[pemurray]

Greetings All,

We have a process for deploying java applications that is quite cumbersome.

Each time there is an update to the application and we deploy a new version of the application it is very time consuming and cumbersome. Currently when we send the new version of the application to the Blackberry’s, we following the following process:

1) We remove the current version of the JAVA Application and wait approximately 10 mins or so for this process to complete.

2) We then add the new JAVA Application to the Blackberry. After approximately 20 minutes, hopefully the application shows up on the Blackberry.

3) When the application appears on the Blackberry, the driver must select that he “accepts” the application permissions to allow the application to load properly.

So that being said, we need to streamline this process. We want the ability to deploy the application to ALL driver’s blackberry’s and we do not want the driver to even know it is taking place or have to allow the application permissions.

Can someone suggest a better way to do this?

Thank you!!

Paul

[cyclmpc]

You do not mention platform or the number of devices, so I'll just give you some general items I have come across.

If you are on 5.0 or >, you can schedule your deployment of apps to a certain time frame period.

The ease at which your application will update will depend on the vendor and their code. Some are more graceful than others.

Due to the newer security features of the newer OS', you cannot get around the device notifying the user of a change in permissions or aka a silent install. That said, you have default settings that the app takes in the soft config. Even if your user changes this, the default settings will push out within 4 hours to your devices. The best you can do is to notify your users of the change, so you don't get emails/calls asking you about some pop up requesting https access or etc...

Good luck.

[pemurray]

Thanks, cyclmpc. We are running 5.0.2 with about 500 devices on Windows 2003 Server.

Okay, Silent Install is out.

What should we be asking for from our software vendor to ease the install process? Is there a standard or guidelines to which they should adhere?

[cyclmpc]

I don't know if there is a standard, but I'd make sure that any update can be easily written over the current version. If you have to do an uninstall of your current version before you can install the newer version, I'd be salty.