This week at its Build developers conference, Microsoft announced some significant additions to its mobile offerings.
An update to the Microsoft Launcher app for Android will allow enterprise customers to access line of business applications directly from a custom home page on an Android-powered mobile phone. The new features are provisioned by Microsoft Intune.
CNET: Build 2018: Livestream, start time, what to expect[1]
The revised Launcher app will also support Microsoft's Timeline feature, which debuted in the just-released Windows 10 April 2018 Update. Timeline, officially billed as a "cross-device application launching" tool, combines information about people, conversations, schedules, and content, as gathered from an organizational profile in Microsoft's cloud-based services.
See also: Windows 10 April 2018 Update arrives and here's what's new[2]
On iPhones and iPads, of course, the option of a custom launcher app isn't available, Instead, Timeline support will be offered through the Microsoft Edge app. In its current incarnation, sites you visit using Edge on iPhone or iPad are shared with Timeline on a Windows 10 PC; an update coming later this year will bring the PC's Timeline to Edge on iOS-powered mobile devices.
In the Day 2 keynote for Build 2018, Microsoft demoed the new Launcher with Timeline on an Android device and also showed Timeline on an iPhone X. In both cases, the search and browser history as well as a record of recently opened documents and conversations are identical on mobile and desktop devices.
Timeline on an Android device using the updated Launcher (left) and within Microsoft Edge on an iPhone (right).
Finally, this week's mobile-related announcements include a new Your Phone app for Windows 10. Microsoft says the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app will provide "a window into a