I was given a link to download Briefcase Pro which is a new iPad product from Colligo.

 

Like their earlier products for Windows machines, the idea is that you have an off-line copy of key parts of your SharePoint site(s) with very effective syncing between the two.

 

The free versions of those Windows products were Read-Only and the versions that cost money also allowed update.

 

The Windows version has been developed over the years and is a solid product that I have always recommended especially to people who say that they want people at their foreign subsidiaries with slow lines to be able to work with a central SP site.

 

The question is whether the iPad version is as good.

 

The short answer (and the title of the post gave this away) is that it's not as there are a number of problems with it.

 

Firstly the installation went as smoothly as most iPad apps installations. The problems started later.

 

Problem 1:

 

The first thing you do is to select a site you want to make an off-line copy of. You do this by (of course) entering the URL of the site but then (not of course) you are forced to enter a Name and Password for accessing the site.

 

I did this automatically the first time as I was accessing my own wssv4faq.mindsharp.com but later I tried without it (and with a nonsense name and password) when accessing wssv3faq.mindsharp.com and indeed it refused to accept no entries there even though the site is completely freely accessible to anonymous users. (The fake name password got past that screen but then didn't work).

 

Problem 2:

 

The next step is that once the web site is accessed you are given a list of Lists and Libraries to select from. This works well.

 

Problem 2 is that by default by selecting the lists all that is happening is that you are getting the contents of the list *when you are on-line*. The Problem in other words is that by default you are not getting an Off-Line copy of the site.

 

As default settings for a product that we are used to using with Windows portables to give us just that - an off-line copy - this is a very strange default setting.

 

It's clear that the logic is that iPads have limited amount of storage space but then a) we know that when selecting the List/Libs we want to access and b) we are capable of turning off the off-line setting.

 

In the case of my sites all the lists except the FAQ (which is text only and therefore also small in size) only contain links so hardly any storage space is needed.

 

[Yes, these are links that you need access to the Internet to access, but you can do your research off-line; collect the suitable URLs to try (put in iPad Notes for instance) and then access them in rapid succession next time you do have Internet access]

 

Problem 3: (Views)

 

Views do not work at all well.

 

When you first open a list the items are in alphabetical order. Always. The default View is ignored completely.

 

Some of the views don't work even if selected (later).

 

For instance I have a View that shows the latest 20 items in descending date order. There's no sign of that 20 items restriction.

 

Another example are what I'll call "nested" views. They don't work at all.

 

In fact all that seem to work are the straightforward single thread sorted by description; sorted by date etc. views.

 

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So there are the three main problems (today: March 2012).

 

Installation is fine and the sync works well which is probably the most difficult thing to get right, but they must solve the above three problems before I start recommending the product.