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No Longer Able to Save As and Overwrite Existing App

Apparently the latest update now prevents a developer from using Save As to overwrite an existing app. This is a SIGNIFICANT ISSUE! Now developers are forced to work on a "live" app being used by end users instead of working in an alternate version of the app, and then overwriting the "live" version with the alternate, updated version. Ugh...thanks MS!

 

To make things worse, users can export the app and import it, overwriting (updating) the target app. So, this is the process we have to go through now???????

9 REPLIES 9
Pstork1
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

End users don't get an app until it is Published, not when it is Saved.  That has always been the case.  So you can work on the app as long as you like.  It won't actually make the new version available to the users its been shared with until you Hit Publish.

 

If you really want to have a separate version to work on then you should build the app in a Solution in a different environment.  Then when you are ready to distribute a new version to users Export the solution from that environment as a Managed Solution and Import it to the production environment.

 

 



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I figured someone would try the Publish argument but for complex apps, it is not reasonable to think developers will develop/test/QA an app that is being used, even an unpublished version, and issues will not arise. Plus, users can still overwrite by exporting/importing the app. MS is just making it more difficult than it has to be. So much for "lightweight" and "low-code" if users have to go through these hoops.

 

To make things worse, "Auto-save" is turned on by default and who knows what changes MS is making to an app when it is opened for editing. Another reason why it is not good practice to perform development work on a "live" app.

If its a more complex app then you should be building it in a solution in a separate environment.  You still don't need Save As for that.  But I agree that its not a good practice to perform development on a "live" app.  But Save As still wouldn't be a best practice.



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DanStG
New Member

I agree - hit me today and I did not like it but check out this trick http://powerappsguide.com/blog/post/how-to-save-as-overwrite-existing

I'd like to add to the issue.
From developing perspective, this change seems fine, although was caught off-guard. Thanks @DanStG for the workaround, I'm sure MS dev's will be hard at work to patch that out.

What is not fine about this change - how do we launch a new version to a test group of users, if the only option is now to publish to prod?

Pstork1
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

That's kind of the point.  You should be using seperate environments for Dev, Test, and Prod.  Then you can use a solution to package everything you need together to move it from Dev to Test to Prod on your schedule.



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100% agree for normal web development, and I am an advocate of having a Staging or Pre Production as well so our apps Power Users can Preview changes before rolling to everyone.  

But Unless something changed recently, Environments are not Free.

Why was Save As and Overwrite removed?
As a Low code product the Save As to overwrite was how I trained our non Developer Excel Power Users to test their own apps without killing their Production version.

Pstork1
Most Valuable Professional
Most Valuable Professional

Sandbox and Developer environments don't count against your capacity.  Only Production environments do. I don't know why Save As changed the way it works, but I assume it was part of moving to a more solution aware system.



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Anonymous
Not applicable

Oh no...this doesn't work anymore. Citizen developers at our company don't have access to DEV,TEST and PROD 😞

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