Need Advice / Direction on a Remote Support Solution

[RickB75]

Guys,

       I have an application that has been running for about 1 1/2 years now with a customer of mine. I have logic built into it to check for remote updates that I publish. It works. Everything works. I recently just did another update and it worked. My issue is I have to wait for the following day for the program to run to verify it in fact did update correctly. My update exe basically checks the file versions of the installed exe's and checks my server for those specific exes and if the file versions are diff, it downloads the newest version to the PC. It is set to do this via the Task Scheduler daily. 

My question is, how can I trigger a manual run??  I was thinking about trying to implement the Remote GMail script somewhere  or somehow. That way, I could just send an email and it would fire off any of the exe's I tell it to regardless if it's the update exe or any of the other 3 I have in place. I'm trying to do this without bothering my customer. We do have great communication and a great relationship. I do realize I may simply have to write the script, compile it, call and have him to download and install it.  I was just wondering if you guys had any pointers  or ideas you could share. I don't even know if it's possible to. Just curious.

 

Thanks for you help!! Any advice is always appreciated!!  

[abberration]

The biggest problems you would have with remotely triggering an action would be the customer's firewall and possibly their public IP address changing.

Here's a possible workaround, if you have web space. If you want to trigger the update, then simply upload an empty text file and call it something like "update.txt". Have your program check to see if that file exists every 5 minutes or so. When you put the file on your web space, the program finds it, performs the update and deletes the from from the FTP.

[RickB75]

22 minutes ago, abberration said:

Here's a possible workaround, if you have web space. If you want to trigger the update, then simply upload an empty text file and call it something like "update.txt". Have your program check to see if that file exists every 5 minutes or so. When you put the file on your web space, the program finds it, performs the update and deletes the from from the FTP.

Thanks @abberration. I already have something similar in place exactly like that now for non payment. It's a empty txt file named Yes.txt. If I change it No.txt, the program stops and simply doesn't run it's course that day. My issue is, the main.exe and the update.exe don't run all day. They are set to run once per day at seperate times. 

Initially at setup and install, I did put logic in place for the main.exe to be able to create and write files in the script dir. Thats what it does on a daily basis. I was thinking I could do another update and add logic into the main.exe to download a seperate exe like your speaking about and have it run in the back ground and check my server every 5 mins to check a file name or something to trigger the main.exe to run. I haven't tried that yet ( downloading a seperate exe).