App is not updating

[Antonio]

Hello,
I've almost 200 devices running my app in Kiosk mode. Recently, the upgrade of the app seems to be not performed by the devices, even if the early versions sent months ago passed throught and were successfully installed. The main configuration of the app is not changed. I'm using windowed mode to update and "always high priority" feature. What can be the issue origin? The update was sent to the store ten days ago.

[Moombas]

Are the apps provided via managed google play account?

Which MDM you are using?

[Antonio]

Hello, thank you for the reply.
The apps are provided via Google Play but the distribution is internal, via the recognition of the Enterprise ID.
We use no MDM, just directly the Google APIs.

[Moombas]

Ok, as I'm only working with MDM not sure if this will help you but maybe points into right direction:

We can setup ("per device") how the apps are handled regarding updates in our MDM (device wide, not app specific):

- Allow user to configure
- never update

- always update

And in addition to this, being able to define a maintenance window for the updates and for each app we can define if updates should be postponed or done with high priority.

So, I assume there must be something in the API's to set all those things.

[Antonio]

Thank you but these are already managed, as you pointed out, using the Google APIs.

Do you know if it would be possible ask for some kind of Google official assistance? I'm looking everywhere and I cannot find a page to contact them for help on this issue.

[Moombas]

There's no other way in general (i don't know if here's a seperated community where those things are discussed) but maybe @Lizzie or @ReeceK can help here out 😉

[Lizzie]

Thanks @Moombas for mentioning me here. 

Hello @Antonio, great to meet you and happy new year. It might be worth asking this question in the Google Play help community, but I'll also ask internally within our team to see if we have any suggestions here. 

Speak to you soon.

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Antonio]

Hello Lizzie good morning and happy new year!
I'm gonna ask the same on the other community group, as you suggested. Anyway, if you have someone internally, it'll be great to support us on this.
The fact we built our custom EMM based on the Google APIs could maybe led to this kind of malfunctioning in the app update, but we're sure we followed all the dev doc suggestions on this matter and however in the past the app updates went through flawlessly.

For any more detail on our code, please feel free to ask.

BR,

Antonio

[jasonbayton]

Hi @Antonio, 

Have you done any local device debugging? Pulling a bug report and running through for instances of packagemanager or your com.package.name should indicate if the device is at least trying to install the application. 

Since you use windowed also there will be references to schedules through Google Play services, and you can then whittle your search just to between these windows.

Has the app changed in permission requirements, distribution requirements, or anything else in recent months? I often see apps stop updating when the dev adds in a new permission for a component that a device doesn't support, so if your devices miss camera, nfc, or other optional components the app is mandating, this will also prevent updates. 

Finally, you can set minimum version code in-policy for the app in question on a subset of devices to force it to stop what it's doing and install the latest version immediately. That should show you visually what the issue may be. 

You may also consider taking a device out of kiosk policy and push into another, with windowed still set, and see if this makes a difference over a day or two.

[Antonio]

Hi Jason,

thank you for the reply.

The devices (150) are installed in several schools and it's difficult to make a local debug. We're thinking about a local firewall that could filter the update request, but it's not easy to investigate since the devices are distributed and not accessible by a technician on site. We're wondering how to access to the logcat remotely. Do you think the app update could be filtered by a local firewall?

To add other info:

- navigating in the Play Dev Console, no issues are evident. The email received on 21/12/23 tells that the app has been published
- the 0.0.6 has been released on 21/12/23; the 0.0.5 has been released on 02/09/23
- for the 150 devices, a part of them updated to the 0.0.6, another part (82 devices) is stuck on the 0.0.5 and not update, even if it updated from the 0.0.1 to the 0.0.5.
- the changelog from the 0.0.5 to the 0.0.6 should not impact on the update, anyway some of them updated
- the device hardware is the same for all (the camera resolution change from 5Mpx to 8Mpx but this should not affect).

For the other suggestions, we're wondering how to do remotely and with minimum (or zero) support on site. Working with schools is a pain,

If you have other toughts, please share them with us.

BR,

Antonio

[jasonbayton]

Unfortunately AMAPI is severely limited with debugging options, so really your best course of action is to either get hands-on with an affected device directly, or have it hooked up to a computer with ADB you can connect into remotely; the latter requiring adjusted policies allowing for developer options access. 

The firewall will likely show traffic to Google Play one way or another because other apps will be updating in the background. I can't think of any recent events that would cause issues like this. There was a Play version update problem but this wouldn't affect other apps, only the Play Store itself. 

You really need a bug report.

[Antonio]

Hello,

we got news on this. Today our technician came to a school, checking the system installed. When exiting from the kiosk mode, to investigate any kind of problem, the Play Store icon wasn't as was supposed to be, instead there was a Play Store Recovery Service yellow icon. After manually clicking on it, the Play Store icon was restored and our app has been manually updated by the technician.
We don't know if this solved the problem for that tablet, I mean for the future remote updates, anyway this event started a set of considerations in our tech group: we suppose that the app wasn't updated for a crash of the Play Store. Questions are:

1. could it be this the possible issue that led to the malfunction in update?
2. how this could be happened? We're sure the Play Store icon was there when we installed the device in the school, this is one of our quality checks. Is it maybe a defecting update of the Play Store?
3. the manual update seems to solve the issue, but:
   • we cannot do it all around the country
   • we're not sure this wouldn't happen again for the same devices fixed.

We tried to launch a remote command to clear the app data in the Play Store app, since it has the same package of the Recovery Service (com.android.vending) but we got errors and we suppose this couldn't be performed on this specific package.

If you can suggest a way to solve this issue, it'd be really appreciated.

BR,

Antonio

[Moombas]

Hi Antonio,

ensure you are not blocking somehow the playstore (com.android.vending) or any related app. And if this is the case on all or several of your devices, this could causing your issue because the play store is handling the updates.

What happens if you re-enable the kiosk and again go back to the admin mode, is the playstore still fine or again broken? If broken, you have an issue with your kiosk mode, if still fine it has happend because of something else (maybe your command?).