How to distribute our application with user prompting reduced or better yet eliminated.

Greg Pipes 1

We are having difficulty distributing our application to our user community. The installation of the application by the end user winds up including too many intimidating questions by the install and we would like to reduce these questions and possibly eliminate them. We used to be able to do this with a ClickOnce install with minimal prompts.

We are curious about three options and what is involved with each, along with will we receive the benefits of reduced end user prompting.

The three options are:

marking the website we distribute our application from as "safe";
Somehow signing our application;
Having our application distributed through the Microsoft Store?

Karen Payne MVP 35,031 Reputation points

2020-12-03T17:55:25.12+00:00

Hello @Greg Pipes

In regards to option 2, have you looked at Visual Studio installer projects? I've only used this installer once with 1,000 plus clients with zero issues. In the post build event you can sign with a paid for or non paid for certificate.
Greg Pipes 1 Reputation point

2020-12-03T19:40:28.507+00:00

We are signing all executables with a certificate from www.digicert.com. We also have an MSI package that is digitally signed. The problem is not the signing, the problem is downloading and running an executable from the web.
Timon Yang-MSFT 9,571 Reputation points

2020-12-08T07:55:54.337+00:00

@Greg Pipes
You can try to upload it to the Microsoft Store and let the Microsoft Store distribute it for you.
If you decide to use this way, please ask a new question with the windows-partner-center-submission tag for more detailed guidance and better support.

1 answer

Cory Smith 11 Reputation points

2020-12-03T15:19:08.443+00:00

With .NET 5, isn't ClickOnce still an option?
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Greg Pipes 1 Reputation point

2020-12-03T16:42:55.177+00:00

We have always used ClickOnce install, and for some customers it does not work well. Currently it now causes the following prompts ...
In Chrome:
Go to https://www.blockcross.com/install
Click Install
Open BlockCross application
Click Install in Application install - Security Warning
Click on More info in Window procted your pc
Run anyway
Application opens

In Edge:
Go to https://www.blockcross.com/install
Click Install
Click "Open" in Open this file
Click Install in Application Install - Security Warning
UI comes up

We would like an install process for our application that does not mention "Security Warning" at the least. So we are trying to determine if there are other avenues for distribution that would be less painful for our customers to install/upgrade our client program.
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