Configuring an Intranet Application in LINK

Link allows you to mobilize your Intranet by mapping Intranet URLs to tiles that appear on the home screen in the Link app. Through this mechanism, you can either mobilize an internal site (e.g., your Intranet) or 1 or more important pages within a larger site (e.g., the search page and the directory page in your Intranet).

The Link browser is generally compatible with any modern web application that does not use any of the legacy “rich-client” web technologies (i.e. Flash, Silverlight). However, Link’s method for proxying web traffic through the Link gateway can, in some cases, introduce compatibility issues with some web applications. If you run into any such issues, please consult with Mobile Helix support as we have a variety of configuration options available to resolve such issues.

All tiles in Link are role-based, meaning that different groupings of users can see different subsets of the configured tiles. Through this mechanism, you can customize the user’s experience in the Link app based on his or her role in your organization.

Prerequisites

Mobilizing a web application in Link requires 3 pieces of information:

  1. The start URL of the application – this is the URL that you want the Link app to load when the user taps on the tile that you create for this application.

  2. A name for this application and any additional descriptive text. This must be concise as space is limited, but it should clearly indicate to the user what the tile mobilizes.

  3. An icon, which is used as a simple visual indicator to help the user identify each tile.

Application Basics

On the Applications tab in the Link Controller, click the “Create” button.

Select Web Application

Select the type as “Web Application”.

Enter Application Name

 

Enter a name for this application, which must be unique within the Controller. If the name you would like to appear at the top of the tile in the Link app differs from the unique name, enter that in the “Display Name …” field. The “Category Name” is required, and it is used to separate tiles in the Link app into groupings (with a header in between them). This field will auto-complete to existing categories within the Controller, but you can type a new value here to create a new category.

 

The “Group Number” is used to order this tile relative to other tiles in the same category. Categories are ordered by group number primarily, then alphabetically within each group.

 

The last field, “Restrict Application Devices”, would be used to introduce restrictions like only displaying a device on iOS vs. Android, or iPhone vs. iPad. Consult Mobile Helix support if you would like to enable this functionality.

Roles

Next, select the user roles that should be permitted to see this application. Move roles that should see the application from the left to the right box on the page by double-clicking on the role or using the buttons to move list items from “Available Roles” to “Selected Roles.”

Web Application Basics

This section focuses entirely on the display of this application on the device:

  • “App description” is the grey text at the bottom of the app tile in tiles mode, or to the right side of the list in list mode.

  • “App icon” is the icon used in the tile or in the list entry in the Link app.

  • “Show splash screen on device” displays an icon on the loading screen when the app is loading from the network.

  • “Splash screen image” is the image to show during loading

  • “Display as full screen” should be generally toggled OFF. Leaving this toggle on hides the header bar of the Link Browser, removing the exit button and the back/forward/refresh/stop buttons.

  • “Hide the bottom tab bar …” – this is a legacy option. Ignore.

  • “Display this app on the device” – toggle this off to hide this app from display on the device without otherwise changing this application record. This is useful when you are testing various tiles and want to temporarily toggle a tile on/off.

  • “Filter passwords …” is a security feature that attempts to block users from sending a password to this web application. This feature has limited use cases. Please use in consultation with Mobile Helix support.

URL

This section specifies what Link loads when the user taps on the tile for this Application:

  • “Full URL …” is the URL to load when the user taps on the tile. Load this page in a desktop browser first and confirm that it is the page that you want a user to see upon tapping the tile.

  • “URL filter…” is a feature to allow you to exclude certain parts of an intranet site from mobile access. Contact Mobile Helix support for more detail.

  • “Show address bar …” determines whether a text box is shown in the Link browser with the URL that the user is currently browsing. Users can also type a new address in the address bar to browse to a different address.

Advanced Settings

These settings are used to customize the load behavior of a web application or to modify the load behavior of that application:

  • “Javascript to inject …” allows for the injection of custom javascript into a web application page. Consult Mobile Helix support before using this option.

  • “Application-specific scripts to inject …” allow for the injection of scripts that are shipped with Link to enhance the compatibility of specific web applications. Again, consult with Mobile Helix support before using this option.

  • “Inject a debug script …” is a useful way to debug web applications when you are working with a support representative.

  • “Inject a meta viewport tag …” tells the browser to scale the width of a loaded page to the device width. Most applications already include this viewport tag, so leave this option off unless you have consulted with support first.

  • “This app uses authentication over HTTP …” toggle this to “on” for IIS applications that use “Windows Integrated Authentication” to automatically authenticate users without any additional sign-on.

  • “Use the newer …” this is a legacy option for older versions of the Link app. Ignore.

  • “Use an alternative user agent …” is useful for applications that reject the user agent sent to the application by the Link app. In such a case, open the desktop web browser that you normally use to access this web application. Browse to google.com, and enter the search query “my user agent”. Copy the value in the “Your user agent” box into this text box in the Controller.

  • “Disable redirect handling …” is an option that you can use to try to fix an application that is not loading correctly in Link. Use in consultation with support.

  • “Forward the Referer …” by default Link does not forward the Referer header to mobilized sites. Turn this on only in the case that a mobilized site requires it.

  • “Allow documents downloaded from this app to be edited” allows an Office Document downloaded from this app to then be edited using Link’s local “Open In” edit method.

  • “Allow documents downloaded from this app to be annotated” allows a PDF or a converted Office Document downloaded from this app to be annotated with Link’s PDF tools.

  • “Auto convert Office documents to PDF …” enables the automatic conversion of all Office Documents and text files to PDF so that they open as annotatable PDFs in the Link Documents viewer. This toggle must be “on” for the “Allow documents …” toggles to work correctly.

When you are done working through all options in the Application record, click “Save” in the blue header bar to save this application record.

Assign the new Application to a Profile

After creating an Application in the Link Controller, the final step is to assign this application to the “Default Apps Profile” profile on the “Profiles” tab in Link. Profiles apply an additional set of feature restrictions to an app. In advanced configurations, profiles may be customized to different user roles.

Edit the “Default Apps Profile” and move the app that you just created from the “Available Applications” to “Selected Applications” by double-clicking on it, or by using the arrow buttons.

 

Mobile Helix, Inc.