Afaria Client Update handling

[Former Member]

Hi there

We are running Afaria 7 SP7 on premise with more than 500 Devices (iOS and Android). Next year we will have doubled the number of devices under Management.

To have a stable and reliable device management we need to know more about the handling of Afaria Client Updates.

There are 3 risks we see concerning device compatibility with Afaria:

1. When a firmware upgrade is being released (iOS / Android)
2. When Afaria is upgraded (Service Pack)
3. When the Afaria Client app is updated

Currently we have our processes to handle 1. and 2.:

1. We disallow OTA device software upgrades by Samsung SAFE Restriction Policy. When we need the devices to be upgraded, we change the policy, instruct the users to upgrade and then re-enable the restriction. For iOS we instruct our users not to upgrade until they are informed by the IT department (risky too, but so far our users have a good discipline). This way we can test new firmware for compatibility with Afaria as well as with our own applications before the devices are upgraded.
2. We have a Afaria Test Server with which we can Test our use cases prior to upgrading on the production Server

For 3. we didn't find a good solution yet for reducing the compatibility risk. Android Devices can auto-update apps and app updates can not be disallowed by policy (iOS and Android). So how do we handle this? What is your proposition of how to handle this?

Cheers,

Tobias

[jtaylor · Accepted solution]

Tobias,

If you're concerned about the backwards compatibility of new client releases, we take effort to assure that the new clients will work with older versions of the Afaria server and recent OS releases. I believe there has been a situation in the past where a new client/phone OS combination wasn't supportable with older versions of the server, but these are rare situations where phone OS updates forced our hand. I believe, even in the one situation I can recall, that the new client worked with recent Afaria releases and older phone OSes, it was just the combination of the new client and new phone OS with the old server that caused problems (which would be expected since the server didn't support the new OS).

Moving to a custom client for iOS would put you in control of the client updates. For Android, I believe that if the client version stored on the server was older than the play store client, we would downgrade the client on connection (I'm not 100% sure on this latter part though).

[tracy_barkley · Accepted solution]

Tobias and John,

If the client version is newer than the server, we do not downgrade the client on Android.  Normally though this is not an issue, as the client is engineered to be backward compatible.

[jtaylor · Accepted solution]

Thanks for clarifying that Tracy. I thought I remembered the MMEP downgrading in the past, but I guess not.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your Feedback Tracy and John

What about release cycle / release Dates. Is there a release Management for the Afaria Clients (iOS and Android) so we know when new Clients are released to be able to react quickli in the worst case?

Regards,

Tobias

[tracy_barkley · Accepted solution]

Tobias,

Updates to clients are as needed for features and fixes.  Android clients are expected either monthly or bi monthly at this point.  iOS clients are running on a few months between cycles. These cycles are subject to change as needed.   When a client is released, a blog post is put up

My recommendation is to go to the wiki page below, log in and then watch the page.  SAP Afaria support updates this regularly with all announcements/releases for clients as well as the main product. Currently this is the best method for prompt notification. http://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/SAPMOB/Afaria+-+Announcements+-+Upcoming+events

Hope you had happy holidays a great new year!

Tracy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Tracy

Thanks for the hint.

I am already following the Wiki Page, but the notifications seem to be a bit chaotic:

Not all Information received by the Wiki-Notifications are relevant. Hopefully this can be improved in the future. In Terms of usability and relevant Information there is still some potential...

A great new year to you too and thanks for the Support.

Cheers,

Tobias

[bernd_maier2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Tobias,

it seems to me you are monitoring the whole mobile wiki space rather than a specific page.

If this is true, moving to just monitor single pages of interest could eventually reduce the number of notifications quite a bit.

HTH

Regards,
Bernd

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Bernd

Ok, will try this.

Thanks.

Cheers,

Tobias