Global Variables Administration: Global Variable Promotion

Overview

When you’re ready to promote your application, you'll also need to promote your variables. Promotion advances your variables from their current environment stage to the next. Once promoted, your variables are available to reference in that new environment stage. This feature also lets you keep your key names consistent across all environment stages. First, let's talk a bit about promotion.

Environment stages in Unqork support each phase of building and rendering applications. 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.

Transferring your variables between environment stages is called a promotion. If you transfer your variables from Staging to UAT, that's a promotion. And, if you transfer your variables from UAT to Production, that's another promotion.

In this article, you'll see that the Global Variables feature makes promoting variables so easy. You can select a destination environment stage and promote all your variables at one time. Each variable's Key, Description, and Server-Side Only setting will promote automatically. The variable's Value won't. This is great because it keeps you from overwriting values in your destination environment stage. Once promoted, you'll create a new value specific to that environment stage.

NOTE   If a global variable already exists in an environment stage, you can't re-promote it.

What You'll Learn

In this article, you'll learn how to:

• Promote your global variables.

• Create a new environment stage-specific global variable value.

Promoting a Global Variable

When you’re ready to promote your app to the next environment stage, you must promote your variables. This ensures that your modules will work correctly in the promoted environment stage.

After you choose a new environment stage, you'll promote all your variables at once. After promotion, you’ll see that the value for each variable disappears. You must add new values for each global variable in each environment stage. We’ll discuss how to add environment stage-specific values later.

To promote your global variables, you'll first need to access them. To access your global variables:

1.

Click the Settings drop-down at the top right of the Unqork Designer Platform.

2.

Click Administration.

3.

Under Environment, select Global Variables.

Once you open the Global Variables grid, you’ll see the Destination Environment drop-down above the grid. This drop-down lets you choose the environment stage where you'll promote your variables.

1.

Select your destination environment stage from the Destination Environment drop-down.

2.

Click Promote Keys.

3.

Review the warning modal and click Promote to transfer your variable to the next environment stage. Or, to stop the promotion process, click Cancel.

NOTE  Remember, if a variable already exists in that environment stage, you can't re- promote it. Also remember, after promoting a variable, you must create a new value in the destination environment stage.

Creating a New Global Variable Value

In your destination environment stage, your Value field is empty. Because values are environment stage-specific, you must create new ones for each environment stage. To make changes, you'll access Global Variables in the destination environment stage. The Global Variables feature lets you create values in every environment stage you plan to promote your app to. You can create test values in testing environment stages and real ones in Production.

To create a new value in your destination environment stage:

1.

Click the Settings drop-down at the top right of the Unqork Designer Platform.

2.

Click Administration.

3.

Under Environment, select Global Variables.

4.

In the Value field, enter a unique value.

5.

In the Actions column, click Save.