Upgrade Universal Clients and Standalone Apps

Whilst all new versions of our software are given extensive testing, every live environment is potentially different. It is therefore important that you test any existing Solutions with a new version in a test environment BEFORE you upgrade your live systems.

This topic provides information about upgrading existing versions of the Digitise Apps Client, Digitise apps, MX Client and MX apps on Windows devices to new Digitise Apps versions.

From MX v10.3, two versions of the MX Client and Standalone Apps have been available for Windows devices - Windows Desktop and Windows Universal Platform versions. Versions of MX before v10.3 only had the Windows Desktop versions. Digitise Apps supports both formats and the latest software allows you to upgrade existing Clients and apps for both, as required. This topic covers upgrading Windows Universal Platform versions. To upgrade Windows Desktop versions see: Upgrade Windows Desktop Clients and Standalone Apps.

The latest Digitise Apps software is generally supplied as a download from our web site. The Product Download can be used to upgrade versions of the standard NDL-signed Windows Universal Client. Pre-configured Clients, Universal Clients signed with your own Certificate and Standalone Apps can all be upgraded by first upgrading your development PC(s) and then generating the required Clients and/or Standalone Apps from within the latest Digitise Apps App Studio.

If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Digitise Apps or from MX v10.3 or later, you can upgrade existing versions of the Windows Universal Client and Windows Universal Standalone Apps in the same way as you would install new versions. You can install over the top of your existing versions; you don’t need to remove your current version before performing the upgrade. Refer to Install Universal Windows Clients and Standalone Apps for details of how to install the latest Client and Standalone Apps. Note, however, that if you want to upgrade an app which was originally sideloaded to devices with a new version available from the Microsoft Store, you will need to uninstall the original app from your devices before you download the new version from the store.

Existing Windows Universal Platform apps should continue to work with the latest Windows Universal Client and App Server without requiring any changes, but if you want to make changes to existing apps, you can edit them in the latest App Studio by simply opening the app in the Digitise Apps App Studio as before.

To convert a pre-MX v10.3 Windows Standalone App to a Windows Universal Standalone App, open the app in the latest App Studio, check your form layouts for the Windows Universal Platform and, if necessary, adjust the positions of any Controls, check your Scripts for anything which might need adjusting to take account of the new Platform, such as a change in device IDs, and then rebuild the app for the Windows Universal Platform. You can then download the new Standalone App to your devices.

The Digitise Apps App Studio allows you to build pre-configured versions of both the Windows Desktop Client and the Windows Universal Client. You can install and run both versions on the same device, if required.

If you are upgrading from MX v10.2 or earlier and you upgrade Windows Desktop versions of the MX Client or MX Standalone Apps to Windows Universal versions, the Device ID registered with App Manager and returned by the GetDeviceID Scripting Method will change. If you use the Device ID to restrict access to an app or to check for a particular device within your Scripts, you will need to make the necessary changes to allow for the change in ID.

You can register a device by connecting to the App Server, but to do this you will need to set up your App Server to allow access to any device and then once any new devices have registered you can set up your restrictions again. Alternatively, you can manually register your devices as new devices and then configure the restrictions before the devices attempt to connect to the App Server. If you want to manually register a device, run up the Client on the device and you can find its new Device ID within Settings in the Client or Standalone App. Once you have connected all your devices and their new IDs have been registered with the App Server, you can delete the old IDs within the Device category in App Manager.

In addition, if you have used the GetDeviceID Scripting Method in any of your Scripts to check which device the Script is running on, the value returned will also change to the new ID format. If you do anything with the returned DeviceID, you will need to check your Scripts and, if necessary, make any appropriate changes to allow for the new DeviceID returned.