Can I sequence applications that update themselves?
There are applications out there that have an automated update mechanism built-in. These applications can be sequenced, but there are some things you should be aware of.
Applications that are SoftGrid enabled always run under the user-context. All changes being made by the user or by the application itself while using it are being saved in a Delta file (.pkg). The Delta files always are per user and per application. So an automatic update through the application itself is actually being saved per user. Per default this is even in the Windows User Profile in a SoftGrid Client folder.
So the advice is turn off these type of automatic updates during sequencing. Use the “Active Upgrade feature” of SoftGrid for application updates.
If you don’t the SoftGrid Client folder for each user could grow enormously and depending of the application even windup in the situation where user A uses version 1.1 and user B uses version 1.0, even on a shared machine. Also when there is a problem with the Windows User Profile or SoftGrid Client directory, or if it is unreachable, the application update and settings will be unavailable or lost, and the application is “reverted” to the version you started out sequencing.
