Promoting Applications

Estimated Reading Time:  6 minutes

Overview

When you're ready to move an application to the next phase of development, you'll promote it. A promotion advances the application from its current environment stage to the next.

What You'll Learn

In this article, you'll learn how to:

• Understand the promotion process.

• Promote an application.

• View Promotion History.

What Happens When I Promote an App?

Workspaces offer freedom and customization with promotions. Promotions work with environment stages. Environment stages in Unqork support each phase of building and rendering applications. Unqork historically used the term environment instead of environment stage. From here on out, the term environment stage is used to describe each phase of building. Generally, there are 3 environment stages for each production customer:

Environment	Description	Codebase
Customer Staging	Where Unqork creators configure applications. This non-production environment hosts test data only. Features and bug fixes are released to Customer Staging at the end of a sprint cycle (every two weeks). After launch, this is where you prepare updates before promoting to UAT for testing. Unqork hosts the Customer Staging environment internally. Staging offers both a Designer and Express View interface.	Staging
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)	Where both Unqork and the client can view the latest build. This non-production environment hosts test data only. Unqork hosts the UAT environment internally. UAT offers both a Designer and Express View interface.	UAT
Production	This is the live application, and the only environment that end-users can access. This is also the only environment to host live client data. IMPORTANT  Following SDLC best practices, development should never take place in Production.	Production

NOTE  Some customer applications move through up to five environments. The additional environments are Quality Assurance (QA) and Pre-production (Pre-prod). QA environments use the UAT code-base. Pre-prod environments use the Production code-base. The progression order is Customer Staging, QA, UAT, Pre-prod, then Production. Client leads decide the number of environments to use when developing a customer application.

Moving your application between these environment stages is called a promotion. So, moving your application from Staging to UAT is a promotion. And moving your application from UAT to Production is another promotion.

Here's how app promotions work:

Promotion Action	Promotion Result
Promoting an app for the first time.	If your app doesn’t yet exist in the destination environment stage, the workspace gets promoted with the app the first time you promote your app.
Promoting an app again, to the same environment.	If your app exists in the destination environment stage, your promoted app overwrites its previous version. And, Unqork promotes your promoted app to the correct workspace.
Promoting your app, but not certain modules in your app.	Those unpromoted modules stay untouched in the destination environment. Your promoted app uses the existing modules in the destination environment stage.
Promoting your app when its shared modules connect to more than one app in the destination environment.	The promotion automatically changes the modules to shared modules. That way, if other apps promote to the next environment stage, they can still connect to these modules.
Promoting your app when its shared modules don't connect to more than one app in the original environment.	These modules promote as normal app elements rather than shared app elements.

NOTE  You can't promote an application that has the same app path as an application already promoted.

Promoting an Application

The best practice for promoting your applications is with the Release Management tool. This tool makes it easy to create releases with specific apps, modules, and data collections. Then, you can promote that release, monitor its progress, and view all of its relevant information.

You can also promote applications at the Application level. Doing so takes you to the App Promotion page.

TIP  To learn more about the Release Management tool, search Release Management Tool in our In-Product Help.

You'll find the following attributes on the App Promotion page:

Attribute	Description
General App Information	Information about the application. This information includes app name, style, type, date created, and date modified. NOTE  This information is read-only on the App Promotion page.
Promotion History	A list of past promotions. This information includes Destination Promotion Environment, Date, Promoted By, and Status. The View Details link shows promotion information for each element in the application.
Modules to Promote	A list of modules available for promotion in the application.
Data Collections to Promote	A list of reference data collections available for promotion in the application.

Let's look at accessing the App Promotion page.

NOTE  If you use Managed Assets and PDF Templates, you must upload these to each environment stage. When moving an app to the next environment stage, you must also promote all other pieces of an application. This includes, but isn't limited to, roles, groups, styles, and collections.

Promoting an Application at the Application Level

Now, promote your application at the Application Level:

1.

Navigate to an app you want to promote.

2.

In the Manage drop-down, select Promotion.

Follow the steps in the previous section to promote your application.

Viewing Promotion History

As soon as you promote your application, it displays in Promotion History. Applications promoted from the environment show in the Out tab. Those promoted into the environment show in the In tab. On these tabs, you see what promotions are in progress. You also see those that are successful and those that failed.

Here's an example of what you might see:

The Promotion History section shows the following:

Section	Description
Destination Promotion Environments	The name of the environment stage where the application is promoted.
Date	Shows date and time stamp of the promotion.
Promoted By	Shows the user name of the person who promoted the application.
Status	The status of the promotion. Statuses include Promotion in Progress, Promotion Completed, and Promotion Failed. Below the status, you see the number of elements included in the promotion. NOTE  If any element in the application doesn't promote, the status is Promotion Failed.
View Details	This link displays the promotion in more detail.

Viewing Promotion History shows what happened for a promotion during the promotion. By comparison, the View Details page shows what happened with individual elements during the promotion.

In the Promotion History section, click View Details to the right of the promotion details.

The following information displays:

• General information about the selected promotion. This includes the module's name, the app version promoted, the user who edited it last, and the promotion's current status.

• Elements selected for this promotion. This includes a list of modules and data collections in this promotion.