The New and Improved Telerik Platform Companion App

The Telerik Platform Companion app is better than ever, with improved app access, glanceable information and more. It's just one of many new features in the latest release for Telerik Platform.

Today, I’m happy to introduce the brand new companion app for the Telerik Platform, one that includes several highly requested features such as the ability to view console logs directly from your devices.

For a long time, companion apps have been a core feature of AppBuilder. They allow programmers to quickly iterate while developing and debugging, and testers to access the app without the hassle of going through TestFlight and provisioning devices. We gradually introduced companion apps for the three major mobile platforms—iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and they are hosting Cordova and NativeScript projects where possible.

But, as we added features, complexity crept in. And you demanded more from us—things like at a glance access to more information about your apps and easier access to your projects.

Because there are a lot of features, we had to think long and hard about the best way to organize them for clarity and maintainability. Our solution is a new app that offers a more streamlined way to work with the Telerik Platform—the Telerik Platform Companion app. This app is part of the latest AppBuilder release. Go ahead, download it now from either of the app stores below:

When you start our new Platform Companion app, we show a very quick tutorial showing the most important features. Once you get familiar with the app, you can go to the main screen.

The good old trustworthy QR Scanner is here and you can continue using it as before—nothing changed with that. But we augmented it with the ability to select and use any of your mobile apps right from the Companion App itself! To do this, tap “My Apps.” You can log into your existing Platform account or create one, if you are experimenting. Log in, and you will see the list of your current apps—both native and hybrid. To test an app on your device, simply tap “Open.”

The Companion App Is Made with Telerik Platform Itself

If you look closer at the screen shot, you can see that we built our companion apps with the Platform itself—we make good use of our services. We even imbued our Companion app with the power to update itself with the help of AppManager LiveSync. For example, I took this screen shot of our app while writing the blog post:

Information at a Glance

Going back to the list of your apps, you can find another nifty feature. While AppBuilder offers excellent debugger tools, sometimes the easiest way is to write a log file using console.log function. Now, this log file is available at your fingertips. To see it, tap on the app while it runs. This shows basic information for the app and allows you to access its log. Then tap "View Log."

Additional “at a glance” information we provide is beneath the “Help & About” button. It shows all Cordova Plugins and NPM packages available to your apps in Companion apps, so you never need to read the boring documentation about this. Also, you can check the current version of the app frameworks used in the companion apps, so you know what your apps are being tested against:

Wrapping Up

Companion apps are one of the most used features of Telerik Platform and the new Platform app is just a herald of things to come. For example, we will add stronger integration with our Analytics service. For our initial release, we wanted to bring the most requested features first.  If you want to tell us what you need, please vote for your favorite feature on our feedback portal!