Small and medium business | Business Central, N...

Publishing Sandbox Designer Changes to Production environment

(1) Share

Report

Posted on by ERPlatanos

I created a sandbox extension in Business Central with the Designer feature. I then downloaded the source to later upload the extension to production, but Business Central does not accept an upload for the created files it downloaded.

Business Central is expecting a .app file

These are the files that got downloaded upon creating the designer extension in sandbox

These are the files the designer created. What am I missing to get the Sandbox extension from designer to be available in production?

I have the same question (0)

All responses (9)

Answers (0)

Suggested answer

Mohana Yadav 60,993 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

You need to open the extracted folder in VS Code and create a .app file from those files and upload them to Production.

It is just not uploading the downloaded zip file.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

Nitin Verma 21,698 Moderator on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi,

Adding mor info.

When you design some pages and then download the source code, it downloads all the .al files in to your local drive,. as suggested open those .al files into VS code and Build an app with those file and later compile and upload that .app file into your production envrionment.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ERPlatanos 73 on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks for the replies, however there are some issues with these files when getting into VSCode. I'm not a developer.

I've run into these errors upon opening the files, but not much info on where to go...

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ERPlatanos 73 on at

Like (0)

Report

Also, when trying to download symbols, I receive the error "No server has been chosen"

I'm very lost now, and don't know if I missed a step

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Robert Jolliffe 885 on at

Like (0)

Report

This is a lot easier if you are a developer.

I did a Google for "Getting started with VS Code and AL Development" and this video is the one that came back. Eric is very thorough and walks through slowly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZcwk8UHr_8

If you do that Google or BING search and look at Videos you'll find many others. eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLXQiBZx8g

Just so you know - I have an out of date developer background (I haven't done development professionally in 10+ years) but I decided to learn this when it was new. It took me most of a day with some help from people who had figured it out before I was able to get VS Code working back in 2018. I think things are easier now but it won't be easy to do.

Just an FYI - Ignore GIT or DevOps if you hear that discussed. A lot of the videos will talk about that. You don't need it (its a nice to have).

Hope that helps.

-Rob

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ERPlatanos 73 on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks for the info, Rob.

I have actually check out Eric's videos and have gone through the some of the development learning paths. I've also built a few extensions already. Developing isn't my role, but I wanted to learn for the sake of specific customer needs in customizing BC.

I've been working in VSCode with what seems to be a simple file, but cannot get past the simple errors.

I haven't been able to download symbols on this page, since there's no server selected on the Launch.JSON file.

Business Central expects you to create your own configurations for this...

It is unclear which instellisense option is best to complete the task, but my best guess was "Attach to the client on your own server"

Do I need to change these settings now, because the build throws an error at this point too.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Robert Jolliffe 885 on at

Like (0)

Report

Just attach to the sandbox on the same instance where you've developed the personalizations/customizations and download those symbols. They will be identical or close enough to the production instance and that should work.

I was confused by this too in the beginning. You develop on a sandbox and do everything there and you'll be fine. The "on your own server" is for developing on-prem when you have a server so that's not this case.

Hope that helps.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
ERPlatanos 73 on at

Like (0)

Report

Thanks, Rob.

Per your advice, I just created a new project with AL-Go!, copied the page extension file from the design download, made sure my id's were right, and then proceeded with building to create the app file, which was uploaded as an extension to BC, where I can see the changes.

It looks like my issues could be solved if I had more knowledge of the app.JSON and launch.JSON files, but it's not obvious exactly what I would do moving forward, besides doing the design just to get the .al file, then proceeding with my own process...
[quote user="ERPlatanos"]
I created a sandbox extension in Business Central with the Designer feature. I then downloaded the source to later upload the extension to production, but Business Central does not accept an upload for the created files it downloaded.

Business Central is expecting a .app file

These are the files that got downloaded upon creating the designer extension in sandbox

These are the files the designer created. What am I missing to get the Sandbox extension from designer to be available in production?
[/quote]

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Suggested answer

YUN ZHU 95,331 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

Like (0)

Report

Hi, hope the following helps.

How to deploy your Design Extension (.zip file) to production environment
https://yzhums.com/21735/

Thanks.

ZHU

Was this reply helpful? Yes No