Is it possible to force a windows phone to update your app?

Question

Say you have an app that uses an external system, like azure, and a major update makes breaking changes to the external system.

The old version of the app would fail, so...

Can you force the app to update?
If so, any help/links/tutorials would be helpful.

Answer 1

I don't think so. You can use one of the application endpoints (Web services / JSON data sources, ...) to return an error to your app so the user is informed that un update is required.

For next releases plan a system to detect client version some how so it is easy to deprecate versions or simply handle multiple versions.

Answer 2

It is possible to programatically check from you app, if there is an update. See https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/21672.now-check-for-updates-of-your-app-inside-your-windows-phone-application.aspx .

If there is an update, just show the user sa message about the need for an update and redirect them to the store, disallowing im the usage of the outdated app.