Android Enterprise Fully Managed
- 02 April 2020
- SOTI MobiControl - Android
11 Answers- 0 Upvote
- 2 Followers
11 Answers
There are some conditions that the Play Store will wait for before installing applications even if they are marked as Mandatory. I believe the devices need to be idle, the app being updated can't be in the foreground or in use, and they must be in a charging state. These criteria are the same criteria enforced by the consumer Play Store since at the end of the day it is the same server architecture powering both. This is one of the primary reasons we continue to install APKs directly onto devices via SOTI packages, circumventing Managed Play completely. If you're trying to install LoB applications of your own then I would suggest the direct APK route instead.
I have similar issue. When comes to updating apps, it's not being automated, even though SOTI has full control over device, SOTI profile has set rule Managed Google Play on "Always Update", on device itself when I go into Play Store App, it says Auto-Updated enabled by admin, app catalog has it set as mandatory.
But nothing is happening with app update, I've tried restarting device, playing with Group Update Schedule time, but nada.
Yes, same here, i can update the apps manually on each phone via playstore but that's not what we wanna do.
Do you have on your devices disabled battery optimization for Google Play Store?
Apparently that could help, not really on my end, but perhaps it could work for you?
Doze Mode is off.
The more interesting question is, why the updates are not done automatically or is it "wad"?
On device, when you go to Battery - 3 dots - Battery Optimization - is Google Play Store marked as "Not optimized"? I also have Doze off, but on one device this perhaps helped since app update was received, but that was only on one device.
Still looking into finding a way to force update. I've been playing around with StageNow configs, so far no luck
Playstore was optimized, i will check later if this makes a difference.
Hello
When you create a catalog rule, devices must check in , so that apps marked as mandatory will install automatically right away.
Yes, but they don't do any automatic update as mentined.
As Matt mentioned above here are the requirements for Auto updates on Managed Play store apps:
Default update behavior
By default, apps are updated automatically when the following constraints are met:
- The device is connected to a Wi-Fi network.
- The device is charging.
- The device is idle (i.e. not actively used).
- The app to be updated is not running in the foreground.
Google Play typically checks for app updates once a day, so it can take up to 24 hours before an app update is added to the update queue. After an app is added to the queue, it will be automatically updated the next time the constraints above are met.
Also when it says the app to be updated is not running in the foreground it actually means the app has to be closed out. If you are using a lockdown(especially Activity suppression) you may need to have a scheduled task to run every so often to close out the apps so they can update.
Last year at SOTI Sync I brought this up with SOTI and some of the Google developers that were at the conference that we need a way to force apps to check in for updates. Google said they would look into it but I have not heard anything new since.
I do see that supposedly there is a maintenance window that can be set to ignore the constraints however I have yet to see any such maintenance window settings in SOTI Mobicontrol yet.
- The device is charging.
- The device is idle (i.e. not actively used).
- The app to be updated is not running in the foreground.
The maintenance window is defined by a start time (local time of the device) and a duration (between 30 minutes and 24 hours).
Note that setting a maintenance window doesn’t affect the network constraint which is controlled separately (see section above for controlling this constraint).
It can take up to 24 hours for an app update to be added to the update queue. After an app is added to the queue, it will be updated automatically the next time the device is in the maintenance window if the network constraint is met. As a result, it can take up to 48 hours for an app to update after you set a maintenance window.
All of this is from this page: https://support.google.com/googleplay/work/answer/9350374?hl=en
I don't believe SOTI has added support for the Maintenance Window configuration yet despite that capability arriving as part of Android Enterprise. I am happy to see these incremental improvements in Managed Play but I feel like it is still a long way off where it needs to be for LoB / Mission Critical app deployments.