The catch with ClickOnce

ClickOnce is a great technique for in-house application distribution. It eliminates a lot of common problems for IT by giving users the ability to control their own application installs and updates. However, relinquishing tight control has some very significant downsides. These are some of the issues I’ve encountered.

First, operators are not required to update their applications. (Edit: This is incorrect. I did not dig very deeply!

To require an update:

VS 2008: Project Properties / Publish tab, Publish Version. Either tick the checkbox “Automatically increment revision with each publish”, or else manually increment the revision.
Thoughts: If manually incrementing, you could match the application/file version.
Project Properties / Publish tab, Updates button.
Tick the checkbox “Specify a minimum required version for this application”. The project will not build if you specify a version ahead of your release.
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They have the option to continue running old versions of applications. This is practical, since a change in privilege on the server can interfere with user-triggered installs. By using an old version of the application, users are able to continue doing their jobs. However, if the old application does not work correctly, it is not desirable to continue using it, and the users should be forced to attempt an update. Further, when an application update is declined, the user is not prompted again until the next update is available. This is a major problem with applications that have “final” rollouts.

Second, there is no record of application use. The applications are installed per PC, per user. Each user on a PC can potentially be using a different version of an application.

Third,  if an application is obsoleted, there is no practical way to uninstall and retract the rollout.

All of these problems can be solved by using web-based applications. However, that requires a supporting infrastructure. ClickOnce applications are a compromise between complex application rollouts versus complex application infrastructure. I for one am thankful to have a third option.

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