SAP Portal on Smartwatch – Part 2: Apple Watch

[Former Member]

In the first part of our „Portal on smartwatch“ blog series my colleague Michael demonstrated the BTEXX mobilePortal prototype for the Pebble smartwatch. Today as the Apple Watch is released in many countries I want to share some information on our Apple Watch prototype with you.

WatchKit Apps

At first I was sceptical about business apps on smartwatches. Who wants to use this tiny screen for more than fitness tracking? After spending a lot of time in the Apple Watch simulator I changed my mind. Don’t think of smartwatches as a replacement for your current tools but as an addition! Your users should be able to choose the right tool for the right time!

With our first WatchKit App "My Tasks" you don't have to take out your phone or even your notebook to approve yet another time correction. Browse through your UWL inbox and open your tasks to access detailed information and approve (or reject :wink: ) the tasks directly on our wrist!

Notifications

Push Notifications on the Apple Watch are pretty similar to the ones you know from your iPhone. You receive a short text and some custom actions. Here's an example of an UWL notification from our prototype:

You get some basic information on the updated UWL task and the available actions. You can approve the request directly on your watch without using your iPhone. Of course sometimes you can’t decide without further information. In this case just open the task on your iPhone with the BTEXX mobilePortal or in the iOS Notification Center.

Architecture

For our prototype we completely reused our BTEXX mobilePortal 2.0 backend. The app itself is implemented in Swift and uses the Apple WatchKit Library.

WatchKit Apps are basically just extensions to native iPhone apps. Right now the code of third party apps runs on the iPhone while the Apple Watch acts as an external touchscreen. Later this year Apple will provide the possibility to develop fully native Apple Watch Apps. This should bring some improvements regarding features and performance.

At the moment wearables are still a research field for us - we’re trying to figure out what can be done and more importantly what should be done with smartwatches in the business context.

I’m looking forward to your feedback and questions!

Best regards

Conrad

About BTEXX

Based on the connection between user perspective, SAP technology and process know-how, BTEXX implements user-friendly solutions that make companies more efficient and users happy.