Data Integration for Mobile Devices – MobileTogether Works with FlowForce Server


When an offsite manager can read and reply to company email on a mobile phone, it’s only a short step to wanting access to all up-to-the-minute company data from the most convenient device.

Previously we’ve written about using FlowForce Server to generate HTML output that communicates data integration results. And yes, HTML results can be made available to Web browsers on mobile phones and tablets, but that’s an inferior solution for several reasons – the data will be cumbersome to view because it is not formatted for each device, and there is no interactive support for user interface controls built into mobile operating systems like buttons, combo boxes, edit fields, etc.

Fortunately, FlowForce Server jobs can be triggered by Altova MobileTogether solutions. The results are delivered directly to the mobile device and presented in a beautiful native-client form.

Altova MobileTogether is a unique cross-platform mobile development solution that includes functionality to work with FlowForce Server, and by extension MapForce Server, to bring data integration results to mobile devices to integrate business intelligence dashboards, elegant enterprise forms, and much more.

Here’s how a month-to-date sales report can appear on a mobile phone as a MobileTogether solution:

Month-to-date sales report on a mobile device, created with MobileTogether

When the solution launches, the sales manager selects the region and product, the report is generated by execution of the FlowForce Server job running on a server back in the enterprise data center, and the results are displayed.

The MobileTogether Designer can interface directly with FlowForce Server to define data sources for mobile solutions that request execution of FlowForce Server jobs. This means all compute-intensive data integration tasks can be performed by high-end servers, and only the results need to be delivered to the mobile device.

Defining a FlowForce Server data integration job as a data source in MobileTogether

Other MobileTogether data sources could be local data structures saved on the mobile device, files stored on the MobileTogether Server, XML or HTML structures read via HTTP requests, or even relational databases.

In the example report, a second results page displays sales rep standings in a scrollable window, as seen below on an Android phone. Note that the graph and data tables are automatically rendered to accommodate the display of each specific device.

Cross-platform sales rep standings report creatded in MobileTogether

It’s likely a sales manager will want to see reports for more than one product within a region, so a combo box provides immediate access to other products (shown again on an iPhone).

Combo-box selector in a report created with MobileTogether

Development is simplified because all the report data is delivered to the mobile device based on a single FlowForce Server data mapping. A single Mobile Together solution that triggers execution of the FlowForce Server job is created once in the MobileTogether Designer and deployed once to the MobileTogether Server.

The data integration task that generates the sales report combines the results of several SQL queries against multiple database tables and incorporates a Web Service lookup to get the up to the minute currency exchange rate. FlowForce Server result caching empowers instant data – delivered on demand to busy managers on the field.

Watch a Mobile Together Designer demo video to see how easy it is to build an elegant mobile solution.

You can begin working on your own impressive mobile solutions now – click here to download a free trial of MobileTogether Designer. And get started for yourself with Altova FlowForce Server – click here to download a free trial!

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