This is absolutely being caused by the bad WebView version. We are seeing it across the board in our customer environments. You need to get the devices updated from 89.0.4389.90 to 89.0.4389.105. 

I  have yet to find a way to use SOTI to automate this process however. Android Enterprise supports a concept of a Minimum App Version in Managed Play to force emergency updates but it doesn't appear that MobiControl has implemented this control. 

You can filter your inventory to see how many devices have the bad version. 

Note I'm searching for Chrome instead of the Android System WebView as Chrome IS the WebView implementation on GMS Zebra devices unless you've blacklisted or manually updated Chrome outside of the Play store. You can verify what the WebView Implementation is on your devices in Developer Options if you're not sure

Are you sure nothing has changed on your problematic devices?  Have you blocked automatic device agent and firmware upgrades on such devices?

Firmware updates are blocked.  We don't login to Google and Google Account creation is blocked.  I think Google App Store still updates system apps on it's own though.

Hi Travis,

Thank you for posting in SOTI Central.

I suggest you raise a Support Case via support@soti.net / support.eu@soti.net and we'll be able to assist you with this issue directly. In the meantime, I suggest you open the Play Store on an affected device and ensure everything is updated. Make sure to check for updates first too.

Edit: On top of the above, if you can't perform those actions. Look into booting the device into recovery mode and select "Safe Boot". Then try the actions suggested above.

Let us know how it goes?

Regards,

Hello,

I see this is a problem with an update of Webview that Google released. 

As you can see in this page https://bit.ly/3vTZLL9 this affects many apps, not only Mobicontrol.

They suggest to update the webview to the latest release in Google Play or uninstall updates of this app.

I have not tried yet but with so many custumers reporting this issue, sure I will soon.

That's what I was afraid of... I'm not sure I can do either since the devices are locked down and when MobiControl fails I can't do anything remotely...

I should have said in the beginning...  I'm using Zebra TC70X devices, and safe mode is disabled so that's not an option either.

Still haven't found a way to automate this update procedure but I did put this script together to get you launched into the Chrome page so that you can just tap on Update from there. 

start com.android.vending
sendintent -a “https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.chrome#Intent;action=android.intent.action.VIEW;end”

Isnt there a mechanism for sending a keypress or tapping on a section of the screen via a recorded macro in Remote Control? 

My TC70s actually have WebView on them.  And when searching it looks like everything has a version below 89.0.4389.90 (We have already fixed those that stopped working).

So now when units update webView they should get the newer version.  That is what happened when I tested anyway. 

Would you agree?

Thats right, any devices pulling an update now should pull down .105 (or higher) so the problem you experienced should only affect devices that happen to download .90 from the Play Store before it was patched. 

After looking at it more it looks like I have a mix of WebView installations and Chrome controlled installations.  I'm not sure why I would have a mix as all devices are at the same firmware, the same build and Kiosk locked down.

Would it be a bad idea to just push the latest version of chrome as an APK at these devices?  The only downside I see is the loss of automatic Google updates, which got me into this problem in the first place.

If devices are with lockdown you may send the following script by Platform Notification Service:

notify kiosk off
_adminmode on
connect -f

The disparity of versions is a byproduct of this being a system app that Google updates in the background. Those updates, while automatic require a certain set of criteria to be met for the update to process including the device being in a charging state, idle, and the app being updated not being in the foreground. It's difficult for those stars to align, especially with enterprise devices that may always be in use, may never be in a charging state if using battery swaps, and may have the business app or lockdown in the foreground all the time. As a result the window of opportunity for an update is very small on each device and as a result you'll end up with a variety of different versions installed based on when that small window may have opened up for a particular device.

This inconsistency of such a critical component has been driving me a little paranoid for a while, as I assumed something would inevitably break. Now that the day has come I'm trying to figure out what to do from here. I had thought I had disabled Managed Play updates by setting that Profile to Never Update, but these background system app updates seem to circumvent that restriction. Either that or that restriction is not doing its job. I may end up having to blacklist the Play Store completely in order to disable updates.

I am not sure about the implications of installing Chrome manually, but I did try that on my device and noticed that caused the WebView implementation to change from Chrome to the System WebView. I think at that point you'd still end up at risk of an over the air update from Play as your apps like the SOTI agent would then rely on the default WebView which is also updated from Play and would have the same problems. 

Thanks for the response.  I have been worried for awhile about this type of an uncontrolled update and it has finally come.  I have spent the entire day remoting into each one of my devices that had the bad version and manually kicking off the update.  I hope that Soti can work something out with Google to either block or at least better control these back end updates.

Hi All,

To add to the above, we've now published a SOTI Central Article for the issue, reference https://discussions.soti.net/kb/soti-mobicontrol-agent-crashing-on-an-unstable-version-of-webview/ for more information.

Regards,