Workflow has been a hot topic for years. It allows users to streamline and automate steps that must be done for the business processes to be completed and accurate. As we move into a mobile workforce, how does mobile and workflow play together nicely?
The process you need to think about are mobile actions. These are little steps that can be done on a mobile device instead of a computer. If you facilitate these little transactions and give users a framework to accomplish their tasks, you are on your way to integrating mobile into your business workflow. Each action should be able to be completed on a computer or mobile device, so you need to offer your mobile users the same capability, kind of.
Mobile screens have their own unique issues and you need to consider these issues when designing software for your mobile users. Do they need to see 25 fields related to the record to accomplish the task at hand? Likely not. So present them with a nice summary of the data and give them easy to access single press actions that they can do in just a few taps. Here in one of our mobile apps, the user can use the buttons to perform quick actions against the record they have selected. Our actions have simple one word verbs; Assign, Reserve and Loan. Users already know the context and the actions are the same although more verbose on the web browser version.
This approach reduces the training curve to near zero and allows users to use either mobile or computer to accomplish the same task without compromise. That allows your business workflow to be fully integrated into your mobile workforce.