eBackpack App

[cpdecker]

What's up nation,

We are using eBackpack for about half the county. Recently most users started having problems with the App freezing, crashing, etc. and then they started getting notifications that they needed to upgrade to the latest version and they couldn't even use the App.

We have the App Store disabled, but do have this App available in Self Service. Users have been deleting the App, waiting for an inventory update (or letting me push a manual one to their site), and then reinstalling the App. Most users are getting the correct App version, 3.2.9, but some are not. Some are getting 3.2.5, some are getting 3.0.3--the App won't function on these versions. I thought it may be a caching server problem, so I cleared our caches. The problem persists. I just downloaded the App straight from the App Store while tethered to my cell phone (no caching server interaction, no JSS server interaction) on my test iPad, and I got version 3.0.3 again. I checked the version history, and 3.0.3 was the first version ever released for this App.

Has anyone seen anything like this in the past?

[cpdecker]

Posting the fix here in case anyone comes across it in the future.

It turns out that the iPads seem to "cache" information about what the most recent version of an App was. Since our App Store was restricted on the iPads, the iPad couldn't see that there was a newer version of the App to be downloaded, so it re-downloaded the most recent one it knew about. I didn't think this behavior could occur--where did the old version of the App come from? Apple must still be supplying it if its requested I guess.

The fix for us was to have the user sign out and back into their AppleID in Settings > iTunes & App Store or choose the "View AppleID" option there. This would refresh the connection to the App Store (even with it being disabled) and allow the iPad to see the newest version of all the Apps.

I think I was seeing version 3.0.3 from the App Store because of a glitch in the App. After launching, it would show the correct version in Settings.

Hopefully this helps someone in the future. Best of luck!