1. Enabling environments for apps
2. Publish Stack
3. Components limitations
4. Feature Limitations
   
5. Usage Limitations

Enabling environments for apps

• Managed apps(like apps from Zoho Marketplace and from the Developer zone) cannot be added to the Environments.
• App dependencies  - If the Applications have dependencies on other applications(like lookup field) and vice versa, then they cannot be added to the environment. To proceed, you'll need to remove the dependencies. Assume  Add vendor form in  Logistics Management  app is dependent on the  Add invoice  form in  Customer Relationship Manager  app through a lookup field.
  
  1. The error will be displayed when you try to add the  Logistics Management  app to the environment as it has dependency on another app.
  2. And the error will also occur while trying to add the  Customer Relationship Manager  app to the environment as another app has dependencies with it.
  Note:
  This limitation occurs only while bringing the apps into environment. Afterwards, the dependencies(like lookups) can be added from within environment-enabled apps and can be published.
• Old payment configuration  - In C4, you could create a payments configuration in the Form builder. If such payment configuration had been created in the app, then they cannot be added to the environment. To proceed, you'll need to remove the payment configuration.  To do so, navigate to the required form -> Form properties -> Payment and delete the payment configuration.
• Custom sorting in Reports  - In Reports, you can sort the columns using  Custom Order  option. Since custom order sorting in the report would be based on the live data, the app cannot be added to the environments.
• Manual filter configuration in Reports  - In Kanban reports, you can filter columns using  Manually Selected Values  option. Since the manual filter in the kanban report would be based on the live data, the app with this filter configuration enabled cannot be added to the environments.

Publish Limitations

• Stacking Limitations
  
  • Users can publish more than one version from Development to Stage sequentially, without having to move them to Production environment before publishing the next version to Stage. However, due to backend limitations, Creator cannot hold more than 30 versions at once across all applications in the Stage environment.
    
    • Example : App A has Major version V1.0 in Production. You can publish from Development to Stage up to versions V30.0 without having to publish to Production. However, once it reaches V30.0, you must publish version Stage V2.0 to Production to be able to publish more versions(i.e V31.0 & later) to Stage.
• During publish to Stage process:
  
  • Development Edit mode and Stage Live mode will be locked until the process is complete.  Learn more
• During publish to Production process:
  
  • Production Environment Live mode will be locked until the process is complete.  Learn More
• At any given point, only one publish can happen at a time.
  
  • If a user initiates a publish to Stage, others cannot initiate another publish to Stage until the first user completes the process.
  • If the first user becomes idle during the publish initiation process, the locks will be reset after a threshold of 5 mins.
  • At any point, there can be a maximum of two publish processes at a time—publish to Stage and publish to Production. So If App1 is being published to Stage, then App 2 cannot be published to Stage.
• One can couple a maximum of three apps together in a publish process.
• If the developer has permission to app 1, and if the user tries to publish a package that has both app 1 and app 2, it will throw an error, as the user does not have permission for app 2.

Component Limitation during publish process

• When a user tries to publish the changes from Development environment to Stage environment, they cannot select more than 800 components in a single publish flow. This applies to publish to Production as well. The component selection count will be displayed during the publish process.
• The publishing process has to be completed within thirty minutes. If it exceeds this time, changes will be reverted and will throw timed out error.
• Duplicate Records Validation
  
  • If a user sets a field attribute to "No Duplicate Records", then tries to to publish it to Stage, there will be a validation to check if the Stage app has any duplicate records for that field. They can only publish to Stage if they remove all duplicate records for that field. However, if there is no report, or if the field is not visible in the report, then users cannot perform the operation. While publishing a field with "No Duplicate Records" attribute, validation occurs to check if the app has any report with this field visible. Otherwise, the field cannot be published.

Feature Limitations

• The following features are not supported in development and stage
  
  1. Approval workflow and Data sharing with specific user configuration cannot be tested in both Development and Stage environment.
  2. Portal, Publish Components, Backup, Audit Trail, Mobile SDK, and Datasources won't support environments.
  3. Connections of Datasource, System Connection, and Payment Gateways won't support environments. Users have to use the same authorization across all the environments.
  4. The Portal is available only for the Production app. When you add a User field and choose Customer as Choices in development edit mode, then in both development and stage live mode, that User's field will not list any customers.
• Environment-enabled applications can have dependencies with any other environment enabled apps. Cross environment apps aren't be supported. i.e If the app that does not have environment, it cannot have a dependency (say lookup) on environment enabled app, and vice versa. Dependencies are as follows:
  
  1. Lookup
  2. Pages Cases
     
     1. Embed Form / Report
     2. Panel actions and configurations
     3. Button Actions / Panel Actions
     4. Chart / Gauge / Search Configuration
  3. Function call in Deluge script
  4. Custom Actions -> Run a function
• In Development and Stage environments, the shared users cannot be added to the application. Instead the Demo Users option shall be used.
• "Contextual messaging" is captured as a single component instead of showing all the changes.
• Create Report / Save to the Current Report / Save as New / Filter by Admin will be available only in Development environments' live mode.
• Pivot report field deletion will require unpublished packages to be published first to production. The deletion can proceed only if all the pivot report versions are published to production. Similarly the same process has to be followed for the below cases if the pivot report is involved.
  
  1. Form field deletion
  2. Form deletion
  3. Field type changes
     
     • Currency/percent/decimal fields type change
     • Email field type change
     • Single line field type change
  4. Formula field expression change
  5. Encryption/decryption
  6. Formula field changes
• The Edit option for Report's formula field will not be available.
  

Usage Limitations

The maximum permissible usage of different features(like Email Notifications, Cloud functions, Schedules etc.) would depend on your pricing plan. Your pre-production apps(Development and Stage environments) can utilize up to 20% of all limits from the pricing page. The aforementioned limits for pre-production apps are independent of the usage limits that would apply to the production apps and utilizing them wouldn't be counted in the Billing section.

Example: Assume you have subscribed to a paid plan which allows 3,000 schedules per user/month. So, you can use up to 600 schedules in the Development and Stage environments combined without affecting the production environment limit of 3000 schedules as per the plan.

Note: Please be aware that the 20% limit applies exclusively to plan limits and does not include the add-ons that have been purchased separately.

Related Links

• Understand Environments