App version retention

Hey there,

I hope I'm not too late, seeing how this is already "started." As some other comments indicated, I'd like similar functionality to the publisher, where previous versions can be retained and you can control how many versions to keep. Additionally, I'm hoping some extra functionality can be added for a pilot scenario.

Let's say App A is made available to all users, and a few users have it installed. A new update for App A comes out on day 1. I want the ability to pilot the required update for App A to a pilot group for a period of 5 days. After the 5 days, I want the update to go out to all devices (this functionality already exists). The new functionality would be on the available app. I want the old version of the app to remain available for people to install until the pilot period is over. While my pilot team has the new version via the update, everyone who has the app already will wait for the pilot period, and anyone who needs the app will get the already "piloted" old version until the pilot window is up and the new version is deployed via the update to all, and made available to all via the app.

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this request.

Ideally this would work similar, if not the same, to how this works in Publisher. So a Cloud version of the Publisher setting "When a New Application Update is Available" - "Retain up to x previously created applications". This would enable rollback to previous versions, or even the ability to run different versions at the same time, for different groups of end users. Although it may not be used very often, it does give courage to business leaders that should the worst happen with an app update, it can be rolled back to a previous version.

In case something goes wrong during the version update. More of a exception to the rule but still.
Just ran into an issue where previously added requirement script (that normally did get copied to newer versions) was not added to the new app version. It would've been much easier to just go to the old deployment and copy the script manually instead of adding it again from scratch.

To anyone voting, can you please elaborate on the scenario you would like us to solve with this feature? Is it rollback to a previous version of an app, or is there some other scenario where there's value in keeping unused versions?

This would be really nice to have for PMPC Cloud indeed, as currently it is quite some manual labor to cleanup each month.

Is there a specific scenario besides the ability to roll back an app to a previous version in case the update fails or something? Would being able to choose a specific version of an app achieve the same result as this feature?

Yes please! At least having one would be nice.