Can not change Environment Variable after promotion with Pipelines

[Thoman]

I have 3 environments... DEV, TEST, PROD. I am using Pipelines to handle the promotion of the Solutions up the chain. I have Environment Variables setup for STRINGS, and Connections to SharePoint. When I publish to TEST, I can't set the override values for that environment. For instance, TEST should point to a different SharePoint list.

Where did I screw up setting up pipelines and my environments? 🤔

[joe_hannes_col · Accepted solution]

Hello @Thoman,

Did you remove the current value from the solution before exporting? If not, the values from your dev environment will be used in your test and prod environments, and you will not be asked to provide new values upon import.

You can find more information and how to remove the current values here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/data-platform/environmentvariables#how-do-i-remov...

[Thoman]

I am not using the export import option... I am using Pipelines. Do you still have to do that with Pipelines? 

[parvezghumra]

@Thoman I'm not sure about pipelines, but if you need to, you can go into the default solution in your target environment and set the environment variable values as required manually. Although this will add an unmanaged layer to the environment variable, you can remove it afterwards and the value of the variable that you set will still be retained.

[Thoman]

I cleared the values in DEV and then published up. When I did I got the prompts to add new values. What I am not clear on is what to do for future updates? Every time I want to promote a change I have to wipe out my DEV settings? I can see that being really annoying if I had lots of Environment variables in a large project.

[joe_hannes_col]

Hello @Thoman,

Glad this works for now. You will not have to delete the values itself from your dev environment, you just have to remove them from your solution using the steps in the link I shared earlier.

Your solution will keep using the dev values in the dev environment, but you can set independent values prior to importing, e.g. for test and prod.

[Thoman]

Thanks... still a bit confusing but I think I get it. Just doesn't make sense to have options for Default Value and Current Value. I was thinking you set the "Default Value" for your Production environment and then you can overwrite each environment stage with the "Current Value".

[Mglat]

Best practice (for me) is to leave default value blank, and remove current value from the solution. 
If you want to change the current value in DEV then you can do that in de default solution or quickly add it in your solution, change the value and exclude it again

[Thoman]

I need to update a data source environment variable in TEST. In Dev and removed the value from my solution but I am not getting the prompt to update it when publishing to TEST. This is for a SharePoint List Connection Reference. Do I need to delete the environment variable in TEST first?

So far the only way I was able to get it to prompt again was to delete the whole solution in Test first... That doesn't seem right.

[DenisBoico1]

I'm facing same issue... I have DEV-TEST-PROD 
I did multiple deployments from DEV to test and to PROD, but now we need to change a SharePoint list. I didn't find any way to remove previous environment variable value in TEST and PROD, just never prompts for value after first successful deployment. Only way works is to delete solution from TEST and PROD, this option might work in some scenarios but in case we have dataverse tables with data deleting solution also delete all custom tables 😞
I was trying to see if somehow deleting deployment artifacts in host environment might help to trigger the prompt for new variable values, but nothing...