Forcing App Updates

[StevenF19]

Hello,

Am I missing something or is there no way to force app updates? We've got users who haven't updated their powerapps version in over 2 months and it's been a huge issue trying to teach some of our not tech-savvy users how to completely close out of Powerapps, reopen our app, and hit the update banner. We're now receiving incomplete data because apps are out of date.

Does anyone have a solution for this? I feel like we're missing something because this should be pretty basic functionality.

[JasonWS]

Two years later and this is still a problem. To add even further strife to the situation, the notification banner for the update is half-covered by the notch in the last few years of iOS phones. iOS keeps the PowerApps app in memory for quite some time, so it shouldn't be down to the user's responsibility to force-close the app, relaunch the PowerApp within the app, then click the "update" banner.

If a user never force-closes the app and instead switches back to it via the phone/device's task-manager, then they will never know there is a new version.

[groyet]

See my approach and tell me if it works for your applications. 

[Dan_Platt]

Is there a way to request that Microsoft includes this feature in PowerApps? Agreed with a previous statement - this should be pretty basic functionality. I'd prefer not to use a workaround. 

[GarethPrisk]

@mdevaney and I solved this elegantly for a customer. He wrote a blog post about it: https://www.matthewdevaney.com/force-app-updates-in-power-apps/

Hope this helps anyone who may need to solve for this issue.

[JasonWS]

While a clever solution, I don't think this is really solving the problem, it's instead working around it. I think Microsoft needs to expose the latest version number of an app inside the app, the latest solution version for apps within a solution, as well as the currently running version of both.

Regarding your solution, it doesn't look like you are accounting for an already running app, instead, it's only checking on launch. Perhaps a five or ten minute timer on each screen that routinely checks the version, so when a new version is published, the user will be forced to the Incorrect Version screen?

[DeeTronSEAM]

I agree with @JasonWS .  It's always good to have the option of a workaround, but for an enterprise-grade product, PApps needs to have a better degree of centralized management.  I'm not saying it's the highest item on the request list, nor even within the sub-section regarding IT-team's oversight of the Power Platform for an organization. 

IMO, the first stage is providing the same sort of thing many of us are doing via similar workarounds....i.e. having visibility within the app about potential deltas between the various versions (e.g. last published version of the app, currently running version, environment runtime version).  Having that functionality being "baked in" means less code overhead.

Second, a way for the app to force the actual update, not just pester the end-user to restart.  Those in-app update demands/dialogs invariably get our support desk answering a few calls from our users who we've scared the beejezzus out of so that they are properly cautious regarding potential malware. We end up telling them it's ok but that time and "intrusion" to the end-user is a waste, me thinks.

Perhaps tthe "version & update" enhancement would be exclusive to more formally packaged apps (e.g. solutions?) so that "Citizen Developers" writing and maintaining limited-deployment apps, e.g. department or project teams, don't have to care, but those of us needing to keep hundreds or thousands of end-users seeing the same thing would have a more standard and ready way to insist only one version of the app is running across our organization at any point in time.

I'm not sure what that fully looks like, but, Microsoft, put me down for enhancements in this area when priorities allow, please.

Kudos, to Prisk and Devaney for yet another nicely written up HowTo.  Once again it reminds me how dependent the success of the Power Platform has been thanks to the community.  @mdevaney is one of those pillars of the community...and has many a clever Cat-in-the-Hat tricks.  🙂