Testing Applications without shortcuts with the new Install/Uninstall Smoke Test

A comprehensive overview of install and uninstall smoke tests, including their purpose and the types of applications they impact.

The Rimo3 Intelligent Smoke Test (IST) empowers users to conduct dynamic testing of applications without relying on pre-defined scripts. By utilizing insights gathered from the Discovery process, including shortcut information that identifies which executables to launch and evaluate, the IST facilitates a more streamlined testing experience. In the Kansas (Interim) release of the Rimo3 platform (March 2025) we have introduced an innovative variation of the smoke test. This new enhancement will enable the progression of applications that do not have shortcuts, allowing them to also undergo automated testing and export.

Discovering applications without shortcuts

Until now, when an application completed Discovery and no shortcuts or executables were discovered it would not be automatically progressed for testing, and manual intervention would be required, either to rectify an installation issue that was preventing shortcuts and executables from being installed, or to manually select executables to be tested from the Discovery information.  This was however limiting when it came to packages that legitimately didn't have shortcuts or executables to test, such as redistributables.

With the Instal/Uninstall smoke test, also referred to as the Install only smoke test, all applications that successfully complete Discovery will now be automatically progress in the pipeline. 

Applications found to not have any shortcuts will be automatically tagged with noshortcutsdiscovered to make them easier to identify on dashboards.

Testing applications without shortcuts

The install/uninstall smoke test sequence will complete the following steps:

• Provision - a new Task Runner will be provisioned for the appropriate OS
• Install dependencies - any dependencies of the application will be installed, the exit code of the dependency installers/installation scripts will determine the success of this step.
• Install - the target application will be installed, the exit code of the installer/installation script will determine the success of this step.
• Uninstall (optional) - the target application will be uninstall if an uninstall command has been provided and the tenant has not be configured to skip the uninstall step.  The exit code of the uninstaller/uninstallation script will determine the success of this step.
• Deprovision - once testing is complete the Task Runner is deprovisioned and deleted.

In the same way as the IST, if any of these steps fail the install/uninstall smoke test will be marked as failed.  Application that pass the install/uninstall smoke test will be marked as "Install only" to clearly differentiate the result from IST results on dashboards.

Selecting executables for testing

If an application doesn't install any shortcuts that can be automatically selected for testing an install/uninstall smoke test will always be created when it comes to testing the package.  However, if there are executables that can be tested these can be manually selected for testing from the Discovery information by toggling Smoke Test to yes when editing the package details:

After editing the executables will be tested by the smoke test sequence the package will be automatically rebased and tested with an intelligent smoke test sequence.

Modernizing applications without shortcuts

Not all modern application formats support applications without shortcuts as they rely on shortcuts as entry points to launch the package container.  Currently in the Rimo3 platform applications without shortcuts will not be available to Modernize to MSIX or FlexApp One.  Applications without shortcuts can, however, be modernized as App Volumes packages.

Exporting applications without shortcuts

Applications without shortcuts can be downloaded as a .intunewin file, exported directly to a configured Intune instance, or a private WPM repository.