Agentry: How to verify that devices get app updates?

[former_member188433]

Hi Folks - We are on SMP 3.0 SP8 PL1.  We use Work Manager 6.0/6.1/6.2 applications. We use Agentry client 70.5.1 on Windows mobile devices.

When we upgrade our WM-based applications we would like to monitor which mobile users have downloaded the upgraded app and also those that have not.  Does anyone know of a way to easily check on this?  Transaction /SYCLO/ADMIN does provide some user and device information but does not appear to provide the application version. 

Points awarded for helpful information.

Best Regards - Jeff

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

Jeff,

Are you referring to incremental updates to WM 6.2 for example or more the major upgrade from WM 6.1 to WM 6.2?

In terms of incremental updates, while not ideal, if you know when you published the new version to the server, simply looking at the logs of users who have connected since then will tell you who has upgraded since users are automatically updated during the next transmit.

Major upgrades are usually deployed as separate applications (same server or different server) so the user would be doing an initial sync against the server to get the new version. 

One thing that isn't really exposed is the current Agentry production version number so while we can build in user tracking / metrics we don't have a good mechanism to get the users current definition version.

My first thought of how to track version would be to use a global that you manually update.  Not ideal but it would be accessible and something you could use in a transaction you call before transmitting that would log the user, version, device etc. 

Hope this helps!

--Bill

[former_member188433 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Bill for the fast response and the helpful idea (using a global and a manual update).

The updates are typically delta updates to the existing application.

We have observed that the version does not get updated if the transmit fails.  So checking just for user logs that occur after the update has been published is not sufficient. 

Is this behavior normal?

Back in Syclo/Agentry 5.3 we were able to clear the DeviceInfo table in the Agentry directory after a publish.  Then we could easily see who had transmitted by viewing the DeviceInfo table.  As far as I know this is no longer possible with SMP 3.0.

Best Regards - Jeff

[bill_froelich · Accepted solution]

Regarding the app not being updated if the transmit fails.  That is the expected behavior based on where the transmit failed.  If the failure occurs during transaction processing then yes I would not expect the update to have occurred.  If it failed during the fetch then the app should have already been updated and I would expect you to be on the new version.

You are correct that under SMP3 there is no more deviceinfo.ini.  If you are interested in this metric then I would typically just setup a simple database table to track user connections.  Using the SQL backend you can easily track events like login/logout to know if a user successfully completed the transmit.  You could even clear out the table during an upgrade to know who connected since the upgrade.

--Bill

[former_member188433 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Bill!  Cheers - Jeff