Today, we’re going to do an experiment in which IDV’s Visual Fusion for SharePoint (VFSP) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is used to generate content that can be viewed on the hottest phone on the market. No, I’m not talking about Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone, I’m talking about Apple’s iPhone.

The iPhone features an application called Maps which allows a user to search for addresses, obtain driving directions, and store a list of “bookmarked” locations. OS integration enables the user to map the location of an address within their Contacts list at the tap of the screen.

As has been reported elsewhere, the iPhone supports basic GeoRSS and KML. I have not yet tested its KML capabilities, but as far as GeoRSS is concerned, Maps can only display points. The more complicated geometries of polygons and polylines are not currently supported.

So for labs.idvsolutions.com’s inaugural experiment we will use VFSP to generate a GeoRSS from a SharePoint list and load the resulting feed into Maps on the iPhone.

First, assuming that VFSP is installed on your SharePoint server, you will need to create a new VFSP Geo Custom List.

Then add the data points you are interested in. For this particular experiment, we will be using the locations of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

When you are finished adding your locations, select View GeoRSS Feed from the Actions menu.

Copy the URL to the GeoRSS that is generated. The URL will look something like this:

http://wondersoftheworld.idvsolutions.com/GetList.vfsp?
ListGuid={2d66d614-1130-4548-96b9-c20068e18c0b}
&outputformat=grss

If you attempt to access the above link from your iPhone, the GeoRSS will be treated as though it were an RSS and will open in an RSS reader. For the feed to load in the Maps program, append the URL to the end of a Google Maps request, like so:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=
http:%2F%2Fwondersoftheworld.idvsolutions.com%2FGetList.vfsp%3F
ListGuid%3D%7B2d66d614-1130-4548-96b9-c20068e18c0b%7D
%26outputformat%3Dgrss

(Note: For this to work, you must URL-encode the address of the GeoRSS that you are passing to Google Maps. Go here for information on URL-encoding as well as a tool which can encode the URL for you.)

Since the iPhone has no copy/paste functionality, you can either type the entire URL into the search field in the Maps application, or go the much easier route and email yourself the URL.

Clicking on that nasty looking link above should open the GeoRSS feed in the Maps application. Let’s see Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone do that!