Ensuring Content Compatibility Across Platforms
CLM uses open web standards, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create and deploy content because there is a wealth of knowledge in our agencies. Unfortunately, current web browsers (IE, Chrome, Safari, etc.) are sometimes inconsistent or inaccurate when interpreting these open standards. As a result, web content publishers spend significant time testing content and creating workarounds for incompatibilities across browsers.
CLM was introduced only on Veeva CRM for iPad so there was only Mobile Safari to support on the iOS platform. Agencies used specific capabilities available on Safari which limited their testing to that browser. As a result, content created for Veeva CRM for iPad is not likely to run in CLM on CRM Desktop platforms without re-work and testing.
Creating Content
To help reduce the amount of re-work, testing, and workarounds, use the following guidelines when creating HTML content for CLM:
- Use web design best practices to create content that functions on both iPad and Windows
- Build and design content that can be deployed across:
- different screen resolutions
- two different web browsers (Internet Explorer 11 and Mobile Safari)
- Be familiar with responsive design best practices. Responsive design allows content to scale in response to the size of the screen displaying the content
- Do not use fixed width designs if the goal is to deploy content on multiple platforms
Downloading Content
While an iPad can hold 16 GB of files or more, downloading that amount of content over 3G/4G (or even WiFi) can take several hours. For the best end user experience, the total sync time should not take over an hour. Internal testing over a 3G connection on an iPad 1 (the slowest device and connectivity combination possible) found that a content sync of 1360 MB of data took between 20 to 40 minutes to download.
While there is no technical limitation for larger media libraries, longer sync times and degraded performance of media might offset the advantages of having larger, more complex files.
|
Data |
Size / unit |
|---|---|
|
HTML5 |
2 MB |
|
Video |
10 MB |
|
Images |
0.25 MB |
If HTML5 pages are created without using transparent PNG files, the size can often be reduced to 25 percent of the size from 2 MB to 0.5 MB by using JPG instead of PNG. This also improves the load time of the page, allowing smoother and more attractive transitions.
While it is possible to load much larger files into HTML5, if those files use up all the memory on the device, Veeva CRM may crash when displaying the content or soon after exiting CLM. During testing, it is important to test displaying and interacting with HTML5 content repeatedly to ensure memory issues do not occur. Memory warnings may appear in the log on the device to identify possible memory issues, although a warning may not always appear and a warning may not always indicate an impending crash. XML parsing within HTML5, complicated JavaScript references, non-default fonts, CSS 3D transformations, and more may be technically possible, but are known to use up a lot or even all of the memory.
The newer iPad and iPad 2 devices provide slightly more memory, which may allow them to display more complex content. It is important to test thoroughly with the oldest model and lowest OS version combination deployed to the field and to imitate real world situations (such as other apps running besides Veeva CRM) to ensure compatibility across versions.
Providing images at a larger resolution allows users to zoom in on parts of the media, adding a level of interactivity and appeal to the media. Complex images can be compressed to about 250kb without visibly impacting quality. If images are significantly larger than 100kb, changing the quality settings or using a different tool to create the jpgs can reduce their size.
PDFs are best used for long-format media, such as reports and articles, as users typically do not display every page from a PDF document. For shorter media and presentations, images or HTML5 provide better navigational experience and more accurate reporting.
Converting PowerPoint Presentations to Images
With Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 or newer, entire presentations can easily be exported as images. When viewing a presentation within PowerPoint, content creators can perform the following steps to export the presentations as images:
- Select the Office button.
- Select Save As.
- Select Other Formats.
- Select jpeg (or png) from the Save as type dropdown.
PowerPoint then displays a popup asking whether to export the current slide or every slide in the presentation. After making a selection, the images are created and ready for use.
Download Times
Estimated download times are provided in the following table using the basic formula of file size / avg. download speed.
|
Average Download Speed |
File Size |
||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
200 MB |
500 MB |
1 GB |
|
Download Time |
|||
|
512 Kbps |
53 minutes |
2.2 hours |
4.6 hours |
|
1 Mbps |
27 minutes |
67 minutes |
2.3 hours |
|
5 Mbps |
5 minutes |
13 minutes |
27 minutes |
|
10 Mbps |
3 minutes |
7 minutes |
14 minutes |
|
20 Mbps |
1 minutes |
3 minutes |
7 minutes |
These times represent download time in perfect conditions. However, because many factors affect actual download time, download speeds may vary dramatically. Network speed, data syncing, number of zip files, and connection times for each media request can all alter download time. For example, one 1GB zip file can take 35 minutes to install with a 5Mbps connection while 1000 1MB zip files can take 60 minutes to install at the same connection speed.
Special care should be taken to determine the download speeds which are actually available to users. Veeva recommends content syncs be performed over a fast WiFi connection.
Since the system records detailed statistics about every piece of media displayed, unused media should be reviewed regularly and removed to ensure users can quickly find the current and most important media and maintain fast download performance.
