Develop in deployed mode without impacting deployed app

[111178]

I have an app that is working and I’ve deployed it. Yet now I want to work on it some more to customize it further. Yet every time I make a change, it updates the app, sometimes even breaks it. How can I work on my modifications without impacting what was deployed, and when ready, select to deploy the changes.

[Steven_Aung]

Clone the app. Work on it. If you don’t have plan to make changes on columns, keep the same data source. Otherwise, you will also have to clone the data.

After you finish your development, copy over all your data from your original app to the new app. You might have to update the column list etc.
In your original app, go to

. Use your new app as the source of “Copy app upgrade from”. You might want to turn on for the new major app version.

That process will basically clone your new version to the deployed app. If you turn on major version update, that will force your users to sync on opening.

I suggest to ask your users to sync all data before you do the data copying process.

[1minManager]

You can’t really. What @Steven_Aung says is correct. But it doubles the development time. Here are some tips from me

1 = Create about 5-10 columns called Temp1,Temp2 etc for all your tables. Then hide them all. Adding new columns will break the app for users if they try to sync data with the old number of columns. But renaming and showing columns doesn’t break the app

2 = Do a save and verify after every change. So that if something breaks the App you have a good idea if where the problem might be. Also you can easily roll it back to an earlier version. I have Apps that are used by 40-50 people and its rare (1-2 times per year) that somone manages to sync the App at the exact time I broke it

3 = The only other obvious suggestion is to work on the App outside of the hours people typically use it. I do this when its a major change that I cannot build & test incrementally. But even if you send emails, SMS’s and use the in-app messaging system, there will always be people who ignore them then complain when the app doesn’t work the next day

Hope this helps

Simon@1minManager.com

[111178]

Thank you both for the response! Appreciate the guidance.

[Scott_Nesbitt]

It would be great if when you create a stable version, it looks at how the Sheet looks at that time and just uses those columns.  Then creating new columns would not break the app.

Google?