Deploy UI Customizings (Client)
As a crucial part of the UBIK® client, it is often the case that a set of UI customizings, once finished, is needed on multiple devices. Therefore, the deployment is an important step.
Contents
Manual deployment
This is an obvious approach of deploying UI customizings. From a UBIK® perspective, this can be
- Manually copying/pasting the UI customizing files (XAMLs, images, etc.) to the desired devices;
- Other 3rd-party (e.g. customers' private rollout infrastructure) automated deployment systems.
UBIK® server deployment
UBIK® provides a new solution where UI customizings can be deployed from UBIK® servers to the clients the same way content can be fetched.
Technical concept
The UI customizings are delivered from UBIK® servers to clients in the form of archive documents which contains the following.
- The archive files containing the packed UI customizing files;
- The version of the UI customizings.
Client scenario
Once a UBIK® client connects to a server and downloads such a customizing archive, it unpacks the archive file and place all its content (with the folder structures if there's any) under the client's XAML folder.
- If a folder or a file at the root level of the archive already has a same-named counterpart in the client's XAML folder, the existing one is first removed before the one from the archive gets unpacked;
- Once the archive is unpacked, the client tries to reload the UI customizings. If a set is found for the currently selected profile, one should see the changes in the UI.
Some other details
- The download of a document file is not always automatically done in UBIK® clients.
- If the archive document is a part of the infrastructure objects, its file is automatically downloaded during login (as long as the client is in online/auto sync mode);
- Otherwise, one has to either navigate to that document or download a branch containing that document.
- One can deploy multiple sets of UI customizings in a single archive document by placing them under corresponding folders. Theoretically, it's okay to configure and deliver multiple archive documents to the clients since the content will be unpacked just the same. However, it's our recommendation to use a single archive document not only because it's simpler, but also see below;
- The version information of the UI customizings is available on the archive document and is displayed together with the client version at the bottom of the login page. Currently there's no additional UI to display a list of versions, so the version of a randomly chosen archive will be displayed in case multiple are present. Also, the version information only becomes available after a user logins in (which grants access to the content).
