Create a hybrid Xamarin Mobile App for an Existing Software product

Summary We need to create a mobile application for ServiceBox that will be installed on a users device. This application will be used to access the ServiceBox web site directly out of the application. So this will not be a native application at this point in time. The applications will likely be saved on the Apple app store or on the Google Play site. Users will need to download the applications from those locations. Windows Azure is the host for the ServiceBox application. Azure has the capabilities to handle push notifications for multiple platforms. Our mobile product will need to capture the push notification and use the notification to go into the area related to the notification. In the future, it will be essential to handle location specific actions. For example if a user is at a job site, for the app to be able to locate the job site/ customer/ active work orders / to dos quickly. This will make navigation even faster than it currently is. Since we are targeting businesses on the go we need to win in mobile. Design The app is going to have a simple design starting off. This design will include only a few features. We need to be able to easily increase new features without making the application feel congested. Phases We will create the application in Phases. Phase 1: - Basic app with browser frame - single user log in - Notifications for To dos and Work Orders - We already have email notifications but want to be able to do the same thing with mobile notifications. - Automatic Log in - Ensure Integrations with mobile are working (ie addresses to maps, phone calls, etc). Ie a user can click on a link in ServiceBox and it will open up google maps. - Android and IOS - Back Button - A way to get quickly to the menu or a day view In Phase 1 we will create an application that will consist of a browser frame. We will need to have some buttons and an intuitive layout to handle the different features explained below. The user will be able to enter in credentials for a single user of the tenant and will be able to open up and edit the settings of these ServiceBox login details (including login credentials). Once the user opens up the app they will be logged into servicebox. We also want to have it so if a user is on a certain page (or in between work), they are not disrupted. This is currently how ServiceBox works on a browser. One thing we need to handle is a back button. Because we are using the browser we need to be able to navigate back to previous pages. Notifications are going to be essential in the application. As mentioned earlier we will be able to use notifications from Microsoft Azure to push them to the user’s devices. We have two time dependent features that we will need to be notified about To Dos and Work Orders. For To dos by the end of this month we will have the features included so they can be assigned to users as well. So both To dos and Work orders (Technically Scheduled Items) will be assigned to individual users. We will need to be able to send out user specific items. So for To dos or scheduled work orders we’ll need to trigger a notification when the reminder date is triggered and notify the user. When the trigger occurs and the user clicks on it it should take the user to that specific item. We will need to see quickly the items that need to be completed. (so if we need to create a day view or something so that they can see all of the remindable info quickly) We will need to think about how to handle things like addresses and viewing sites on maps applications. It will be nice if a user can click on a link and it will open up in the maps application. We need to make sure that the phone numbers work as well. Email should also work.