $140 billion a year by 2020.  As instant mobilization makes it possible with a range of Pre-packages apps available, ready to run within weeks.

Innovapptive provides enterprises with Pre-packaged apps in Line-of-businesses helping them consume & process information and change the way they conduct business.

According to leading industry analysts 50% of business applications will be accessed through mobile within two years, The reason is the way enterprise mobility apps function  to increase employee productivity, improve competitive advantage, enhance decision making making every organization to leverage the phenomenon.

Few of our apps which can transform business procedures and bring value are:

mQuality:  The Mobile Quality Management solution is an SAP® certified, a winning app of 2014 SAP Partner Edge Application Development for Mobile Challenge . The solution transforms manufacturing companies’ quality control and assurance process by being able to capture an SAP Quality Notification, along with images and GPS information – anywhere, anytime.

mInventory  - Extend your inventory management system into the field to increase availability and avoid downtime

mAssetTag – Using bar code scanning and RFID technologies mAssetTap helps managing   assets, tracking their location to ensure assets are not missing or stolen, and ensures upgrades and system deployments run effectively.

mWorklist -  mWorklist is a one stop solution for managers to approve all their work items from anywhere anytime. Instead of using one app per approval, mWorklist contains 16 out-of-the-box role based configurable SAP approvals.

 mRelease -   The PO or PR release (mRelease) helps in controlling budgets, to avoid unnecessary spend and provide optimization of stock levels.

mWorkOrder - Using this app field technicians can receive new work orders, push notifications and priorities in real time. It helps in avoiding any potential equipment failure, unexpected downtime, safety and environmental risks.

mSales Execution - The native mobile application enhances productivity of the sales rep, by providing critical insights into retail execution and increases revenue.

mShop - mShop mobile solution empowers field workforce to raise and manage their requisitions from anywhere, anytime.