Forum Discussion
MSIX automatic updates and authentication
Hello everyone,
we recently started using MSIX with the automatic updates and made great progress in a short time. Our business would like change all our products from standalone MSI to MSIX with automatic updates, but one thing we need is different versions for specific customers (depending on the contract type). The package flighting concept in the microsoft store sounds like what we wan't to achive. I tried to achieve this, with using an azure webservice as the update source, which returns the correct package for the customer. I got the service to run and it works, but as soon as I enable authentication (Azure AD) on it, windows can't download the package and displays an generic error message ("An error occurred while accessing the file from the web") during appinstall / update.
Is there any way to enable authentication on the update url or achieve customer specific update streams?
thanks and best regards,
Martin
Hey Martin82
The AppInsatller file currently doesn't support user authentication. This is a feature in our backlog and we hope to get to it soon.
Tanaka (MSFT)
9 Replies
Hey Martin82
The AppInsatller file currently doesn't support user authentication. This is a feature in our backlog and we hope to get to it soon.
Tanaka (MSFT)
Hi Tanaka_Jimha, is there any news?
- In looking at this thread, while it might be nice if the AppInstaller file functionality included an auth feature, I'm not sure we need it.
Typically in any kind of packaged deployments, the package is user agnostic and the tooling provides authentication. The AppInstaller file is used as something sent to be installed, so auth might not be needed here. Instead, I think that authentication should be implemented by the "hoster" on the actual MSIX file. So if UNC file share that means ACLs, and for Http/S some sort of logon permissions. The latter might be harder to do, but I'm assuming that this is an enterprise situation that would be using UNC.
Edit: made this a separate post.
I'm wondering if this backlog item will solve my issue, which is I want to host the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/app-installer/installing-windows10-apps-web in an Azure web app behind Easy Auth so that only users in the linked Active Directory can access the installation download.Easy Auth works as expected to require login to the web page, but the App Installer experience fails with 'An error occurred while accessing the file from the web. Please try downloading and opening the file locally.' I'm guessing this same issue will impact the automatic update functionality of the UWP app as well.Curious if 'AppInstaller user authentication' would solve this problem, or if it will be an authentication experience after the MSIX package has already been downloaded.HiTanaka_Jimha ,
thx for your reply back in January. I've checked a few sources about msix development, but couldn't find anything about this. Do you have an update or can you point me at some alternatives how to implement customer specific versions with automatic updates?
thx and br,
Martin
Hi Martin82,
Can you please elaborate on "customer specific versions". Do you mean being able to distribute certain versions of your package depending on who is trying to install the app?
Thanks,
Tanaka
