My client is still running into issues with users not installing updates because they’re scared by the “may lose unsaved changes” message (see App Update Message). We implemented the ability to force users to re-authenticate resulting in forcing the update, but this is causing additional issues as many users do not remember their password. While clearly their users are not very savvy, we are looking for more ways to potentially improve the experience.
This page in the documentation says
Please note, if the user closes the app and opens it again then, in other words restarts the app, then all pending changes will automatically be applied.
But this doesn’t really happen. If I force close the app on my phone and reopen I’m still prompted to update. Is there any reason why updates cannot be automatically deployed in this case? It would not interrupt user activity. Any other bright ideas aside from what was mentioned above?
Hi @fthomas
If this is the case, it is a bug.
It should definitely be the case that app updates are applied when the app is closed and reopened (i.e. user sees the app splash screen again and is taken to the main view). If that is no longer the case, then we will have to open up a bug report. I have briefly tried to reproduce that on my side, but updates do seem to apply correctly with a force close.
Interesting, I just retested it and found the same. I think maybe the issue is that their users are opening the app after not using it for a little while, they’re prompted to update, and they ignore. Then while they’re using the app on-site all day they never actually fully close it, just “minimize” and keep using.
Is there any reason that the app couldn’t auto-install updates on opening without needing to force close after the prompt?
@fthomas I believe at the moment the default behavior is that when the app is minimized and brought back to the foreground, it will stay on the same view (and things like the init() shouldn’t run again). That is different from a force close in that the entire app is naturally restarted. So in the case of minimizing and reopening it is still possible that the user is busy with something (even if they are on main) and that automatically applying an update could cause some minor data loss.
There is currently an indicator in one of the menus to show that an app update is available. That said, perhaps we could also “reprompt” users about pending app updates when they reach main again from somewhere else in the app. Would that potentially help in your specific case?
It would certainly help if we could retrigger the prompt to update on specific views - main definitely comes to mind.
But that wasn’t quite what I meant above. If I haven’t opened the app for a week and somewhere in that week an update occurred, then the first time I open it I am prompted to install an update. My question is why can’t the update be automatically installed on opening for the first time? I.e. the user would be completely unaware that any update occurred - they just opened the app. Of course if the user still had the app open in the background and was just “resuming” it, then this would not occur.
Customizing the update message would also be a great option. If I were to rank the potential improvements:
- Force updates without requiring reauthentication
- Customize the update message
- Retrigger the update prompt on demand/entering certain views