We have a separate environment for testing changes to apps that are not possible in a production scenario.
This does present a challenge, however, in making sure the app is copied across to the development environment correctly, and also that the finished app is correctly copied back.
It would be VERY useful to have a function to export and import apps, possibly even being able to select specific versions of the app to export.
I am aware of GoCanvas' concerns that such a function might be used to export the app and import into another platform. This, however, is quite far from what we are looking to do, so I suggest that the export file can be encrypted if necessary.
That way, it would only be readable and usable by the GoCanvas platform.
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Is this similar to this?
https://help.gocanvas.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360015593314-Facility-to-export-edit-and-import-app-designs-in-a-textual-format-suitable-for-inclusion-in-version-control
Pretty much.
I'd keep the option open to make the file encrypted, but if they already expose the app schema as described in the XML trick in the post you linked to, I guess that's not that important anyway.
I've upvoted the other feature request.
One thing I think several of our customers do is have a Department specifically for testing. That Department is limited to only Admins or people who need to approve changes. When an App is ready to go live, you can deploy it to your other Departments for regular use.
Does that sound like it might satisfy this particular use case?
How would one limit that new version of the app to only one department while leaving the existing version of the app available for the regular users?
Also, how would one dispatch to a particular version of the app, so that we can test dispatches and submissions on the new version, while still directing other dispatches to the old version of the app?
If the App has already been finished and deployed to other Departments, and then you want to work on it back in the original department, you could work through those revisions in testing mode OR make a copy of the App (in the original department) to do testing on, then manually make those changes to the original App.
You can't, at the moment, Dispatch to a test version, so the manual method might work best for you, though it's a bit more labor intensive.
Let me know if you have questions; departments can get tricky so I'm happy to help!
The manual version is what we do now, but there's no guarantee that the same changes are applied correctly when merging between the different versions.
Having developed a solution with GoCanvas only doing the handhelds and providing the CSV that we then import into a SQL database we are now ready to "sell" the solution to other companies. If we can't export the app and load it to other companies accounts we might be forced to write something ourselves to replace gocanvas. If we can export our perfected app and then import it we have an opportunity. I don't necessarily requires control of the exported app - I would be happy for customers to open their own gocanvass account and have support copy the app to the new account.
Howdy Mary,
Thank you for sharing this feedback! We do offer a program to bring user-built forms to our Application Store (Template Library) for other GoCanvas Users to utilize. If you are interested in sharing your solution with other GoCanvas Users, I would advise looking into our Content Partner Program here.