Update a Standalone App

After deploying a Standalone App to users, you may need to fix any issues which arise or want to make future changes. You can edit and publish the relevant Project(s) in App Studio in the usual way but then you will need to update the app(s) on users' devices.

On Android, Windows and Windows Universal Platforms, you can update the Models within a Standalone App by downloading the updates directly from the App Server or by building a new version of the Standalone App and re-distributing it to your users.

When you configure the build settings for a Standalone App, the Security tab includes the option Allow Updates. If you want to allow the Standalone App to be updated from the App Server, you must make sure this option is selected. If the option is deselected, your Standalone App cannot be updated from the App Server and any changes will require the Standalone App to be rebuilt and redistributed to each user you want to update.

The Settings tab also includes an option, which is only available if Allow Updates is selected, called Check for Updates on Startup. If this option is set to Yes, each time the user loads the Standalone App, the app will automatically check with the App Server to see if there are any updates for any of the Models included in the app. If the option is set to No, users can manually check for updates at their convenience.

 

If you have allowed updates, when you want to distribute a new version of a Digitise app, you simply publish the app to your App Server. Once published, if necessary, you can change the access permissions for the app in the App Manager utility to restrict who can download and use the app, for example you may want to give the new app to a selected few users to test before rolling it out to all users. You can also designate the new version as a forced or optional update in App Manager.

If the update is forced, when a device checks for updates, whether it be automatically on startup or by manual user request, the update will automatically be downloaded and installed, providing the user/device has permission to use the app. If the update is optional, users who have permission to use the app, will be notified that the update is available and can choose whether to install it or not.

Both primary and secondary apps can be updated in this way.

 

If you don't allow updates from the App Server you will need to make your changes, rebuild the Standalone App and redistribute the new version. You can download and install the app to a device in any of the standard ways available for the type of device.

 

On Apple devices, you cannot download updates from the App Server, you must always rebuild the Standalone App and redistribute it to your users.

 

If you are rebuilding a Standalone App, remember that some settings have a Read-Only option within the Build request dialog box. For these settings, when you install your updated Standalone App, only those which are marked as read-only in the new version will overwrite existing settings. This prevents a new version overwriting user-made changes. Settings not marked as read-only in the new version will not overwrite existing values and users will subsequently be able to modify these Settings, even if previously marked as read-only.

Note that for the Windows Universal Platform, the Read-Only setting will operate as for a clean install (see Warning below).

 

Remember you always need to publish all the changed Models within the app to the App Server as normal, how ever you will be updating your devices. You will need to increment the version numbers of all changed Models within the app and the version number of the app itself, if you want updates to be applied automatically. If you will be applying updates manually, we recommend that you always increment version numbers in order to keep track of your changes and who has applied them.

If you will be publishing your updated Models using the Publish to Server option in App Studio or as part of the Standalone App Build, you might want to check the option settings in the Publish Project to Server dialog box. In particular you might want to change the Inherit Security Settings From Previous Version option, which determines whether your new version should automatically be assigned the same access rights as the previous published version of this app. You might not want to assign the same rights, for example if you want to perform a controlled rollout of the new version.

You may also need to consider the timing of when you publish a new version, especially if the app is designated as a forced update and your Standalone Apps are configured to allow updates and to check on startup. Once you have published your changes, the new version(s) will be immediately available to download to any devices which are allowed them. If this is not what you want, you may need to publish your changes out of normal working hours to allow you to configure the access permissions when there is less chance of users updating their devices.

 

If you will be redistributing changes in the form of a new build of the Standalone App, make sure you update the version numbers of any changed Models within the app. If you don't do this, when you publish your new versions to the App Server, the versions on your users' devices and the published versions will become out of step until the users install the new Standalone App. If the versions are out of step this may cause unpredictable results when the app is run by users.

On Android and Windows Universal Platforms, the version number of a Standalone App will be a combination of the value in the Version option (specified in the build dialog box) and the version number of the Digitise Apps Client included in the app.

On Apple Platforms, the version number of a Standalone App will be a combination of the value in the Version and Submission options (specified in the build dialog box) and the version number of the Digitise Apps Client included in the app.

This is the version number recognised by the device's operating system and also used by an MDM package to determine whether a new version of the app is different to the currently installed version. Consequently, it is important to update the version number when requesting a new build for an upgrade to an existing app.

Note, therefore, that if you build a new Standalone App with a later version of the Digitise Apps Client you may not need to increase the Standalone App's version number as well, although we recommend that you do.

You can check version numbers within a Standalone App's Settings when the app is running on a device.