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Export a design as a .app file

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Posted on by pgrover@enhanced.co.uk

I need to add a new field to the Customer card in my production instance. To do this, I launched my sandbox, opened the Designer, made the change and saved the extension.

When I then try to upload the extension into my production company, I get an error telling me it must be of type .app. The sandbox has produced a series of files, all of which are either .json or .al. There is no file of type .app.

I have tried this in multiple companies, with multiple designs etc but keep getting the same problem. What am I dong wrong?

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Stefano Demiliani 37,166 Most Valuable Professional on at

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If you have exported the source code (.al files) you need to open the project with Visual Studio Code and compile it in order to have the .app file. You need to have the AL language extension installed in order to be able to compile. You can download the .app file from extension management page.

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pgrover@enhanced.co.uk 30 on at

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Hi Stefano, thanks for the reply - is there a step by step guide of how to do this anywhere please? I've tried Googling it but I'm not having much luck.

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Stefano Demiliani 37,166 Most Valuable Professional on at

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You can go to Extension Management Page, select your extension, click on Download Source and a ZIP file is downloaded to your machine.You can unzip this file and open it with Visual Studio Code. Then press CTRL + SHIFT + B to compile it.

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ERPlatanos 73 on at

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Hi Stefano,

I'm trying to do this build after extracting and opening in VSCode, but I'm getting errors from the attempt. Assuming this is due to having no configurations on the launch.JSON file?

Not sure which configuration to use, as I then get errors telling me I need to use different servers, etc.

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

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Hi, hope the following helps.

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

Thanks.

ZHU

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Steven Renders 5,672 Moderator on at

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To be honest, best is to ask a developer or your partner to do this.

I think it is unwise to try to put apps on a production environment and start fiddling in VScode without any experience in that domain.

Another solution is to use the Personalization feature on your production environment, to add the desired fields.

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ERPlatanos 73 on at

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[quote user="Steven Renders"]
To be honest, best is to ask a developer or your partner to do this.

I think it is unwise to try to put apps on a production environment and start fiddling in VScode without any experience in that domain.

Another solution is to use the Personalization feature on your production environment, to add the desired fields.
[/quote]
Hi Steven

Thanks, I am a partner, but we don't have any developers here. I typically would use the personalization feature, but there is an outstanding bug on the general journals personalization I have with Microsoft that makes me unable to perform the task. Microsoft doesn't give ETA's for some bugs, just notification it may be on the next release. I basically just created the extension from scratch and publish it that way

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Stefano Demiliani 37,166 Most Valuable Professional on at

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As I said in this post in the past, when you download the source code from a personalization, you need to add this source code in a full BC project to be able to compile (so add a launch.json file, condifure it accordingly to your environment, download symbols etc). Then you will be able to compile that extension.

Generaly speaking, it's a worst practice to customize the system via personalizations. Personalizations extensions are prone to problems.

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ERPlatanos 73 on at

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Thanks for the info, Stefano.

I must have misunderstood your previous messaging. I thought it was only to open the files within VS Code, then go from there. I ended up creating a project from scratch with a page extension and published it that way to get the desired outcome.

Can you elaborate on why personalization is bad? Are you referring to the BC design feature and using that as means for development?

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