Mobile core client architecture
Methods and systems are disclosed for automatically managing multiple types of applications, electronic forms, electronic forms data instances, network services and, network services. The methods and systems allow organizations with a mobile workforce that relies on established business processes to execute timely and secure exchange of information while providing easy to use, fast, accurate and flexible information capture capability in the field. These organizations and/or third-party providers may optimize the design of mobile applications to better match existing corporate processes and forms in order to reflect existing business needs, preferred graphical user interfaces, processes and experiences on the mobile devices. Organizations and/or third-party providers may also build mobile applications that allow information to be automatically created and updated both online and offline and synchronized or routed to another mobile device, an application server, web service, software-as-a-service (SaaS), database or website.
1. A system for automatically managing one or more processes created by a plurality of software providers, comprising:
a computer processor;
a memory; and
a mobile resource contextualization engine stored in the memory,
the mobile resource contextualization engine having computer readable instructions for execution by the computer processor,
the mobile resource contextualization engine being coupled with a mobile device having a plurality of applications running thereon;
the mobile resource contextualization engine configured to communicate with one or more network services available to the mobile device over a network, the mobile resource contextualization engine comprising:
a secure framework configured to control access to one or more context information exposed to mobile applications running on the mobile device;
a device context engine coupled with said secure framework and configured to exchange information with one or more information capture resource;
a network context engine coupled with said secure framework, the network context engine configured to communicate with one or more network services over a network;
wherein said device context engine and said network context engine communicate with a mobile context registry and said one or more context information exposed to said one or more processes running on the mobile device to allow the mobile device and the applications running thereon to utilize said plurality of context information;
an extensible application programming interface coupled with said secure framework and configured to allow said one or more processes to access said one or more context information and said one or more information capture resource; and
a call notification interface coupled with said secure framework and configured to receive updates for said one or more processes and configured to subscribe to changes in said one or more context information.
2. The system of claim 1 , wherein said one or more processes are selected from the group consisting of mobile applications, electronic forms, electronic forms data instances and business processes.
3. The system of claim 1 , wherein said one or more information capture resource are selected from the group consisting of cameras, scanners, GPS, magnetic card readers, and RFID readers.
4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more context information is selected from the group comprised of electronic form and electronic forms data instance.
5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more context information for each of said one or more processes is received by the mobile device from one of said one or more network services.
6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the device context engine is configured to automatically create a registry of processes that are available to the mobile device.
7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the network context engine is configured to automatically discover network services available to the mobile device.
8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the device context engine is configured to limit access to said one or more context information to authorized mobile applications only.