In-House app version control

scottt
New Contributor

Hi

We have an in house app that is pushed out to 500 devices and is used on a day by day basis, it is a POS application that needs to run at all times.

When our developers have an update we want to be able to test this update to a specific store's devices (6-12 devices)

What I'm not sure on, is the best way to handle this. If I just update the application in the JSS all 500 devices will update. Is there a way to handle version control for the application?

Or is it a case of creating a new in-house app in the JSS and only scoping it to the specific devices that are needed?

We used to use Airwatch that had a way of uploading multiple versions of the same in house app into the system and we could select which version went to which group of devices, is there something similar in the JSS that would allow this?

Thanks

Scott

3 REPLIES 3

thoule
Valued Contributor II

I've a couple problems here.. 1st, if you update the application in the JSS, why are all devices automatically updated? Do you have a policy to reinstall every day?

If you want to make sure your app XYZPOSv1.0.app is on each computer, then have a smart group of computers that don't have app version 1.0 installed, and a policy to install the app on those computers each day.

As for the version thing, then upload your XYZPOSv2.1.app to the JSS as a new app. Scope to to install on a few machines with a new policy and see what you think.

Once you are happy and want it everywhere, edit your policy XYZPOSv1.0 to distribute v2.0. Then edit your smart group to say version XYZPOS.app is not install and version is not 2.0. Then your policy will update each computer.

scottb
Honored Contributor

Yeah, it's really easy to manage more than one version of an app - takes time to setup, etc., but totally doable - we do it with many apps.
The key for us as in @thoule's input above is using version info in the package/policy names. Then, it doesn't know the difference between Flash 1,2,3 and Office 14,15 etc. - they're all just objects and will do what you tell them to do.

scottt
New Contributor

Sorry i probably should have specified this is for iOS devices,

We cannot upload the new version of the app to the JSS as the file name is the same and we get an error. And when just updating the app, the update pushes to devices automatically from our testing.

However we have found that if we rename the application file upload it, do our testing to a specific group of devices then rename the app back, upload over the original app to push it out to everyone this works, all be it a bit clumsy.