Mobile App for eZ Conference 2010

Development of a mobile app to display the conference programme for the eZ Conference 2010

Customer: silver.solutions

silver.solutions is an IT services provider whose main focus of activity is on eCommerce applications and their integration into ERP systems, and developing web portals for media companies. silver.solutions has been relying on the eZ Publish CMS since 2002 for this and has been a partner of eZ Systems for a number of years. Its innovative Web-Connector eCommerce interface won the eZ Award in 2007.

Job:

The basic idea was to provide participants at the eZ Conference 2010 with a free application for their smartphones so they could quickly and easily see every event at a glance. As one of the focal points of this year’s conference was on new mobile terminals, this was an obvious way to practically demonstrate eZ Publish’s capability in this area.

Solution:

Appcelerator’s Titanium software was used as a development platform for the application. Thanks to Titanium, the app could be made available for both Apple mobile devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad) and the Android platform without significant additional expense.

To create the application, two new classes were added to an existing eZ system. The attributes for an event are defined one and the attributes for additional information (restaurant, location etc) in the other. The events and additional information are each located in a separate folder.

The mobile terminals use a local database where the individual data fields are synchronised. The benefit of this is clear. Users only need a data connection for the initial synchronisation process. This saves them money and enables them to use the application offline, even in places where there is no WLAN or mobile network.

Another advantage of working with the database is that specific queries about the data pool can be made and events can be displayed according to fairly specific criteria, e.g. all presentations starting within the next 15 minutes. A Favourites function was also enabled via the database. Clicking on the Favourites icon for an entry copies it to a separate table. Users can then call up a list of their favourites at any time.

Benefit:

A high-performance mobile app took just a few days to be developed using eZ Publish and Titanium, and was ready in time for the start of the eZ Conference in Berlin. The app was very popular with all the participants and provided an excellent demonstration of the strengths of eZ Publish as a content management platform.