• Managed apps (like apps installed from Zoho Marketplace and installed through Developer zone private share distribution) cannot be added to environments. Learn more

• App dependencies - If any of your application is dependent on other applications (like lookup field) and vice versa, then both the applications cannot be added to environments. If you still wish to proceed adding them to environments, you'll need to remove the dependencies.
  Assume an Add vendor form in Logistics Management app is dependent on the Add invoice form in Customer Relationship Manager app through a lookup field Related Invoice.
  

  1. An error will be displayed when you try to add the Logistics Management app to the environment as it has dependency on another app.

  2. 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 adding 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 payment configuration in the form builder. If such payment configurations 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.
  

• When adding an application to environments, a copy of the production app is created in the Development environment without data. The Stage environment will be empty, while the Production environment, along with its data, remains unchanged. The data present in the Production environment will not copied to the Development environment.

 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 app A from Development to Stage up to versions V30.0 without having to publish to Production. However, once it reaches V31.0, you must publish version Stage V2.0 to Production to be able to publish more versions(i.e V32.0 & later) to Stage.

• During the publish to Stage process:

• for the apps participating in the publish process, the Development environment's Edit mode and Stage environment's Live mode will be locked until the publish process is complete.  Learn more

• During the publish to Production process:

• for the apps participating in the publish process, the Production environment's Live mode will be locked until the publish process is complete.  Learn More

• At any given 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.

• 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.

• If a developer has permission to app 1, and if a 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.
  

• A successfully published version cannot be reverted back to it's previous state.

 Component limitation during publish process     

• When a user tries to publish the changes from the Development environment to the Stage environment, they cannot select more than 800 components in a single publish. This applies to publish to Production as well. The count of the components selected will be displayed during the publish process.

• The publishing process has to be completed within 30 minutes. If it exceeds this time, changes will be reverted and will throw a timed out error.

• Duplicate Records Validation - while publishing a field with No Duplicate Values field, a validation occurs to check if the app has any report with this field visible. Otherwise, the app cannot be published. For instance, if a user sets a field's property to No Duplicate Values, 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 publish to Stage only after removing all the duplicate records for that field.
  
  

• Maximum Length Validation - while publishing a field with changed Character Maximum, a validation occurs to check if the app has any report with this field visible. If not, the app cannot be published. For instance, if a user edits the Character Maximum of a field and then tries to publish it to Stage, there will be a validation to check if the Stage app has any records with characters greater than the set limit. They can publish to Stage only after reducing the characters in the records for that field.

 Feature Limitations     

• The following features are not supported in development and stage environments:

1. Approval workflows and data sharing with a specific configuration for the users, cannot be tested in both the Development and Stage environments.

2. Portals are available only for the applications in production environments. When you add a users field when creating a form and choose Customer as choice in development edit mode, then in both development and stage live mode, that user's field will not list any of your application's customers. It will only display the list of portal demo users, if you have added them in the testing environments.

3. Portal configuration, Publish Components, Backup, Audit Trail, Mobile SDK, and Datasources won't support environments.

• Environment enabled applications cannot have dependencies with other apps for which it has not been enabled i.e the app that does not have an environment cannot have a dependency (say lookup) with an environment enabled app, and vice versa. Dependencies are as follows:

• Lookup

• Pages cases

1. Embed Form / Report

2. Panel actions and configurations

3. Button actions / Panel actions

4. Chart / Gauge / Search configuration

• Function call in Deluge script

• 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.

• The following filters (actions) will be available only in Development environments' live mode, Create Report / Save to the Current Report / Save as New / Filter by Admin.

• Deletion of Pivot report fields 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 a pivot report is involved.

• Form field deletion
  

• Form deletion

• Field type changes
  

• Currency/percent/decimal fields type change
  

• Email field type change

• Single line field type change

• Formula field expression change

• Encryption/decryption

• Formula field changes

• The Edit option for pivot 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 together) can utilize up to 20% of all limits from the pricing page. This 20% is an extra limit and does not include the Production environment limit.

Note: 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.

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