How to ensure software automatically updates

tina_cardona

Hi there,

The current situation in my company is that any approved software must be downloaded and controlled via an internal "software store." This has been the case with Zotero for a couple years now and I am the "owner" of Zotero for our company. However, months ago I realized that many folks were having weird issues with Zotero due to them not running the latest version. Once they manually updated (Help\Check for Updates), their problems disappeared. I then reached out to our IT department to update the software package for Zotero so that automatic updates were enabled. After many months of going back and forth, they insist it is not possible or that it does not work that way. When I look at my own config editor, it appears that all the commands related to automatic updates are turned on, but they do not work. Is there anything I can do to help my IT department figure out this issue? Thanks in advance - Tina

adamsmith

So check for update works and installs go through, but the updates don't get triggered automatically?
I don't think we've ever seen that before (blocking updates entirely is fairly common, otoh), so that would very much suggest it's something in the locally downloadable version. As you have seen, auto-updating is turned on by default.
Have IT said anything more specific than "it's not possible"?

tina_cardona

Yes, you've got the issue correct. And no IT hasn't said anything more specific and unfortunately there's a bit of a language barrier. Is there any further information I can give you from looking at my installed version?

adamsmith

if you search for app.update in the config editor, could you take a screenshot that captures all results, upload it somewhere and post a link to it here? There's nothing private in there. dstillman might have other ideas, but that'd be the first thing to check.

tina_cardona

Sure - could you remind me of a good website to post images? Thanks

adamsmith

You can use something like dropbox or google drive (remember to create a link with Everyone can View (which will allow you to take it down later if you want to) or you can use something like imgur.com (which allows upload w/o an account)

tina_cardona

One additional piece of info that may be helpful (or just redundant) is that when my company simply had Zotero white listed, and we could download directly from the Zotero website, the auto update pop-ups occurred. It's something about the software package they created that stops it.

tina_cardona

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-KmSeyCAqgkpEg6IGJZbcHsm3AQQgpq1/view?usp=sharing

adamsmith

Yeah, that all looks exactly as it should. Maybe someone else has an idea, but I don't really know what else to say without details of what happened during packaging, I'm afraid.

tina_cardona

That's unfortunate but I appreciate your time. I'll dig further into this on my side and escalate it to an IT lead. Thanks again!

tina_cardona

I spoke with an IT lead and have a follow-up question for you. Is the auto update behavior set to only occur when major updates are available rather than minor ones? I assume that, if correct, this means the next one would be 7.0 but all the minor ones within 6.0 would not trigger the updating pop-up.

adamsmith

No, it occurs for every version update, so including, say, 6.0.22 to 6.0.23 (in case that helps IT, the update mechanism is the same used by Firefox).

In fact, major updates do not typically happen automatically but rather prompt users (since you may not want a major update towards the end of a large project, say)

tina_cardona

So theoretically, if the package my company deployed to a new user was 6.0.20, what would the expected behavior be? Would it immediately, automatically apply the latest update upon install? Would it take 24 hours?

adamsmith

I believe the app checks on new run (and then every 24hs) for available updates, yes. Those are then downloaded in the background and applied on next (app) restart.
I'm actually not sure about whether/when it displays a prompt to restart to update.

tina_cardona

I'm happy to report that our tester reopened the new installation for a second time yesterday (after a month) and it automatically updated while giving helpful pop-ups. Thank you for working with me to figure this out!