Install Digitise Apps

The Digitise Apps software is generally supplied as a download from our web site. Therefore, before you can install or upgrade to Digitise Apps, you will need to download the latest version from the web site. You, or someone in your organisation, should have received an email providing full details of how to download and unzip the software and details of your Software Licence. You can unzip the download directly on to individual machines or unzip the files to an accessible location, such as a network or shared folder. Alternatively, you could copy the unzipped files to a USB stick which you can then insert into individual PCs.

The Product Download can be used to perform a new install of Digitise Apps or to update an existing version of its predecessor, MX, to Digitise Apps. We recommend taking a backup of your existing installation before performing an upgrade.

 

You will need to install/upgrade the Digitise Apps software in several places:

1. Development PCs – the individual PCs used by your development team to develop your Digitise apps.

   We recommend you install the full software on each development PC, which includes the development studio, App Studio, along with test versions of the server component, App Server, the management utility, App Manager, and the Windows Desktop Client.

   Developers can use the test App Server and Windows Desktop Client to test apps, as they develop them, on their development machines. If your final app won't be running on Windows devices, you can still include the Windows Platform in your apps' Target Platforms to allow you to perform some generic testing using the Windows Client during development, if you want to. If you want to test your apps on an external test device, such as a smartphone, using your development PC as the test environment, the test device must be able to access the App Server installed on the development PC, otherwise the app won't run on the device.

2. App Server PC – a central server which will run the App Server software. This server will need to be accessible to all mobile devices which want to run the Digitise apps published to this server.

   We recommend you install a full copy of Digitise Apps on the App Server machine.

   You will need at least one App Server in your live environment. For testing during development, you can use the locally installed App Servers on your development machines, but you may want to create a test environment with its own App Server which will mirror your live environment for testing prior to releasing an app to your live users. You might also want backup or disaster recovery versions of your App Server to minimise downtime in the event of problems with your live environment.

   Remember, even in test environments, your mobile devices must be able to access an appropriate App Server in order to authenticate, authorise and transfer data, whether that be the App Server installed on a development PC or a separate server.

3. Mobile devices – each mobile device you want to run one or more Digitise apps will need a Digitise Apps Client and/or one or more Standalone Apps installed.

   During development of your Digitise apps, developers may find it easier to use the Digitise Apps Client to test their apps because they can download changes immediately to their test devices, whereas for deployment to your users you may prefer to use the Standalone App format, which has a more familiar feel for non-technical users. On Apple devices, you can only deploy your apps to users as Standalone Apps. For more information about the two approaches see Introduction to Digitise Apps and Digitise Apps Components.

   The installation process is different for each Platform but is generally similar for both Client and Standalone Apps within a Platform. Within this help you will find various topics providing information about installing the Clients and Standalone Apps on different device Platforms. In addition to the methods described in these topics, you may also be able to use an appropriate Mobile Device Management (MDM) software to download the Clients or Standalone Apps to your devices. The exact method for doing this will depend on the MDM software you are using and, hence, isn't covered in this online help.

   As mentioned under 2. above, in order to run Digitise apps, a mobile device must be able to access the App Server to which the apps have been published.

 

The Product Download includes a standard Windows setup for installing the software on Windows PCs. This setup is used to install the software to your App Server and development PCs. If you are installing the standard Client on Windows devices, the setup can also be used to install the Windows Desktop Client to these devices. The setup will automatically install the software for all users of the machine.

In addition, the Product Download includes the installation files required to install a standard Client on Android devices and the install files to install an NDL-signed version of the standard Windows Universal Client on Windows PCs and tablets. The setup can be used to copy any of these installation files to a PC so that you can use them to download the Client to your devices. These files are included in the components selected for a default install and will be copied to a subfolder of your chosen installation folder. If you wish to copy them to a different PC or folder to that used for other components, you can rerun the setup on an appropriate PC and choose only to copy the install files for the required device(s) to a specified folder.

If you want to install a version of the standard Windows Universal Client signed with your own code-signing Certificate, you will need to generate the installation files from within Digitise Apps’ design utility, App Studio; they are not included in the Product Download.

The setup also does not include Client files for Apple devices (if you need these, they can also be generated from within the App Studio utility). It does, however, allow you to copy sample web pages to a PC which you can use to produce a web site from which Digitise apps can be downloaded to your Apple devices. These files are included in the default components selected within the setup and, if not deselected, the files will be copied to a subfolder of your specified installation folder.

For more information about installing the standard Client to mobile devices, see the links below.

 

If you deploy your Digitise apps as Standalone Apps, you do not need to install the standard Digitise Apps Client on devices which will only run Standalone Apps, except on Windows devices which will be running Windows Desktop Standalone Apps, which work slightly differently and do require the standard Windows Desktop Client to be installed before you can install and use Standalone Apps. If you will be running Windows Universal Standalone Apps on Windows devices, you don’t need to install the Client prior to installing your Standalone Apps.

 

For more information see: