Repoint all Data Sources for Deployments? Tips to manage Google Sheet changes?

[dbweb]

Hi, 

I've just worked thru documenting all the steps to: 

1. Create a Dev version of my App from the Prod version for Development
2. Make some Dev changes independent of the Prod version
3. Deploy the Dev version changes as an upgrade to the Prod version

While this wasn't too bad to sort out, I can see where more complex changes across multiple Google sheet tabs could get complicated, as well as repointing every data table from the Dev sheet to the Prod sheet. 

Is there any way I could simply update the "Source Id" for all Data Tables in an App at once? If there was some way to do this in an XML file hidden in Google Drive, that would be fine. The ID is clearly just the Google Sheet file pointer.

I'm on the Core plan, does anything in the Enterprise plans help with this? 

If I used an AppSheet database as a backend, would that help? 

Lastly, do any more experienced AppSheet devs here have suggestions on a good process to move changes from my Dev Google Sheet to the Prod one? 

I'm familiar with change management for relational databases, I'm not sure if there's anything similar like that I could use for a Google Sheet. Right now I'm just keeping a list of changes, and I've thought of possibly having a dedicated tab that inventories all sheet names and their columns. I could possibly use that to compare the Dev and Prod sheets to ensure they both line up. 

[dbweb]

What seems somewhat promising is that under Settings -> Information, there is a "Default app folder". 

So if the Google Sheet data reference was just relative to this folder, then the repoint would "just work". 

[dbaum · Accepted solution]

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@dbweb wrote:

Is there any way I could simply update the "Source Id" for all Data Tables in an App at once?

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No

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@dbweb wrote:

I'm on the Core plan, does anything in the Enterprise plans help with this? 

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See Maintain a stable version of an app - AppSheet Help. This helps as long as you're not revising the assets referenced by the stable version--e.g., changing the structure of a data source or the design of a template.

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@dbweb wrote:

If I used an AppSheet database as a backend, would that help? 

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No.

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@dbweb wrote:

Lastly, do any more experienced AppSheet devs here have suggestions on a good process to move changes from my Dev Google Sheet to the Prod one? 

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I manually replicate structural changes from my Dev source to my Prod source. One thing that helps when the source is a spreadsheet is that I made a spreadsheet template where I paste the Dev column headers on one row and the Prod column headers on another row. The template has various formulas and conditional formatting to help me identify differences between the two sets of column headers.

[dbaum]

Here's a partial outline of these types of details you may need to account for when upgrading an app. This post also includes a link to a smart technique for minimizing the effort.

Re: AppSheet Office Hours: App Lifecycle Managemen... - Page 6 - Google Cloud Community