Summary
Our Android app experienced an issue loading Frontstage screens such as the the user profile, session pages, etc. This was caused by an update of a shared component: Android System WebView.
Status
Android app version 1.42.2 is now being rolled out with a fix for the issue.
If you are seeing the issue still after updating your app to v1.42.2 or newer, please also make sure you also have the latest version of Android System WebView on your device.
Description
On June 7, 2019, we received a first report of a device displaying a blank screen.
Initially, we believed this was linked to our May release, when we introduced a synchronization performance screen. However, after several days spent trying to reproduce the issue without success, and after not receiving any additional reports of the issue, we decided to temporarily place the investigation on hold.
Towards the end of June, we started to receive new reports of this same issue. At this point, we were able to link the issue to a release of Android System WebView, a component that is used to display Frontstage screens in the app. Since the component itself is managed by Google and updated independently of our apps, additional time was required to understand and resolve the issue. This also means the same issue was happening in other apps that use the same technology, ex. Salesforce, Financial Times, etc.
On July 18, 2019, Google started to roll out out a new version of the System WebView that changed how the WebView works. This did not directly fix the issue, however it did allow us to finally reproduce the conditions in which the issue occurred on July 26, and rapidly develop a fix.
On July 29, 2019 10am CEST we started to roll out version 1.42.2 of our Android app, which now contains the fix.
Learnings
In order to prevent this type of issue happening in the future, we have started replacing Android System WebView with a similar component from another provider. This will allow us to test and verify this component as an integral part of our QA processes.
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