How do you share app specific content?

Question

I'm looking to find out how best to share app specific content.

I'm creating a news app which includes polls at the bottom of the article. I'd like the ability to share the poll but I'm wondering where someone else on desktop (via the generated share link) would go in order to interact with the poll.

Would we need a separate web view where users can interact with the poll and include a link to the app?

As an example, I was looking at the YPlan app... they don't have a presence on desktop where you can browse events. However, you can still share content and the generated link goes to a web view where you can still purchase events...

Any information on the share journey from apps would be great!

Answer 1

The question is...confusing. If you are able to store the poll data in an app, then you're able to do so on the web as well. However you store the poll data should in theory be visible and editable (add-only, like 1-vote adding per mac address for example) and then the two would be relatively in sync. Then all you have to do is just make sure that the app reloads the data every time the article loads (which it'll need to do anyways) and that the website does the same.

So to answer, yes, you would need a separate web view, not just for interaction but for viewing. Since this is a news app, I assume there's a corresponding news site, so this shouldn't be a major issue.

Take for example the YPlan app (or older versions of Instagram)... they don't have a presence on desktop where you can browse events, they just have the app. However, you can still share content and the generated link goes to a web view which is interactive still... I was looking for an answer on how this works.

That's typically called a web responder, and is basically a web version of the app. I've gone through building two of these, and it's a nightmare every time. Effectively it's building a dumbed-down version of your native app as a web-app (because building a full version would be too expensive). A number of apps do this, and I highly recommend against building and using web responders. They're generally not a good experience for users. In your case, for voting, you don't need that; you just need a website to be able to access the same database that the app does and to be able to update it.

Answer 2

This answer is very specific to your use case.

TL;DR

Since you have mentioned you only have an application, and do not want to create a web view. You could generate text and links for options, and every link would simply count as a vote.

Elaborate explanation:

From the sharing menu, you could generate text. The text will include the question of the poll and the answers(options) for it. There will be a link corresponding to every answer. That link will access your database and upvote the specific answer. This is easy to implement if you have a general way of generating polls. If your poll structure changes everytime, then it'll be a nightmare coding a single solution for it.

Again, this is only a work around. This also has a lot of issues, like multiple votes from the same person.

Conclusion:

This is simply a workaround for your specific requirement. It requires you to generate links for each answer. You could spend another 2 hours and come up with a simple web view, and solve the problem for ever.