Windows Phone to access network shares

[Space_Kowboy]

So I'm a recent convert to the Windows Phone world and so far I love it. I'm an IT professional and I have clients that want to be able to access and edit network shares from smart phones and tablets. Most of the clients I interact with do this through devices running iOS. It doesn't do it natively but there are apps I have found that will at the very least access network shares and view files, but editing them is something else. It is not elegant by any means, but I can get it to work for my clients. I kept hearing about the integration between the new Windows phone platforms with WP8, Windows 8 and Server 2012. My thoughts when I first heard about all of this would be that it would be easy to access network shares on a Windows domain, open up and possibly edit documents right from my phone. Alas, this does not seem to be the case.

I came across the "My Server" app in the marketplace and looked into it. At first glance it looked like it may do everything I wanted it to do. I thought I might finally have a good solution for my clients and can convert them over to the Windows phones/tablets. It apparently only works on servers running 2012 Essentials but is not supported on any other version of Server 2012. I was highly disappointed when I found this out. Am I overlooking something here? I am still fairly green on the Windows Phone OS. Is there any way to access network shares and open and edit documents in those shares?

 

[paulm187]

I don't know of any app which would allow you to access network shares, but there is SharePoint integration built into the phone if that is something you use.

 

[Space_Kowboy]

Thanks for the reply. I noticed that there is SP integration, but that is not something we currently use.

 

[Brandon57]

I just found an app called "ShareFolder". It claims it can browse shared folders, but I haven't tried it yet.

 

[Funky Cricket]

Win8 Pro tablets will be the win for this. I can't wait for surface pro to come out.
Not sure why anyone would want to view or edit corp. docs on a phone though. just so small (I am a network engineer at a managed services company so I deal with a lot of the "I want an iPad crowd" too)

I've never tried to connect my android to a share? not sure I would want to.. ssh, rdp I use all the time though.

 

[DaveSC]

There's always Skydrive depending on if the user is editing personal shared files or public shared files.

 

[rabit1]

I can't believe this feature is not built-in. WP should easily be able to access other windows network shares.

 

[DOS76]

Just confirmed sharefolder explorer gives access to smb shares on Windows Phone 8.1 DP