How to update existing Azure Managed Applications with a new package version?

Question

I created a new package for my Azure Managed Application. How do I get existing instances of the Managed Application to upgrade to that package version (mainTemplate.json + viewDefinition.json)?

Answer 1

We were able to talk to a MSFT rep about this today. The information that we got is that any updates to a Managed Application and its resources must be pushed out manually by the publisher by their mechanism of choice (Azure CLI, ARM templates, Azure Portal, Terraform, etc) via the access that the publisher has to the resource group created for the Managed Application.

There is no way to just push up the new ARM template and have that roll out to deployed instances. He said you can re-publish the offer (if publishing via the Commercial Marketplace) with a new template if you want to make the new template available to be used by freshly-created instances, but that this will never affect instances of the Managed Application that already exist.

The rep agreed that the docs that state the following are misleading to how the process actually works:

You can make sure that all customers are using approved versions. Customers don't have to develop application-specific domain knowledge to manage these applications. Customers automatically acquire application updates without the need to worry about troubleshooting and diagnosing issues with the applications.

This "automatic" versioning process is one that the publisher is responsible for implementing on their own. There is actually no concept of versioning built in to Managed Applications.