uMobile OverviewTaking Mobile Applications and Devices to the Next Level

Jennifer Bourey, UniconJasig-Sakai Conference 2012

About Unicon

Trusted Partner since 1993

Expertise in Open Source Software for Education

Professional Services for uPortal, Sakai, CAS, Shib, Grouper, and soon Student Success Planner

Innovative Cooperative Support Program

Common Themes to Date

Student or visitor-focused

Cater to campus life use cases

News, events

Maps, transportation

Maybe some course features

Often no authentication or personalization

Current Challenges

Diverse Audiences

Students

Provide course resources, grades, schedules

Support campus life and activities

Faculty and Staff

Payroll information, administrative resources

Diverse Audiences

Prospective Students

Admissions sessions and deadlines

Visitor parking

Alumni

Increase engagement and donations

Content Creation

Many departments want to publish mobile content

Departments have varying resources, technical expertise

Need for delegated authoring, administration

Development

Must develop code separately for each platform, mobile web

Requires developers to work with new and diverse technologies

New APIs for mobile modules

May change rapidly

Might not offer enough flexibility

Complex Integration Requirements

Complex higher ed environments

Data resides in many different systems

One university many have many campuses, schools

Complex audience

Diverse user populations

Users with overlapping roles

Collaboration Challenges

Desire for collaboration

Every university is different!

Harder to share open-source code effectively

Graphic copyright EducauseMobile IT in Higher Education, 2011http://www.educause.edu/MobileITinHigherEducation

App Distribution

Must republish to make even minor changes to app

Submission process adds delay, reduces control

Potential for mismatch between server and app

Introducing uMobile

uMobile is a Campus Solution

Delivers rich mobile campus platform for:

Visitors

Recruits

Students

Faculty

Staff

Alumni

uMobile is Native

iPhone Android

uMobile is Web

Android 1.5+

webOS 1.4.1+

Windows Mobile 6.5.1+(via Opera)

MeeGo 1.1

iOS 2.2.1+

bada 1.0+

uMobile is open source

Developed directly in Jasig control with all source code available under Apache Software License 2.0

Maintained by a community of developers governed by the Jasig uMobile Steering Committee

This is real open source enterprise software (i.e. no separate proprietary version that requires a licensing fee)

uMobile is Higher EduMobile builds on Jasig’s experience in enterprise higher education integration portals

Sophisticated and mature framework for personalization, aggregation, access control, integration, and administration

Production instances supporting millions of users

uMobile can be adopted stand-alone or as an extension of a “traditional” enterprise portal

Personalizing the Mobile Experience

Authentication

Display user-specific information

Calendars, course schedules

Support single sign-on to other mobile university websites

Role-based ContentUse existing campus roles to drive personalized content

Potential data sources

LDAP, Active Directory, Grouper

Local (app-specific) group definitions

Attribute-based ad-hoc groups

Use roles to distribute both module list and content within modules

Customization

Improve app usefulness and user engagement by allowing users to override defaults

Toggle optional calendar, news feeds

Select defaults and favorites

Add/remove optional content modules

Integrate with any desktop-side portal customizations

Authorization

Control permissions on modules and module content

Support privacy and data protection

Protected department resources

Directory data

Integrating with Campus Resources

Development Strategy

Where possible, support open data formats

Enable common implementations out of the box

Publish open APIs for custom integrations

Standards-based Development

Enable single sign-on

CAS, Shibboleth

Consume common data formats

RSS, iCal

Support common user attribute and group data sources

LDAP, Active Directory, Grouper

SakaiMoodle

SIS

DB

Campus Integration

Easing Development and Distribution

Native App ChallengesUnfamiliar and varied technology, dev environments

iOS: Cocoa

Android: Java

Need to implement a feature multiple times

Publishing apps takes time and effort

Still need another strategy for mobile browsers

Hard to leverage existing investment

A Better Strategy

What if we could . . .

Write features once

Using familiar technology

While offering both native and browser-based views

And re-using existing application logic

Single codebase produces all mobile views

Multiple native applications

Multiple mobile web browsers

No update to the mobile client app required

Familiar development environment

Potentially share logic with desktop functionality

Web-Centric Content

WebView presents markup from portal

Native components provide navigation

Multiple ViewsOften need a different feature or interface on one platform

Share backend logic as much as possible

Business logic

Controllers

Render separate view layers as needed

Separate layout / CSS for desktop, tablet, mobile

May need to omit chrome from native views

Multiple ViewsController

View Resolver

Desktop View

Mobile View

Model

Calendar Views

Phone

Desktopin-page

MobileMobile

Tablet

Native App Codebase

Based on Titanium Appcelerator

JavaScript-based platform-independent development framework

Compile shared codebase to iPhone and Android applications with native controls

Open source under the Apache 2.0 License

Native Components via REST

REST services provide JSON data for

User layout

Map data

Contacts information

REST feeds can easily be created for other areas

Present native components based on portal data

Request data fromuPortal map service

Return location data as JSON

uMobileServer

uMobileApp

Portlet-based Content

JSR-168 / JSR-286 portlet standards

Enables collaboration beyond uMobile project

Google Gadget integration

Alternate language modules

Provides a familiar, well-defined development model

Assures modules will work across uMobile versions

External Content

Leverage existing mobile investment

Allow departments to develop and control their own content

Enable web-based development in other frameworks

Include external content via WebView, IFrame, WebProxy

External Content

Application Skinning

Administrative Access

Cache Management Content Creation

StatisticsData Migration

Looking Ahead

Augmented reality map integration

Enhanced course and grades portlet

Custom mobile layouts

Additional native app platforms

Augmented Reality

uMobile is UniqueTruly Free & Open Source Software

Provides Native App and Mobile Web

Provides personalized experience and information

Build on mature, proven, scalable, enterprise integration portal framework

Ready for deployment at your campus now

No other platform has all of these characteristics

More Resources

Jasig uMobile web site

jasig.org/umobile

YouTube channel

youtube.com/jasigumobile

uMobile Manual

wiki.jasig.org/display/umobile

Questions?

Jennifer Boureyjbourey@unicon.net