One pain point we have found is when an app is updated with a new version we need to go around and manually restart it on each machine. This is easy to miss for a single machine and not super easy to catch.
It would be even nicer if we could drive this reset with a ‘reset this station’ button on the web editor so we could just restart machines while they are between jobs vs all of them, and having to go back into the current order.
Eventually it would be very nice to be able to do control the player from the web dashboard, but I realize that is a big ask.
This can currently be done from the Shop Floor by clicking the pen icon next to the Player that’s running and selecting the Splash Screen. This will restart the app and run the latest published version.
Ah I figured out what’s going on. That pen will only be there if the app is currently running. Our app is running on iPads and also in different places around the world and is more often “Not Running” than running. Is there a way I can force restart an app while it isn’t running?
hello @Ethan, just to confirm is the Player on the Splash Screen (with the green Begin button)??
if so, the Player will run the latest Published Version if that’s what it’s set to on the Station once the User clicks Begin. let me know if I understood your question correctly!!
Oh, I suppose it is also important to mention that our app doesn’t work around completions, so the user is never brought back to that splash screen in the process of using the app. But, I also don’t have our stations set up to run the latest version of the app because we roll out the latest version here in the local office and once confirming there are no bugs, roll it out internationally.
Nope, I just want to restart it to make sure the station is on the latest version of the app. It’s okay if this combination of things is not possible haha
Hi
Coming back to this old feature request that are still a pain for us.
When we publish a new version of the apps for an area, we need to ask to all operator to “restart apps”. This is really a paint in context of :
Apps have been design without completion, apps is never restart
Apps deployed widely, +100 stations
Apps used on shared windows stations, we could have up to 15 users/windows session per stations.
In this context, we couldn’t remotely go on the platform, station page and remotely splash (not all station are active, and on active station operator are working).
The only solution is to ask all user go and log to windows and make a restart… it is really heavy!
It will more efficient to be able to schedule and force the apps restart during night, for selected station or focus on station this new publishing apps.
Thanks for bringing this back up! I can see how this would be frustrating and more work than ideal! Tagging @jakerigos and @shep here to see if they can provide any information or updates from the product side
you could put a trigger on the base layout step enter or step exit, that checks if your App Info.App Version contains a number (if so, its not the development version) and if this number is smaller than the App Info.Most Recent Published Version
When this is the case do an App Cancel and open the App again…
But keep in mind, that could break some calculations between steps.
You could also put this into a “Page Rendered”-Custom Widget, to only run this when the Player gets opened (so they could potentially use the old version for like halve a day).
Or you don’t reload but only inform the user on every step change…
Hi
Thanks for the workarround. We will try this.
But we still think that a feature that automatically to restart the apps as standard behavior of the apps/station/player. There is no reason that an operator run a previous version of an apps.
Nicolas
This pain is definitely heard and understood. Thank you for the recommendation @thorsten.langner.
Let’s say, for example, we implement a force restart behavior, I have a couple of questions here:
Are you looking to restart only to force new app versions (and under which conditions - i.e. non active stations, or where operators are logged in) or for other reasons as well (stations running too long)?
Would you ever want to force restart on an active/running station station?
When a player restarts and an app is running, what behavior would you expect?
