I have a customer who is using the Worklight V61 version as well as the IBM Application Center to distribute a B2E app for internal employee usage and consumption. Now the requirement is that when a new version of the Worklight app is available, the older version of the app needs to be disabled on the Worklight Console and the new version needs to be fetched through the IBM AppCenter client
So as per the available capabilities, the customer has remotely disabled the older app version on the Worklight Console and now needs to provide an external URL in the text field from where the new app version can be downloaded from the AppCenter client. At the same time, the new APK version of the Worklight app has been published to the Application Center console.
He is trying to use the notation of the app URL as
ibmappctr://show-app?id=com.RBLBankApp
where
ibmappctr has been substituted with the actual IP Address / Hostname of the machine running the Application Center component.
Note that the Worklight Server and the IBM Application Center Server have been deployed on separate WAS JVM servers
When the disabled pop-up dialog box is shown on the device when the older app version is accessed, the user clicks the 'Update button but nothing happens
Can someone please advise on what should be the app URL to get the latest version from the AppCenter client that needs to be put on the Worklight Console field ??
Note: this feature is supported starting Worklight 6.2, where the externalURL property was added (see "Application properties" link).
If you are actually using Worklight 6.2 (rather the 6.1 mentioned in the question), then
You wrote:
ibmappctr has been substituted with the actual IP Address / Hostname of the machine running the Application Center component.
Do you mean you've actually replaced ibmappctr with the host/IP?
You are not supposed to alter the URL scheme other than the id of the application (the documentation has been enhanced in this regard for the next release).
You need to use the following as-is: ibmappctr://show-app?id=com.my-app-bundle. This in turn should open the installed AppCenter Installer application via which the new application version could be downloaded.
If you are actually using Worklight 6.1, then the alternatives are to:
Only notify the employees via the Remote Disable message that a new version is available and that they should open the AppCenter Installer application in order to install it.
Direct them to some "instructions page" on the company's website using the "New Version" button.
Create a customized Remote Disable behavior to display an "instructions page" that is "built-in" the application (can be introduced first using a Direct Update if the application is already deployed in the field).
Depends how much effort you want to put into it.