Apps do not appear to be updating from Self Service on to iPads?

sjl2005
New Contributor

The JAMF Self Service Software was installed on my classroom set of iPads last semester. Ever since we had this software installed, apps are constantly either freezing or they will start to open and then suddenly just close continuously, like the app just flashes and goes back to the home screen. I am wondering if this has to do with apps being updated in the Apple Store, but the update not actually getting down to the iPads through Self Service?

On the Self Service screen, in the updates tab it has a 25 in a red circle, meaning 25 apps need to be updated? However, every time I click to update all or any app to update...it says "Success"...but, the app doesn't really update? And, I close out of the Self Service go back in and it still says that 25 apps need to be updated. I was told that there was an issue with the last OS...however, all of my iPads have been updated to the newest version OS 9.2.1.

It has become really frustrating, especially when it comes to Google Apps (like Google Classroom and Google Drive) because these seem to update constantly, and we are using these apps almost daily in my classes. The solution the IT guys in the district gave me was to delete the app, then go to self service and re-install it. Which, does fix the issue, but there has to be a better way. It takes at least 25 minutes during a class period to get students apps working again between the 30 iPads in my classroom. We also have apps that have in app saves, like Notability, and if you delete...all of my students work is gone when re-installing the app over instead of just getting the update, like we could get before using JAMF and Self Service. Which, you can connect Notability to your Google Drive to back up data, however, we are using a shared model, so I have 5 different students using the iPads each day. So, backing up Notability to Drive is not an option for us.

Please someone give me some help or some information I can get to the IT guys to get my classroom flow back to normal. It has been so frustrating the last few months! And I was told that it would be fixed with the new apple iOS update...however, it doesn't seem to help much with the issue we were having. 0ff37ad6776f4075857e4cec4332218d

4 REPLIES 4

eanderson
New Contributor

We're having the same issue. I'm not sure what's causing it, but deleting and reinstalling from Self Service has solved it for us. It would be nice to find a better solution, though.

cdenesha
Valued Contributor II

Check with your IT department and make sure they have not turned on 'Automatically Update apps'. If an update comes out it will automatically be deployed, but there is a bug which causes it to open and crash.

[edit] Manually re-installing the app fixes it.

msnowdon
Contributor

We are having the same problem regarding the apps opening and quickly closing. We have shut off "Automatically Update apps" in the JSS as soon as the advisory came out, yet people complain daily that apps stop working.

As far as the updates in self-service, I'm not sure if they will actually update if Automatically Updating is shut off in the JSS. I know you can shut off "displaying app updates" in the options for the self-service web clip though. See image attached.2a61c48445594282b1d2e29dace59786

We have also recently changed over from using the self-service web clip to using the self-service app. It gives the user the ability to re-install any app that is scoped to them and doesn't give them the option to update apps.

gramsm
New Contributor

Any idea if the auto update has been fixed yet. We seem to still have a lot of devices crashing with the Self Service app. Jamf is up to date. A second note is that the Free checkbox for this app is unchecked. Does anyone know if the Self Service crashing issue is related to the checkbox being unchecked?