About Mobile Workforce

With today's ever-progressing wireless technologies, it's
easier for people to work away from the office. Not only can they receive
and send an e-mail with mobile devices, they can also use Internet
access and powerful mobile devices to work away from the office
for longer periods of time.

Challenge

In spite of the constant advances in wireless technologies, receiving,
accessing, and modifying the latest information is still a major
challenge for the mobile workforce. As information changes, people
need the newest versions, whether they are in the office or not.
And they need to be able to access the newest information using
laptops, remote desktops, and mobile phones

When working remotely it's difficult to securely search through
large quantities of information in all of its available formats
and locations. Simply viewing files important to your work can be
difficult. If you don't have the files stored locally on your mobile
device, they might be in a location that is remotely inaccessible.
Mobile phones and computers outside the organization's firewall
might have problems connecting to internal information storage areas.
This can be a significant challenge for mobile workers that might need
access to company information, including knowledge stores, project
data, customer information, company policies, and training materials.

Even if your mobile workforce can access the files they need,
depending on file format and the capabilities of their mobile device,
the files might not even be viewable. When they are able to view
those files, they also need to be able to modify them or provide
feedback on them back to their team members or others in the organization.
Consequently, the major challenge in supporting the mobile workforce
is in effectively providing the type of access your mobile workers
need, no matter where they happen to be located.

Novell Solution

Novell Vibe is a next-generation, Web-based collaborative
application that allows users to view information from any device
that has access to the Internet. Since it is browser-based, Novell
Vibe allows information to be accessed through any Web-enabled device,
including Web-enabled mobile phones. Additionally, Novell Vibe
doesn't require any client software on your mobile devices.

Novell Vibe also provides a lightweight, secure, and easy
to use mobile user interface that incorporates most of the functionality
available in the standard Novell Vibe interface. Tailored to
the needs of mobile users, it presents a specialized view of Novell
Vibe workspaces, including a starting home page with quick links
to the most commonly used aspects of Vibe, such as workspaces,
favorites, search, teams, and what’s new. The mobile UI enforces
the same security and access controls as does the regular Novell
Vibe interface. While optimized for iPhone and Blackberry devices,
the new interface works with any mobile device with an HTTP/HTML-based
interface that supports HTML 4 and JavaScript. So, as long as you
have a connection to the Internet, you can access the information you
need, even files from your mobile device.

To address the problem of limited document support in some
mobile phones, Novell Vibe also has a document rendering engine
that presents mobile users an HTML view of most file types (over
400 formats supported). Although this rendered HTML view does not
allow file editing from a mobile phone, Novell Vibe does allow
comments to be posted on the file or on other information in the
Novell Vibe workspace.

The ability to assign e-mail addresses to each of your Novell
Vibe folders can also be a help to your mobile workforce. This
lets users simply e-mail information to those folders while being
mobile. Once the folders receive the e-mail, its information will
be incorporated into the Novell Vibe system, making it completely
searchable and accessible while on the road.

Also, any time information changes in Novell Vibe, it's updated
in real-time across the entire system. If a change is made by anybody
at any location, the change instantly becomes visible to everyone
else who has access to the information. This ensures that even mobile
users that access Novell Vibe from their mobile devices will always
have access to the most current information that they need.

Results

Whether they're using a laptop or mobile phone, Novell Vibe
enables mobile users to access any information they need to do
their job while away from the organization. Mobile users can easily
view and manage documents in Novell Vibe even if they don't have
the same application the document was created in. Mobile users can easily
and securely enjoy the same level of access to company information
that they have when in the office. Novell Vibe updates information
in real-time, always presenting the most recent version. Mobile
users can also easily contribute information to their organization's knowledge
base via e-mail without ever logging in to Vibe. Whether in the
office or mobile, users can always take advantage of the powerful
search options in Novell Vibe to quickly find the information
they need. Novell Vibe empowers mobile users to be more efficient
and effective by providing them constant access to the information
they need.