PTC Servigistics Field Service Management Release 11.1 was made available for customers to download (via ptc.com) and install at the end of June 2015. This is a release of the core Field Service Management application. As you may have noticed there has not (yet) been an 11.1 release of the Field Service mobile app. I wanted to consolidate information related to questions around the usage of the Field Service mobile app after you upgrade the core application to 11.1.
The 10.7.7 Field Service mobile app will work with the Field Service Management Release 11.1 core application. The day or weekend where you turn on the 11.1 release of the core application, you do not have to have your field technicians update their version of the mobile app. The mobile users can continue to work with the 10.7.7 version of the mobile app to perform their work. This should allow you to upgrade the 11.1 core application server first and then roll-out the 11.1 mobile client (when it is released) over a period of time. This compatibility will not be supported forever and we expect that customers will quickly move to the 11.1 mobile app after upgrading to the 11.1 core application.
The 10.7.7 Field Service mobile app will not be auto-updated to 11.1 by app stores. The 11.1 Field Service mobile app will be released as a new app in the app stores. This will allow users to select which versions of the mobile app that they want to install and allow customers time to upgrade their core application. Even if a user has existing 10.7.7 app enabled for auto-update, the 11.1 mobile app will not be automatically installed. When the 11.1 mobile app is released, users will need to specifically find and install the new version of the app from the app stores.
The 11.1 Field Service mobile app will not work with core application releases prior to 11.1. If a user does install the 11.1 mobile app prior to the core application server being upgraded to 11.1, the mobile app will not work. The user will get a message that the app cannot connect to the server and will be unable to login. If this happens, the user will just need to go back to the app store and get the 10.7.7 version of the client.
The 11.1 core application can only send push notifications to one version of the mobile app. While we do get more control of the upgrades by making the 11.1 mobile app a separate app, there is a cost. The 11.1 core application can only send push notifications to one version of the mobile app and by default it is configured to send notifications to the 10.7.7 mobile app. This means that when you upgrade to the 11.1 core application, push notifications will continue to be delivered to users of the 10.7.7 mobile app. If a user installs the 11.1 mobile app, they will not receive push notifications until the server is configured to start sending these notifications to the 11.1 client and not the 10.7.7 client. As the 11.1 mobile app gets closer to release, we will be providing more information on the configuration changes required to switch push notifications to 11.1 clients.
