Document Management App Development on Xamarin

Customer

The Customer is a European company that offers products and services to help their clients make the most of the IFS Applications™ platform – an integrated ERP for businesses to carry out such processes as service and asset management, manufacturing, projects and supply chain management.

Challenge

Initially, ScienceSoft turned a number of the Customer’s ideas into successful products, namely two Xamarin mobile apps and a series of MS Office plugins to make document management easier for the IFS Applications™ users. For an increased market presence, the Customer decided to develop a new cross-platform app based on the IFS cloud solution. The tool would allow end-users – mostly, but not exclusively, contractors and engineers – to become more mobile and agile because they would be able to approve or reject documents on their mobile devices.

Solution

ScienceSoft tasks focused primarily on the client-side development of the application. The developers used the Xamarin.Forms platform to create an intuitive UI compatible with iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

The app was designed to serve a very narrow and specific purpose, so all the documents handled by it are split in three categories:

• To be approved
• Approved
• Rejected

Users can select a document for review, read it and then either approve or reject it. For some types of documents, it is possible to add a comment. The tool can process DOC, XLS, PPT, JPG and other types of files.

For an improved user experience, ScienceSoft’s Xamarin developers implemented large and visible action buttons atop a bright background.

ScienceSoft also developed web services to load and process documents from the IFS database.

Results

The Customer received a cross-platform mobile application in line with the requirements – a real-time tool that helps users enhance IFS document management significantly.

Technologies and Tools

Platforms: Xamarin.Forms, .NET 4.5.

Libraries: iTextSharp, Json.NET, Microsoft HTTP Client Libraries, Bouncy Castle PCL, User Dialogs Plugin for Xamarin.Forms.

Database management system: SQLite.