Possible to Automatically Update an Enterprise App While Running in Guided Access Mode?

Question

I made an app deployed internally at my company. It is placed outside conference rooms and allows the user to see if it's open, schedule room time, view other rooms, etc. Given its nature and use, the app is always the active one on the device and is placed into guided access mode to prevent passers-by from playing around with it. However, the update process is rather tedious since despite our MDM solution, we have to go around and take each device individually out of guided access mode in order for the app to be updated. I've been looking into supervised mode for each device (using the Apple Configurator tool), but I wanted to ask if there was anyone here with experience trying this who could point me in the right direction in case that idea doesn't bare fruit. Is there perhaps a way to trigger the app (and guided access) to close remotely and open, also remotely, once updated? Naturally, this would go against Apple's guidelines, but this app will never touch the app store, so any solution at all is feasible. I saw a few answers on this site from over two years ago saying it isn't possible, but perhaps something has changed to allow this possibility between then and now seeing as so much has changed around deployment in the past few years.

Answer 1

I would do something like that:

• Have a device in supervised mode
• Set Guided mode through configuration profile (rather than manually doing it). App Lock payload does that.

And when you need to upgrade the app:

• Try to upgrade it without disabling guided mode. As I remember, you can install applications silently on a supervised device. So, there is a chance that it will upgrade it and restart it (because of Guided mode) after that.

If it won't restart the app on upgrade try following:

• Remove App Lock profile
• Upgrade app
• Install App Lock profile again

This should work.