SCN on Android anyone?

[Former Member]

I somtimes wonder if I am the only one or one of a minority who has serious troubles to consume/participate in SCN due to the simple fact that I'm using Android based devices rather than a MS PC or an Apple iSomething for most of my internet related activities.

My usual usage of SCN nowadays - since to me the current platform is simply not usefully navigateable - is to follow some email notifications on content from spaces or users I somehow follow. Usually I take note of that mails every now and then and want to follow up on interesting ones later when I have time. Usually I want to do that from my Samsung Smartphon or tablet by clicking 'View th full discussion' or some similar link. Another 'access vector' is my Twitter stream where I get tweets on interesting SCN content. Latter I do also consume nearly entirely from some mobile devices.

But clicking such links always leads me to some awfully slow loading in the browser (interestingly no matter what browser I use, my main browser being chrome though). And with slow I mean so slow that I usually cancel it unless I forgot it on a different tab anyway.

Funnily I once thought of investing some time to find out what's really wrong with SCN when loading it on my Android device but since I got the impression that the relevant SCN team doesn'T give much on such observations I forgot about that analysis.

So for me the current somewhat unsatisfying status is this

- I largely decreased my usage of the site since the navigation capabilities of SCN seem to not fit to my intellectual ones

- since the login doesn't recognize me for more than a year the SCN site gets much less info on my usage since I do only very rarely login and rather surf anonymously

- the world advanced and I followed that trend and fire up my full blown PC only for dedicated work and even then consume blogs and similar stuff in parallel from some handier device like a tablet. for many sites this allows me to participate from anyplace next to real time and only on SCN this practically excludes me from participation.

Strange thing I think. What'S your opinion on that?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

If you use Chrome Beta you can make certificate login work and life on SCN is much easier. I assume the certificate support will make it to the non-beta Chrome at some point, but no idea when. The beta seems to work well enough for me - I've not encountered any problems using it. Thanks to @Christopher_Paine

You could also try the Jive mobile app. That also works very well, but doesn't help with the "following links from other places" problem. For browsing spaces and discovering content directly in SCN it works pretty well, though. I use it quite a lot for keeping up with my Activity stream while I'm away from my desk.

Steve.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thx Steve.

Chrome Beta really seems to work as a workaround. Interestingly Chrome Beta doesn't show up in my Google Play Store (here in Europe) so I had to look it up in the browser and follow the download link from there.

Why the SCN site cannot identify my client OS and user agent string and based on that either omit searching for client certificates or give me a hint on what to do remains a puzzle to me. Additionally it's not really obvious to me where to get that client certificate (in former times it was possible by a SAP passport from the market place (which required market place credentials) and then I remember some device registration for the actual platform which, if I recall correctly, leads to some different URL for mobile (which wouldn't be resolved if I follow links from mail notifications, Twitter or elsewhere.

Cheers, anton

[midhun_vp · Accepted solution]

You can use the hybrid mobile app for Android.

http://scn.sap.com/community/about/blog/2012/10/19/scn-goes-mobile

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Midhun VP,

thx for your advice. Basically those possibilities look good, especially the rendering, though they both have the major disadvantage that they are served from an alternative domain. Therefore no link to scn.sap.com, e.g. from Twitter, Google search, Email resolves to them.

IMHO the standard site should identify the client OS and browser and if it receives a hit from an android device (fulfilling version requirements) it should (once!) ask the user if he wants to be re-directed (including instructions on how to obtain the native app or required browser and where and how to obtain an activation code). Once the user chose an option it should be an automatic re-direct to the appropriate channel.

Or the native app should register itself for scn.sap.com, be selectable in Open with ... once a scn-link is klicked anywhere and subsequently do the URL-re-writing to re-direct to the jive-site. E.g. Twitter works like that AFAIK.

Or whatever other options there are to provide a satisfying user experience.

Regards,

anton

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Yes, if there was a way to get the Jive app to open when following links from other apps (esp. Twitter) then it would be much more useful. I have no idea how that is done with Android apps, but it is clearly possible. Do we need to get Jive themselves to add this? Anyone know?

Steve.

[midhun_vp · Accepted solution]

You are right Anton. I had the same comment regarding the need of an SCN mobile app.

Then I came to know about the Jive app and started using it.

Lets expect such an app in the future.

[JasonLax · Accepted solution]

There would be value in this: that links open in the Jive App rather than the browser. This would be up to the app provider to develop: Jive.

I've just posted a review on the app in Apple App Store.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I think it should work rather simple on Android with something like this:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15245037/path-pattern-for-intent-filter

of course this needed to be implemented in the Jive App. Unfortunately as I understand, the setting is in the manifest file of the app and therefore a URL pattern cannot be supplied by user configuration. This means that JIVE had to update its app whenever it wants a new customer URL to be added to the manifest. Or provide each customer with its own app compilation.

Or an Android guru proves my qucik shot wrong and/or provides an even better solution.

anton

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Not being able to specify the patterns at runtime seems like a major oversight. I hope there's a way around it...

[Former Member]

Firefox on my Galaxy Tab 10.1  Adriod 4.3, can handle sso certificate from SMP. Just installed 10 min ago. Will test it now....

............

.so far it works on SAP Support Portal, here on SCN and on SAP Partneredge.com

Message was edited by: Hans Christian Hansen