Understand Environments
Let's say you have an application with multiple forms and reports and you want to add a new module containing a few additional forms and reports. Additionally, you want to add a new workflow to send email notifications to users on form submission. To prevent users from accessing the new module until all the changes have been implemented, you can first make the changes in the development environment and publish them to the Stage environment. Here, the new changes can be tested to see if they're working, and if the notifications are being triggered as expected. Once verified, the changes can be published to the production environment at once for your users.
Zoho Creator offers three environments:
- Development
- Stage
- Production
Whenever an application is edited, it is, by default, done in the Development environment. However, the application can be accessed (live mode) in all three environments—development, stage, and production. To put it simply, there is one edit mode (development) and three live modes (development, stage, and production). Live mode also means that data can be added to the application. Data in each of those three live modes are stored separately.
Out of the three live modes, production is where the end users or consumers access the app. This means testing needs to happen in the development and staging environments, before the changes are published to production. Changes are first published to the stage environment, where the testing happens, and then to the production environment.
So, applications are created in the development environment, tested in the stage environment, and made accessible to end users in production mode.
The flow:
- Create or make changes to an app in the development environment.
- Then access the app in the development environment to see how it functions. This is more or less similar to unit testing or the immediate surface level testing by developers.
- Publish the changes to the stage environment and perform extensive user testing in the stage environment.
- Finally, publish the changes to production environment for customers.
Environments Dashboard
- Applications Added to Environments:This section displays the list of all applications which have been added to Environments. It also includes additional information indicating changes available for an app that can be published to the next environment.
The meatball menu that is adjacent to each application lets you manage the app-specific configurations in each of the three environments. - Development:
- Edit: Clicking this will take you to the edit mode where you can make desired changes to the app.
- Access: This section enables users to access the application while it's running in the development environment.
- Settings: Here, developers can configure various settings like Demo Users, notifications, AI Models, variables, and workflow schedules specific to the development environment.
- Logs: Form actions, schedules, email data, and integrations related logs in an application in development are logged here with a time stamp.
- Stage:
- Access: Provides access to the staging environment, which serves as an intermediate step between development and production.
- Settings: This section allows configuration of settings like Demo Users, notifications, AI Models, variables, and workflow schedules specific to the staging environment.
- Logs: Form actions, schedules, email data, and integrations related logs in an application in stage are logged here with a time stamp.
- Production:
- Access: Provides access to the live, production version of the application.
- Settings: This section allows configuration of settings like Demo Users, notifications, AI Models, variables, and workflow schedules specific to the production environment.
- Logs: Form actions, schedules, email data, and integrations related logs in an application in production are logged here with a time stamp.
- Remove Environment: This facilitates the removing of an application from the environment.
- Stage: If the application has been published to the stage environment, this column displays the version number and the date of the most recent publish.
- Production: If the application has been published to the production environment, this column displays the version number and the date of the most recent publish.This version of the application will be currently live and accessible to users.
- Version History: Displays a log of all previous versions of the applications.
- Add Application: Allows adding a new application to the environment.
- Publish: Allows making the application available to users.
- Stage: Moves the application from development to stage.
- Production: Moves the application from stage to production and makes it live.
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