Lifesciences
The new and improved CARA Mobile App is here, bringing CARA users more ways to manage content, complete workflows, and do your job on the go. To show you just what CARA on mobile can do, we asked Generis CTO Mariusz Pala a few questions:
Q: Firstly, where can users download the CARA Mobile App?
Currently, the app supports both iOS and Android on mobile devices only. Support for tablets is currently in the hands of our QA team and will be available very soon.
Q: What can users do on the new CARA Mobile App?
Users can do a great deal of what is possible on the CARA Platform web app in terms of search, document management, and workflows. You can browse through your workspaces and views, search for content, filter results, view navigations. It’s a simplified view adjusted to a mobile screen but you can still view properties of content, and preview content like on the web app.
But what I believe is the main function of CARA on your mobile device is that it can act as your inbox. The app has push notifications so when a task is sent your way, you can get a notification pop up on your phone that takes you straight to the task. You can see the task, the attachments, view the content, and review, approve, reject etc. in order to complete the task.
The app also has QR code scanning, so users can generate a unique QR code for any document, which can then be scanned by another user to instantly bring up the document on their app.
Q: How does it differ to the old CARA Mobile App?
Our older CARA Mobile App is based on CARA V.3, which is a front-end UI for Documentum. The new app is based on CARA V5, so the main difference is that, the same as the web app, CARA is it’s own cloud platform, with it’s own single information lake as a repository.
With the new CARA mobile app, you can connect multiple CARA instances using the server ID. Plus, there are many more features to search through your data – like workspaces, views, filters, and navigation through nodes. Something that wasn’t available in the old app is that you can now use aggregations too.
But the most important feature for customers is the inbox coupled with push notifications, which weren’t available previously. So now you can view the document and approve it without leaving your phone.
Q: How will it work with new releases?
In terms of updates and new releases, it works on its own release schedule, we update and add new features, and apply fixes to the mobile version as we find them.
It’s worth noting that because we have a stable rest API, the mobile app is backwards compatible and works with CARA versions 5.10 and newer. In the future, we may review this and have support from say 5.11 and newer, but for now it supports v5.10 – v5.13.
Q: Does the mobile app impact security & compliance in any way?
The CARA mobile app is just as secure as the web app. As always, protecting customer data and ensuring customers stay compliant is a priority. In terms of access, the app supports SSO, as well as biometric (face and touch ID) login. It also supports MFA if customers use in-line users.
Q: Does the customer need to enable use of the app or is it automatic?
At the moment anyone who has access to CARA can access the mobile app, all you need to do is define your server to connect it to the app.
Due to some customer restrictions, and based on customer feedback, we have plans on the roadmap to make the app available only to a defined group of users. We are going to add a group in CARA, and only if you are a part of this ‘Mobile Group’ can you access the app.
This way we are adding another layer of user control into the hands of our customers, and they can then define which users have access to the app – whether it’s all, or a selection, that is up to them.
Q: What is the key benefit of the app in your eyes?
I mentioned earlier, but the real benefit for users is being able to, while on the go, get a notification about a task straight to your phone, and be able to quickly make decisions, complete workflows, review and approve documents. This is the game-changer.
This is especially important for key decision makers in a company. As we heard directly from one of our customers, it was often these senior employees who had a desire for a CARA app because they need to act fast or complete several tasks without always being sat at a desk and logging on to a desktop.
Much like with the CARA Platform in general, we care a great deal about increasing efficiency in organisations, making processes run smoother and faster, and this app is an extension of that goal.
Q: Can you share any future plans for the app?
We do plan to follow the CARA roadmap, implementing what functionality we believe will work well on the mobile app. Right now we have a subset of functionality, as of course the mobile app can’t support every feature and function of the web app.
Something I’m very excited to get into the mobile app is our latest AI innovation – the Chat with Data feature. This is a unique feature that makes a big difference for users in CARA. AI is such an important topic right now, and we’ve been working hard to make sure that any AI additions to CARA aren’t just for the sake of AI, but make a real difference and contribute to our goal of increasing efficiency for customers. I know this will also make a great addition to the mobile app.
In the short term we will be adding features like a Calendar, which will include synchronisation with calendars, and being able to view items and events in a calendar. And also the ability to annotate documents too.
My long-term goal for the mobile app however, is to make it so you can control a vast amount of business processes from one app in your pocket – not just content.
We know that we can use CARA to build almost anything we want. For example, internally we used CARA to build server management, which means we can manage our own infrastructure without buying another tool. Within that we built custom actions that allow us to start, stop, restart a server, deploy a new version and so on. And we want to be able to add these custom actions to the mobile app as well, that would mean when you build your system you don’t have to buy or build a dedicated mobile application to manage it. You can use CARA to manage anything you want, it’s just a matter of creating custom actions. This would open up a number of doors; customers would be able to use CARA for anything from starting servers, to logging hours and approving holiday requests, all from a single mobile app.
This is of course a bit down the line, for now we need more users, more data, and more feedback. But it is a possibility I see in the future.
