Moving Enterprise iOS app from one MAM to another - without uninstall?

Question

We have an iOS app that was originally pushed out to users via Testflight.

Now we have our own Airwatch environment, we want to move the users over.

If a user already has the app installed via test flight, clicking the "install/Update" button in the AW app store doesn't do anything. The users have to uninstall the testflight installed version first. Unfortunately, this deletes the data they've created with the app.

Is there anyway around the uninstall?

Note that I've been told that both instances of the app are signed with our developer cert.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Sandboxing is an extremely essential piece of tech for the OS, and it is designed to specifically prevent you from reaching directly from one app into another one's data through the OS.

Every app get's it's own sandbox, and your data is stuck in it. The app has a unique identifier that is different than your developer cert. Your cert is used to sign the app, but every app you create is unique (otherwise each developer would be restricted to only having one app to their name by default)

If you really want to move the stored databases from the TestFlight installed app, you'll have to update it with the built in ability to upload their data to a remote server somewhere, then write your new App in AW to fetch that stored data and consume it.

Yes, that is probably as big of a task as it sounds, but some clever work on the server side might make the whole thing seamless and unobtrusive for the user. Just not for the developers...